his hands the helm at the start. Ken Howarth, owner and skipper, stood smiling beside him; and Lyman, who was on from Newport, watched Jay's hands and the pilot of the sloop Saracen, bearing away a hundred yards ahead.
She spread identical canvas with the Arletta, from jib-point to topsail. She matched the Arletta in length and beam. Among the sloops, it was, likely, the Arletta to beat the Saracen or the other way about.
Jay glanced at the Saracen and beyond to the stake boat and with his eyes he traced the starting-line to the shore.
"They have it," said Ken Howarth, suddenly nervous. They had the start, he meant; they were timed to the third gun and would cross with its echo, leading the Arletta by a hundred yards, Ken thought.
Jay did not think so; but he did not even shake his head; he stared at the shore; and, for those seconds, he was not even thinking of the race. He'd be cut off from shore, suddenly he realized, for two days and nights and the Lord of the Four Winds only knew how much longer. Cut off, that meant, from the waiting in these last days for word of Stanley Alban, and of Lida.
Not such word as was expected from Stanley, did he fear from Lida; a very opposite word, indeed—news of birth, the exact contrary of death, but with a possibility of death, too, of course. But he could do nothing about it, afloat or ashore. He did not know so much as where Lida was; she had not told him and her mother refused all information.
