He had somehow, while she slept, crept forward and set their smallest storm-jib. It had never been hoisted before, except once for drill in San Francisco Bay. He had reefed the mizzen, too, and lashed the wheel. They were hove-to on a port tack. His feat was impressive but, she thought, futile. They were inching through the most enormous seas she had ever seen and slipping to leeward like skiers in a turn.

She looked around. There was no sun or even any sky. They were trapped like insects under a shallow, dark-gray bowl. The scud hurtling by above her seemed low enough to touch. But there seemed for a moment hardly enough wind to drive them to leeward so fast.

And then the sound of it came, a quiet humming from aloft. At first she could not believe it was their rigging, it was so melodious. The note rose and fell and rose in pitch again. A giant swell off their port bow rose in a pyramid, and suddenly the top one-third was ripped loose, flying toward them in a stinging hail of salt. She ducked too late. Her cheeks felt as if she had been struck with splinters of glass.

The wind stopped short. She looked up again. They were climbing, and the pyramid was passing beneath them. They balanced on the top and fell into the following trough. She heard a screech from aloft. A gust whipped her southwester from her head and sailed it fifty yards to starboard. It almost took her with it too. No calm followed this one, just a rising crescendo that heeled Linda Lee to starboard, heeled her further and further, until it seemed that they were going over. She clutched at Mitch’s arm, missed, and found herself thrown into the mizzen instead. The keening aloft got drowned in the roar of a breaking wave from port. She cringed and hung on. The wave struck, drenching her. Hundreds of gallons of light-green water buried the scuppers and swirled calf-deep in the cockpit.

The wind rose further. She could no longer face it. She burrowed into her oilskins in the lee of the deckhouse. She looked to starboard. The seas were a tangled snowscape of foam. The wind drew her breath from her body. She tried to turn to port now, to face the oncoming waves. The wind seemed about to tear the eyes from her face. Mitch was crouched behind the lashed wheel, low in the cockpit, back to the seas.

“How long?” she mouthed. She could not hear her own voice. “How long will it last?” she yelled.

He shook his head. He couldn’t hear, or didn’t know, or didn’t care to answer. He locked his eyes on hers, pointed decisively below, and moved toward the hatch.