Yes. Yes. They understood. The rigging could not withstand the strain much longer; either the shroud would part or the sails would blow out, and if neither happened, the vessel would be knocked down and very likely founder. She had to be turned off the wind.

On their bellies, the Braithwaites slithered along the weather deck between the rail and the main cabin, its two-foot height all that prevented them from sliding back to the drowned lee side.

“You two! Main!” Nathaniel yelled. “I … for’ard!”

He returned to all fours, tensed like a runner in the starting block, and scampered across the ten feet of open space amidships, between the main and forward cabins. He started to slip, hooked an arm around a shroud, then continued to the safety of the forward cabin bulkhead. Crawling to the foremast, he kneeled against it, groped amid the pins in the pinrack, and took the turns off the staysail sheet. He did not have to look up to see the sail; he looked out, for the masts now were canted almost to forty degrees, the crosstrees dipped to within a few feet of the lunging wavetops, and the staysail was skimming the seas like a bird. The water over the lee deck hissed only inches away.

“Ease sheets, then down peak!” he howled over the cabin top to Eliot and Drew, who were at the main, Drew sitting with both legs wrapped around the mast, Eliot seated behind, his legs around Drew’s waist. Their arms were held high, their hands gripping the main sheet. “Ease sheets, then down peak, all together now!” Nathaniel repeated. They were only fifteen or sixteen feet behind him, but he wasn’t sure they’d heard, so he gave the command again, his voice breaking.

They paid out the sheets, watched the booms swing to leeward, and then made fast. The ship swung off to a reach, but did not begin to right herself; she continued to race on her side. She had too much sail on her.

“Down peak now!” Nathaniel screamed to his brothers and dashed aft to give them a hand. “She needs our help! Down peak! Down peak!”

He stood, and fell belly first against the mainmast. From above, he would have looked like a man crawling along an inclined log. He loosened the halyard, let the rope burn through his palms, and grabbed the luff of the sail, pulling it down. The unloveliest dousing he had ever seen. Eliot and Drew, clambering to the cabin top, stood doubled over the boom, like square-rig sailors on the yards aloft, and snatched handfuls of canvas, snapping so violently that it almost jerked them off their feet. Gradually, they stuffed it between boom and gaff and used the main sheet to tie it down.