“Ze beeg fool!” French Pete cried, running out of the cabin to see.  “Sometime—­ah, sometime, I tell you—­he crack on like dat, an’ he go, pouf! just like dat, pouf!—­an’ no more Nelson, no more Reindeer, no more nothing.”

Joe looked inquiringly at ’Frisco Kid.

“That ’s right,” he answered.  “Nelson ought to have at least one reef in.  Two ’d be better.  But there he goes, every inch spread, as though some fiend was after ’im.  He drives too hard; he ’s too reckless, when there ain’t the smallest need for it.  I ’ve sailed with him, and I know his ways.”

Like some huge bird of the air, the Reindeer lifted and soared down on them on the foaming crest of a wave.

“Don’t mind,” ’Frisco Kid warned.  “He ‘s only tryin’ to see how close he can come to us without hittin’ us.”

Joe nodded, and stared with wide eyes at the thrilling sight.  The Reindeer leaped up in the air, pointing her nose to the sky till they could see her whole churning forefoot; then she plunged downward till her for’ard deck was flush with the foam, and with a dizzying rush she drove past them, her main-boom missing the Dazzler’s rigging by scarcely a foot.

Nelson, at the wheel, waved his hand to them as he hurtled past, and laughed joyously in French Pete’s face, who was angered by the dangerous trick.

When to leeward, the splendid craft rounded to the wind, rolling once till her brown bottom showed to the centerboard and they thought she was over, then righting and dashing ahead again like a thing possessed.  She passed abreast of them on the starboard side.  They saw the jib run down with a rush and an anchor go overboard as she shot into the wind; and as she fell off and back and off and back with a spilling mainsail, they saw a second anchor go overboard, wide apart from the first.  Then the mainsail came down on the run, and was furled and fastened by the time she had tightened to her double hawsers.

“Ah, ah!  Never was there such a man!”

The Frenchman’s eyes were glistening with admiration for such perfect seamanship, and ’Frisco Kid’s were likewise moist.

“Just like a yacht,” he said as he went back into the cabin.  “Just like a yacht, only better.”

As night came on the wind began to rise again, and by eleven o’clock had reached the stage which ’Frisco Kid described as “howlin’.”  There was little sleep on the Dazzler.  He alone closed his eyes.  French Pete was up and down every few minutes.  Twice, when he went on deck, he paid out more chain and rope.  Joe lay in his blankets and listened, the while vainly courting sleep.  He was not frightened, but he was untrained in the art of sleeping in the midst of such turmoil and uproar and violent commotion.  Nor had he imagined a boat could play as wild antics as did the Dazzler and still survive.  Often she wallowed over on her beam till he thought she would surely capsize.  At other times she leaped and plunged in the air and fell upon the seas with thunderous crashes as though her bottom were shattered to fragments.  Again, she would fetch up taut on her hawsers so suddenly and so fiercely as to reel from the shock and to groan and protest through every timber.