On the next wave, Sprite was there, rolling within thirty yards of us. I had the binocs glued to my eyes. “She’s all shot up! And . . . oh, no!”

Julian clung to the wheel, pale and bleeding. His engines sputtered as he throttled back. An oil slick spread wide where Sprite’s fuel tanks had been punctured. The passenger side was empty.

“Where’s Hannah?” Daniel bellowed across the churning water. “Julie! Where . . . is . . . Hannah?”

Julian’s eyes rolled back. He slumped over in his seat.

Daniel grabbed me by the scruff and shoved the tiller into my hands. “Bring her in!”

“Daniel! No!”

But he’d already shucked his harness and his foul-weather gear and bounded up on the gunwale. He caught his balance as Melville rolled, then dove into the water.

The next swell hid them both, boat and swimmer.

Time stops. No, slows, like it’s making every second last to hold off disaster.

I take a step toward the gunwale. Julian might be dying, even dead. The tiller swings free and Melville veers broadside to the swell, heeling precipitously. Go after them and likely drown, or save the ship and crew—my ship now, and Breakers, Jenn, and Jandi—never mind the plant wealth on which the new den’s survival surely depends? Melville carries our hope for the future.

It isn’t a choice. I’d already made it when I told Daniel I wouldn’t desert Unca Joe. Daniel chose in a nanosecond, not for me or the den but for family. He’s on his own.

Is it grief or fury, this fever that boils up in me like magma? Or simply a sense of purpose?

I fall on the tiller to wrench Melville around, nose to the wave. It breaks over us, but the good craft plows through. I scan ahead for Sea Sprite, for a glimpse of Daniel in the water. Bobbing and rolling, I see Julian rouse himself enough to toss a lifeline. Another dip and rise, and there’s Daniel grappling for Sea Sprite’s side rail as she slides past him down the face of the trough. Using the wave as a boost, he manages to fling himself onto her stern deck. He lies there, panting, gripping with every part of his body to stay on board.

Suddenly I see my father. That sun-struck vision, all I’d kept of him, faceless and godlike. How I felt when he abandoned me. But now, as if that long-ago sun has dropped behind a cloud, I see him clearly: tight-mouthed, slightly pouty, anxiety hiding under a tinge of bravado. More show than go. My mother was the steady one. As I must be, now.

The fever drains away to ice. Sprite is rushing toward me, lifted on a froth of breaking wave. I must get Melville out of the way or kill us all.