Two hundred yards from the entrance, passing a little motu, they plowed into white water from the last breaker. Feeling undertow, the boat slewed to port and picked up speed. The throb of the engine quickened. Under full power, with jib and mizzen set to angry gusts from the peaks behind, they rushed toward the pass. There was nothing to do now but hang on.

Linda Lee rose to the incoming surge. The first swell stopped them cold. They climbed, dead in the water. To either side the big blue mountains hung curled over the reef. The combers fell, first to port and then to starboard, in twin booming bellows of rage.

A central crest remained. Linda Lee hung tottering on it, her propeller flailing air. Her engine oversped and roared in agony. Then she was sliding down the reverse side of the swell, sails luffing as they fell into the lee of the wave, engine slowing as the screw felt water again.

The sides of the pass inched astern, far too slowly. When the next wave broke, she was sure they would be trapped in midchannel. She could see it growing now, far at sea. It seemed bigger than the last. She found herself straining against her belt, spurring the boat onward with her toes. The oncoming swell jarred them, stopping them dead again, and Linda Lee threw her bowsprit up, her stern down, and shuddered. She lost way. Mitch muttered, “Shit!” He tested the wheel for control, spinning it first to starboard, then to port. If the bow fell off either way, they would tumble broadside to the comber, and never survive the roll.

A cold gust of wind filled the jib. The boat came alive and climbed for the rim. The wave broke under them and they slid down the reverse slope. To seaward the next swell was gathering.

Linda Lee climbed that one too. It broke under them, precisely when they were cresting it. They balanced for an instant, and then the bow went down, the breaker crashed harmlessly in the entrance behind them, and they slid out of the pass.

So far as she knew, they were free of land. Maupiti, ahead of them, she could still safely see. Nothing else this side of Rarotonga in the Cooks, 500 miles to the southwest, could hurt them.

The hurricane she thought of as an overgrown gale. Andy Dugan had survived a gale on Linda Lee already.

She went below to change.

At the dock he had been numb with shock. The need for action in the pass had saved him from thinking. Now, temporarily out of danger, he groped for things to be done, looking for refuge from pain.

Behind them, a fine mist, untropical and northern-looking, was suddenly obscuring Mount Pahia and the crags. Bora Bora had been safety, for themselves if not the boat, and there was no way to re-enter the pass, now. A thrill of fear elbowed the agony further aside.