"It's going to be luck," said Ryder. "If either of us get a good slant that the other misses, the last will be out of it. But I wish I'd had those other two hands. The _Star_ wants 'beef' on the braces. Mr. Semple, as soon as possible see all the parrals greased and the blocks running as free as you can make 'em." And Semple did his best, as the crew did. But Mrs. Ryder had her doubts as to whether her husband was doing his. For once he seemed to think failure was a foregone conclusion. "I think it must be his liver," said Mrs. Ryder. "I'll see to that at once." But instead of looking up the medicine chest she came across the Pacific Directory. "I never thought of that," she said. "He's never done it, now he shall." She took the big book down and read one part of it eagerly. "I don't see why not," she decided, and she went to her husband with the request that he should run through Magellan's Straits when he came to it. "Not for dollars," said Will Ryder. "When I'm skipper of a Pacific Navigation boat I'll take you through, but not till then." "But look at all you cut off," urged his wife, "if you get through." "And how you are cut off if you don't," retorted Ryder. "When I was an apprentice I went through in fine weather, and I'd rather drive a 'bus down Fleet Street in a fog than try it." She said he had very little enterprise and pouted. "Suppose the _Battle-Axe_ does it?" Ryder declined to suppose it. "John wouldn't try it if you could guarantee the weather. I know him." "You never take my advice," said his wife. "I love you too much," replied Will Ryder. He put his arm about her, but she was cross and pushed him away. "This is mutiny," said the captain, smiling. "Well, I feel mutinous," retorted Connie. "I wanted you to steal two of your cousin's men and you wouldn't. I'm sure they would have come, for what the _Battle-Axe_ owed them. And you wouldn't. And now I want to go through the Straits and you won't. The very, very next time that I want to do anything I shall do it without asking you. Why did you bet a hundred pounds if you weren't prepared to try to win it?" "We'll win yet," said the skipper, cheerfully, "We're only just started." The two vessels kept company right down to the Horn, and there, between Ildefonso Island and the Diego Ramirez Islands, the _Star of the South_ lost sight of her sister and her rival, in a dark sou'-westerly gale. With the wind astern as it was when they squared away with Cape Horn frowning to the nor'-west the _Star_ was a shooting star, as they said for'ard. "If we could on'y carry a gale like this right to the line, we'd 'ave a pull over the _Battle-Axe_, ma'am," said Silas Bagge, an old fo'c's'le man, who was Mrs. Ryder's favourite among all the crew. He was a magnificent old chap with a long white beard, which he wore tucked inside a guernsey, except in fine weather. "But we can't; there'll be the trades," said the captain's wife, dolorously.