“We’re in Southwest Channel. Okay, if we lose the anchors now, on the front side, we’ll get blown away from Loggerhead onto the Garden Key reef. If we lose ’em on the back side, we’ll get blown into Loggerhead. What do we do to prevent that? Okay … Only thing I can think of … set the foresail, triple reefed, and … and … Well, if we’re exceptionally fortunate, and lose the anchors just before the eye passes over us, we could sail through the eye into Tortugas harbor, abandon ship, and get ourselves into the fort before the back side hits. We’d have half an hour to do all that. Otherwise, we try to sail down channel till we’re clear of the rocks and in the open sea. It’s only about two miles. Pray the canvas holds long enough till we’re clear. Once we are, we run with the wind. And if the sail blows out, we run under bare poles.”

Run with it under bare poles—the last resort in heavy weather. Run with it under bare poles in the open sea. They were all silent as the words sank in.

“But listen,” Will continued, on a second thought. “We can’t run with the wind dead astern. That’s what our skipper told us in Bermuda. You could pitch pole that way, but there’s this, too. He said the idea is to run away from the eye, and if you’re already in it, to run out of it. And he said you do that by keeping the wind on your stern quarter and your bow angled away from the eye. That way, the winds propel you out toward the edges of the storm. They’re spinning counterclockwise, see, and eventually they’ll spin you out to the edges. The only thing I don’t remember”—this with a caustic laugh—“is which stern quarter: port or starboard.”

There was an interval of silence, then Drew traced with his finger an imaginary diagram on the floor.

“Starboard,” he said. “If the wind’s backing the clock and the bow’s angled away from the middle, it would have to be starboard.”

Will paused, thinking.

“Yeah. Right. That’s what he did say. Starboard quarter. Better reef the foresail now, while we can. Might not be able to when the eye wall hits. Reef it, rig a couple of lines as extra preventer stays so the fore boom doesn’t swing an inch unless—until—we want it to.”

Nathaniel stood, and was flung backward onto the settee. A cooking pot rolled one way across the floor, then the other way.