The staysail sheet parted. The top half of the line flew out straight as a stick, and the sail, jerked to a horizontal, flapped two or three times before it became a mass of tatters, some of which soared off while the rest whipped themselves around the stay. Without canvas to control her, the schooner swung and rolled broadside into a ravine alive with foamy spindrift. Will and Nathaniel brought the helm hard over, fighting to bring her head round on the rudder alone, but she was a plaything of the storm now and would not answer.

“The anchor!” Eliot yelled into Drew’s ear, and loosened their bonds. Dropping, they belly-crawled to the chain locker and pried the hatch cover open. A vicious gust caught it and slammed it down on Eliot’s fingers. He screamed. Drew wedged his hands under the cover and yanked it open again. Another gust tore it from its hinges; the screws pinged off like bullets, the cover careened over the lee rail. Rolling to the starboard rail, to which the main anchor was attached, Drew undid the lashings and let the hook fall. The chain banged through the starboard bow chock, and the cable uncoiled from the locker without a foul. Thank God for that, Eliot thought. No, thank Will for doing such a nice job of flaking it. Lying flat, cradling the throbbing fingers of his left hand in his right, he watched the cable pay out across the deck and through the chock. He knew the anchor had found bottom, although he didn’t know how he knew; he hadn’t seen the line go slack, even for a moment. When about a hundred and fifty feet of scope had gone out, Drew snubbed off on the samson post. The one-inch manila line came taut, creaked and quivered from the tension on it. The bow swinging back into the wind, the two boys rose to run aft for the kedge, were nearly blown off their feet, and so, once again, crawled like dogs.

“Quick work!” Nat said.

“Kedge … Help Drew set …” gasped Eliot. “My hand, think it’s broke.…”

The kedge, with its twenty-five fathoms of cable, was dragged forward, foot by bouncing foot, and dropped over the port side. Nathaniel threw a turn around the samson post and, sitting with his feet braced against the bow rail and the line in his hands, let out scope.

“Okay! That’s all of it!” he yelled.

The boys lay still, exhausted, clutching the samson post. Nathaniel’s lips twitched, and he muttered that the old man would be proud if he could see what they had accomplished, a comment that inspired an outburst of uncharacteristically foul language from Drew.

“Fuck the old man!” he screamed. “If it wasn’t for that son of a bitch, we wouldn’t be in this goddamned mess!”

Irrefutable truths require no reply, and Nathaniel made none.