In the meanwhile he had to do the work of two adults, just to keep them sailing. Blustery gales drove down from the northwest. Slanting rain and wind forced him again and again to strike their sails. He must be so tired that he could hardly move. She awakened one night with the wind moaning in the rigging and the vane in command. The boat was charging due west, in the wrong direction. Mitch was sitting on his bunk in dripping yellow oilskins, staring at a rubber boot he had got on the wrong foot, apparently unable to tackle the job of changing it. She longed to help, but knew that if she got up she would vomit. She lay there helpless while he changed the boot and climbed topside, moving like a man of sixty.

Since he wouldn’t let her try to cook, she sliced canned coldcuts. She stuffed him with food she could hardly bear to look at, let alone smell. And still, she stayed sick.

One day he announced that they were clear of the steamship lanes, far off Mexico, and could abandon the continual watches topside. He showed her on the chart.

She should have been happy that now he could get more sleep. But it was dim and dank by the chart table, and the smell of diesel fuel from the engine compartment got to her very quickly. And her glance at the chart only threw her deeper into despair. They had come so minute a distance, and the way to the Marquesas stretched so far, that she was sure she would never survive.

Their peace of mind seemed balanced on a knife edge. No matter how she goofed—as in the matter of the seasick pills—he would not let her see a reaction, and she knew that the pressure must be building. Every minor error they made held the seed of catastrophe.

Irwin began to tremble ominously. Mitch prepared to reglue the base that held the vane erect. Cans, brushes, and the members of Irwin slid around the spray-swept deck, while Mitch tried to hold course and fix the vane as well.

She volunteered to crawl to the forepeak to get a can of acetone he needed to clean the base. The forepeak was a roller coaster, rising and falling twice as far as anyplace else on the boat. In the chaos forward, she found the can of acetone.

It was a new can, closed with a metal seal. While Mitch squatted wetly on the fantail, waiting, she started to lift the seal with an icepick in the galley. But she lurched at the moment of truth and speared the top of the can. She still had the acetone but had wrecked the container. There was no more acetone aboard, so somehow they must find something for the contents.