Then it was passing in a drumming crescendo of power, pounding into the swells a hundred yards away. She finally glimpsed the helmsman behind glass in the cabin. He was a fat, serious Polynesian, braced at the wheel. She seemed actually to remember him from the Papeete quai. He was someone they might have bought tuna from.

Standing next to him, clinging to a cabin support, stood a handsome young Tahitian. The younger man saw something, in the other direction. He pointed to port. The older followed his glance and nodded. The younger raised a bottle of beer and sipped it.

“Hey!” she shrieked. “Help! M’aidez!"

They thundered past, leaving the smell of diesel exhaust, and then she was suddenly immersed in the brutal, rushing wake. When she fought free of that, they were far past hearing, but she whistled anyway until they were almost out of sight.

For a long while she lay exhausted.

It had taken all day long, but at last she was truly scared.

In Cox’s Boatyard, Mitch sat in Linda Lee’s cockpit with Andrew Dugan and wrote a check for the yard-bill. Using the compass-binnacle as a desk, he filled it out for just over $6,000.

The yardwork was done, the gasoline engine replaced with diesel, the through-hull fittings changed. Tomorrow Linda Lee would leave the dock she had been chained to for years, and move to a modern marina.

It was the first time Andrew himself had been aboard since he had sold the boat. He took the check and stuffed it into the pocket of his immaculate overalls. “We charge too much,” he said.

Mitch, having done half the work himself, agreed, but at least the major jobs were done. Lindy’s new alcohol stove hung glittering on its gimbals, swinging to the surge. An auxiliary diesel generator snored below, charging their batteries and breaking itself in. A neat plexiglass-and-stainless steering vane, named Irwin after his accountant, sat behind the helmsman’s station. They had tried it on a shakedown cruise and it worked perfectly.

Dugan asked him when they were leaving for the South Pacific. Mitch told him in a couple of months: there was still lots to do.

“Go now or you never will. Maybe if I’d done that, after the gale, I wouldn’t have sold her.” He arose. “The hell with it.”

Mitch said: “Your brother told me about the storm. Awful.”

The observation seemed to anger Dugan. “Awful? Jesus, that’s where storms are, at sea! Nobody makes you go there, do they?” He was silent for a while, and his eyes drifted far away. “No, I’d been through gales before. Next summer, I headed for Alaska. Anchorage or bust. Beautiful day, everything perfect, perfect ... Nice little twelve-knot breeze through the Golden Gate, little chop outside in the Potato Patch...”

He seemed puzzled. “All at once I jibed her around and came home. Tied her up and hardly sailed her since.”