So he staggered aft and got the mizzen down too. The rain began with a roar. Wind yelled through his barren rigging. His inclination was to ease off and run before it. But now that he knew she was somewhere ahead, he refused to lose ground. He jammed the engine full forward, wheeled the boat into the wind, and began to take the waves head on. Linda Lee hobbyhorsed, tossing her head at the peaks and digging her bowsprit deep in the troughs. She reared and bucked, snorting water from her bows at each steep short sea, and there was nothing he could do about it but hang on.

He sensed that the hastily secured jib had torn from its gaskets and was inching its way up the mast with every shake of her head. He felt the wind catch it and swing the bow to starboard. He fought the turn. He flicked on the spreader light. The jib was almost two-blocked, bellied out wildly. They had turned 180 degrees now.

He threw the engine into reverse. It was like trying to brake a runaway truck by dragging a foot. Under the bullheaded jib alone, they were suddenly making eight, nine knots through the slashing rain. He was losing ground that it would take him hours to get back.

He whipped his rigging-knife from his jacket pocket and slashed the starboard jibsheet.

The boat slowed as the sail streamed ahead like a great white flag of truce. In the glare of the spreader lights he could see it flogging itself to tatters; within seconds the head-stay was a laundry-line of shapeless snapping pennants.

But the strain was off the wheel, and he brought her bow back into the wind. He had lost half a mile, perhaps more. And if he had not found her by dawn, he would have to struggle topside with the old spare jib and bend it on. But that was tomorrow.

He began again to slog into the squall, southeast, logging nothing, but at least holding his own. In the shine from the spreader light he could see little past the hatch. He suddenly realized that it was open. His chart table, log, and instruments must be inundated, below. He clawed it closed, far too late, and turned off the light to readjust his eyes to darkness.

The rain continued, terrifying him. Earlier in the day, when the morning squalls had hit, he had not been nearly as scared, for it was easy to imagine that she was somewhere far away. But this storm, driving in from ahead, must have passed her very closely. Its rains seemed capable of slamming her under, if its waves didn’t, or drowning her in the sheer cascade of water.