A QUARTER of an hour passed. Then they heard a terrible, onrushing rumble. In seconds, as the central winds roared over the ship, shaking her till her crew thought she would come apart, the rumbling changed pitch and character, ranging from a demonic howl to a bellow to a prolonged bass groan, deafening and demented, as if a lunatic were pounding the keys of a cathedral organ. They all remembered the words of the old trader, Cudlip. None of them knew what the lamentations of the damned were supposed to sound like, but they could not possibly rival what the boys heard now, or, rather, felt. They felt it, as Cudlip told them they would, first in their groins, then all through their bodies and in their bones. Double Eagle reared to monstrous breakers, reared and bucked against the cables tethering her. Hatch covers lifted off their battens and slammed down, the masts trembled, booms thudded, cordage rattled; a great sea hammered the cabin tops and saltwater surged through the Charley Noble into the stove, transforming it into a washtub. All the while, the awful noise never abated. It was, each of them thought in his own words, the cry of that power in the universe which hated integrity and sought disintegration, which despised order, peace, and contentment and sought their opposites. It was the voice of chaos. Drew clamped his hands over his ears and recited his incantations silently … coriolis force … cold air in the upper atmosphere, low pressure on the surface … weather, only weather … but they did no good. He could not help himself. Convinced his life was going to end among these forlorn reefs, he began to cry, curled up, and fell across Nathaniel’s lap.

“C’mon, Drew.” Nathaniel felt awkward, as he always did in situations that required compassion. “C’mon, we’ll get through it, you’ll see.”

“Why don’t you sing?” Will said to Eliot, who gave him a stupefied look. “You’re the one with the voice. Lead us in a tune. Let’s see if we can sing louder than the wind can blow.”

And he led them in the “Mingulay Boat Song” and in other old chanteys his father had taught on summer cruises, or that he had heard Lockwood sing in the house on Marlborough Street: “Heave Away Me Johnnies” and “Cape Cod Girls” and “The Leaving of Liverpool.” They hurled their voices defiantly into the mad imprecations of the storm; but in the end, they were like a quartet trying to make itself heard amid the roars in a football stadium. In the middle of a verse, the ship gave a quick lurch to starboard, then swung back and held. They grew silent, all but certain that they had lost an anchor. In a crouch, Nathaniel stumbled to the fo’cs’l and fetched the sea anchor and two kegs of storm oil, with lanyards attached to the handles.