“Darling? More coffee? Hey, are you all right? We’re luffing up again.”

“Little bastards quit.”

“What little bastards?”

He had trusted tiny elves, dancing in the binnacle light, to swing the compass back on course. Her coffee had snapped the wire of exhaustion and driven the elves out of the binnacle. He needed it now.

His back stabbed him again, this time with authority. He clutched at the mast in agony. It was 11:15, and he had to leave the yardarm.

He steeled himself, waited for a roll to starboard to help him dismount the crosstree, and began to hoist his right foot over the spar.

The needle exploded in a flash of pain. He grunted, his foot locked halfway over the spreader. When he tried to inch his right leg either way, his lower back clamped. He teetered for a moment, gritted his teeth, yanked at his knee, and got the leg back over the yard.

He had regained the spreader, but reversed his position. There was nothing he could do until his back eased. He collapsed backward, sitting with his spine supported by the mast and his legs astride the yardarm.

Facing outboard, to windward, insecure and scared, he had no way to grip the mast until the pain left. The tendons at the base of his spine clenched tightly. He groaned, tried once to shift, and froze.

He was locked by his own muscles twenty-five feet aloft, so he clung to the spreader beneath him as best he could.

The sun would not wait, he must somehow get himself down before Local Apparent Noon, but he could not budge now.

Andrew Dugan, perhaps to delay his own decision, or to generate business for his brother’s yard, had finally insisted that Mitch haul out and survey the boat before they talked further. Mitch and Lindy had watched her trundled from the oily water. Squealing up the marine railway, she had grown before their eyes from a yacht to a full-sized sailing ship.

Now she towered on the ways above them, ready to return to the tide. Her long underwater hull, wineglass-shaped when seen head-on, shone newly under brick-red paint. Mitch was filthy from the quick inspection he had given her; he had been afraid that if he hired a professional surveyor he would hurt Dugan’s feelings. His bargaining position stank, and they all knew it. No one had mentioned price since the first day. He wanted the boat so badly, and showed it so flagrantly, that he had set himself up for the maritime screwing of the century. He didn’t care.

He watched painters slap the last few quarts of anti-fouling under her sweeping bow. Andrew Dugan strolled from the loft.

“You figure she’s sound?” he asked tartly. He had been distant and evasive all morning.