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"Ha, I told you he was yellow!" shouted Code in glee. "Somebody's

cut away one edge of the stays'l. Now we've got 'em!"

And they had; for within a quarter of an hour they left the

_Nettie B._ astern, finally defeated, Nat Burns's last act of

treachery gone for nothing.

But the mystery schooner would not be denied. Though the Lass

made her seventeen knots, the wonderful Mallaby schooner did her

twenty, with everything spread in that gale; and when the white

lighthouse of Swallowtail Point was in plain sight through the

murk, she swept by like a magnificent racer and beat the Charming

Lass to moorings by twenty minutes.

Half an hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that

time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and

clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him

of the bonus offered for the first vessel in.