The spinnaker went into the sea, the topsail thrashed half-way up the mast, and _Red Rose_ listed until the water was deep on her lee deck. A white sea swept her forward as they hauled down the staysail; and then, coming round, she plunged head to wind, a few yards from the dark ironwork of the pier. Wyndham came to help and soon afterwards they brought her to a safe anchorage. While they stowed the sails a gig crossed the bows and somebody shouted: "Well done, _Red Rose_! You're first by three minutes on handicap time." Wyndham put on his jacket and lighted a cigarette. "Not bad for a boat I bought because she was outclassed. Sometimes I wonder what I could do if I had proper tools," he said. Then he laughed. "Anyhow, we had better start the pump." CHAPTER II MOONLIGHT AND GLAMOUR Rockets leaped up from the old castle on the narrow flat between the woods and the strait. Colored fires burned behind the loopholes in the ruined walls, and an admiring crowd occupied the lawn that slanted to the water. The night was calm and when the band stopped the voices of a choir, singing old part-songs on the pier, carried well. There was a smell of drying seaweed, and the yachts' anchor-lights burned steadily in rows that wavered with the eddying tide. The last race was over and the townsfolk had given the crews a feast before the fleet dispersed. Marston sat on a broken wall, talking to _Deva_'s owner about the race along the coast. Elliot was a friend of Marston's. Chisholm, the commodore's young son, stood close by, smoking a cigarette. "You beat us handsomely and Wyndham deserves the cup for his pluck in carrying on when we were forced to lower our topsail," Elliot admitted. "Still something was due to luck; you got the last of the stream along the shore when the tide running down the river carried the rest of us back." "Wyndham has a talent for that kind of thing," said Marston. "Sometimes you feel he, so to speak, thinks like a fish. He doesn't need to calculate when the tide will turn and where he'll find slack water. He knows." "Wyndham has a talent for getting what he wants," Chisholm interposed. "_Deva_ ought to have beaten _Red Rose_." "Aren't you rather young to judge?" Marston asked, with a touch of dryness. "Oh, well," said the lad, "I like a man who loses now and then. You can understand that kind of fellow." Elliot frowned. He could take a beating; but he was curious and looked at Marston thoughtfully. "I suppose you didn't see the Knoll buoy?" "We did not," Marston replied. "There was something on the water in the haze, but it was too small for the buoy. Wyndham thought it a gull, a big black-back; his sight is pretty good." "How did the thing bear?" Marston hesitated, because he saw where the question led, but he was honest.