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Show SKIPPER'S BLUFF WAS CALLED Fife Held the Weather Berth and Would Not Yield It to His Opponent. C. H. J. Snider, who often sailed under him, tells this incident as characteristic char-acteristic of William Fife, Jr., Scotland's Scot-land's famous designer and sailor of yachts: He was in the weather berth, once, on the port tack, dodging around the line. "The enemy." to leeward, and close aboard, hadn't room to clear us, but put his helm a-lee on the chance of forcing Fife to come about and then weather-bow'ing him. The yachts were side by side. "I'm not coming about," Fife sang out in warning to the other. The headsails of the enemy fluttered. flut-tered. It looked like come about or a collision. "I'm no coming about!" thundered the Clyde man, dropping a "t" from the "not" for emphasis and keeping his own tiller arm amidships. The other man realized that his bluff was called. Hard-a-weather went his helm. His boat was almost in the wind's eye, sheets and sails slatting wildly, everything adrift. She had just enough way on her to pay off. She went clear, but you could have cracked an egg between the two boats as she did. Then, of course, Fife had her nailed. Before she had gathered way again we were on her weather bow. The back draught from our mainsail killed her. Every time she tacked we did the same. Fife's position was as impregnable as a stone wall. There was no passing us in all the buck to windward ; and as it happened hap-pened that we had the heels of her running, the race was ours from the start and all due to the grit of the Scotchman. Yachting. |