Now he was in the enemy's hands, and St. Andrew's was less than a dozen hours away; St. Andrew's, with its jail, its grand jury, and its pen.
Life aboard the _Nettie B._ had been a dead monotony. On the foremast above Code's prison hung the bell that rang the watches, so that the passage of every half hour was dinged into his ears. Three times a day he was given food, and twice a day he was allowed to pace up and down the deck, a man holding tightly to each arm.
The weather had been propitious, with a moderate sea and a good quartering wind. The _Nettie_ had footed it properly, and Code's experienced eye had, on one occasion, seen her log her twelve knots in an hour. The fact had raised his estimation of her fifty per cent.
It must not be supposed that, as Code sat in his hard wooden chair, he forgot the diary that he had read the first afternoon of his incarceration. Often he thought of it, and often he drew it out from its place and reread those last entries: "Swears he will win second race," "Says he can't lose day after to-morrow," "I wonder what the boy has got up his sleeve that makes him so sure he will win?"
At first Code merely ascribed these recorded sayings of Nat Burns to youthful disappointment and a sportsmanlike determination to do better next time. But not for long. He remembered as though it had been yesterday the look with which Nat had favored him when he finally came ashore beaten, and the sullen resentment with which he greeted any remarks concerning the race.
There was no sportsmanlike determination about him! Code quickly changed his point of view. How could Nat be so sure he was going to win?
The thing was ridiculous on the face of it. The fifty-year-old _May_ had limped in half an hour ahead of the thirty-year-old _M. C. Burns_ after a race of fifteen miles. How, then, could Nat swear with any degree of certainty that he would win the second time. It was well known that the _M. C. Burns_ was especially good in heavy weather, but how could Nat ordain that there would be just the wind and sea he wanted?
The thing was absurd on the face of it, and, besides, silly braggadocio, if not actually malicious. And even if it were malicious, Code thanked Heaven that the race had not been sailed, and that he had been spared the exhibition of Nat's malice. He had escaped that much, anyway.