Sloshing across the grimy yard enroute to the john, he glanced up and glimpsed blue sky. In an hour he had everything topside to dry. Then he noticed that the bulkhead barometer was still low. He recalled, too late, an old racing adage: “When in doubt, wait half an hour.” In another twenty minutes, just as Lindy announced breakfast, new clouds were scudding in from the west. They bolted their Sunday ham-and-eggs, and by the time they had finished, drops were falling again.

He and Lindy repeated last night’s drill, without Red-Dog, who had during the morning got high on something and was sleeping it off in the rain on the deckhouse of his captive schooner.

By the time they had rejammed everything, his back was killing him. The kerosene heater, blasting in the closed cabin, had given him a headache. He collapsed on a sailbag. It smelled already of mildew. Lindy squirreled her way forward after an aspirin bottle, thought to be in one of the medicine cartons in the forepeak.

He closed his eyes and saw their house empty in the rain. It was very inviting, even to him, and he could imagine its pull on Lindy. Well, it had a mudslide threatening it, and he knew of termite damage in its pilings, and there were still plumbing problems: at least he was away from all that. He had it all together, within forty feet. He dozed off.

“Mitch? Mitch!”

He snapped awake. She was emerging from the fo’c’s’le jumble, butt first, like a tick stung by a match. He got off the sailbag to make room for her to pass. She sucked a finger, nicked on a locker hatch. She blew a strand of hair from her face. She looked tired again, and it was only ten in the morning. “There’s got to be aspirin aboard, but I can’t find it. I’ll have to go to the drugstore.”

“Christ, it’s pouring. I’ll ache, instead. Headache’s gone anyway,” he lied. “Back’s fine.”

“Good. Look, will you move your legs?” He hoisted them painfully, so that she could sidle between the bunk and the table. She began to stuff pillowcases into a locker already stuffed. “We need more lights forward.”

“OK.”

She waited. “Put them on your list, all right?”

He cut off a groan. He kept the worklist on a legal pad and couldn’t remember where he’d put it. He crawled aft across the cartons, groped through papers on the chart table. The main hatch was snugged against the rain, and the skylight, blocked topside by the dinghy, was dim. Dugan’s dockside power had failed last night in the storm. Mitch couldn’t find the circuit breakers in the empty shed, and the twelve-volt boat-battery power was growing weaker by the hour.

He found the worklist and peered at it. It was stupefying.