These rods, to which Sam had already referred, and of an X form, extended from side to side of the vessel. If it were not for them the Duncan, a notoriously hard-driven vessel, would (or so common report had it) have long ago ended her career. To stiffen further the Duncan, it may be added that she was also hooped by iron bands outside her hull; the same extending from chain-plates to chain-plates forward. Even as the men gazed, the steel stays, which crossed at the foremast, were quivering under the impact which came of the vessel plunging into heavy seas before an immense press of canvas.

“Some day, Sammie, them rods’ll part, and then she’ll split in two like a Boston cracker and down she’ll go the farther from the cook.”

“If, instead of swearing at them so much, cook, you’d once in a while take a marlinspike to the turnbuckle and screw ’em a little tighter—” Sam followed his own advice. “There; that looks better.”

“But she is loose, Sammie.”

“Loose? Of course she’s loose. But that’s no fault of hers. Look back at the passages she’s made. Sure ’tisn’t in nature for a vessel to be driven as this man’s driven this one for years now and she not be loose. But that only affects a vessel’s comfort. For sailin’ ’tis no harm. Indeed, ’tis notorious that a loose vessel sails fastest.”

“H-m-m—then this one ought to be about the fastest thing that ever wiped her nose in a winter westerly.”

“And so she is. I’d hate to say what I think she’s logging now, for fear of what you’d call me. But what odds if she is loose, so she’s standin’ up well? And she’s standin’ up—well enough to carry her mains’l anyway, and all the vessels that’s carryin’ a whole mains’l here-away to-day c’n be counted on the thumbs of a one-armed man, I’ll bet.”

“And no slack now, Sammie, till he’s home, I s’pose?”

“Slack? Slack?” Leary looked into the cook’s face to assure himself no joke was meant. “This man slack on a passage home? Well, if—there goes another bunch of crockery, cookie. You ought to know better than leave them around so careless—and the way this vessel’s bein’ jolted. If I know him, he’s got a picture in his eye now of cradles and babies and a lone woman by the fire. No, sir, if it was blowin’ 16-inch guns out of the water he wouldn’t slack now.”

And never a slack did Clancy think of. Cruel it certainly seemed. Wind just forward of her beam then, and so allowing of sheet enough to keep all the bouncing life in her. And the sea? She was picking it up over her knightheads and passing it along deck, smothering hatches, house, and wheel-box, and over the taffrail roaring.

“Like an express train on the other track,” said the next man off watch after Leary. “Honest, I caught myself looking back at her wake to see if I couldn’t see the cars going out of sight around the curve. Man! if she don’t bust all the records this trip!”

And that started them to figuring out how long before she would be here, there, and finally into Gloucester, which is known of any old Gloucester fishermen to be the surest way to discount any good luck in store. It was only inevitable then, that the vengeful wind should jump to the westward. The skipper was the first to note the veering, and it was, “Blast your hoary old face!—can’t you stay with a man in a hurry for two days running?” And to the man at the wheel then, “Let her come about, and don’t trip her, either.”

Almost to Sable Island Northwest Light it was on that tack. Abreast of Cape Sable they hoped it would be on the inshore tack. But no; the wind headed them off again and developed into a westerly hurricane, of which, between one tack and the other, they got thirty hours, she reeling off her express speed under four lowers the meantime. It was then her planks first gave warning. Clancy was not deaf to the indications.