After the noise topside, it was almost quiet below. But the boat was a sodden tangle of all they owned. Every wave that rolled down on them threatened a knockdown. They were rolling forty, fifty degrees, dead in the water, and it was impossible to hang on. The cabin sole was strewn with cans, oilskins, boots, and towels Lindy had tried to use to mop up. Oily water sloshed up from the bilges through the grills in the floorboards. There was no way he could get to his tools now, let alone nail the floorboards down.

The bunks were too precarious, even with the leecloths, so they crawled forward together and lay on the littered floor in the narrow passage between the head and the hanging locker. Water sloshed between them. He enveloped her in his arms to protect her from the wildest rolls, from the inevitable knockdown and the barrage of lead.

They both grew sick. The electrical system shorted and left them in the dark. They passed a seasick bag back and forth, alternately and regularly. He was sure they would die.

He heard a Scuba tank, lashed in the engine compartment, go adrift and begin to smash the thwarts to pieces. He was too tired to move. A galley locker sprung open. Her crockery went in a sliding, roaring crash. They did not mention it. Somehow, Linda Lee avoided capsize. They did not speak at all.

He finally slept. When he awakened the motion had eased. He crawled to the porthole over the chart table. The eastern horizon was banded in a steel-gray cast. He crawled back and slept some more. When he awakened again they were in fast clearing weather. She had crept aft and was trying to light the galley stove. She felt him looking at her and gave up. She snaked back beside him. He could see her profile against the gray skylight.

“Are we OK, Mitch?” she murmured.

He knew what she meant, what she wanted him to say, and couldn’t say it. Later, maybe, but Jean-Paul was too close. “Sure,” he said. “It’s clearing.”

He slumbered again. When he finally surfaced out of a deep well of oblivion his mouth tasted of acid, his teeth were coated, his face was raw and stubbled with a two-day growth. He had slept almost eighteen hours. He moved topside. Linda Lee was still jogging, going nowhere. The sun was rising upwind in a mess of orange squalls. They were harmless camp-followers of Arlene, which had given up on Linda Lee and was probably sweeping down on Rarotonga in the Cooks.

They had taken the worst they would ever see. He would never fear weather again, not on this boat, not with Lindy. After repairs, there were the Cooks, the Tongas, Fijis, New Caledonia. Then?

Why not? Through the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope. Around the world?