He was focused now, he was pure concentration, all distraction distilled right out of him by the desire, the need, to win. Eliot had seen him get this way at Andover, on the football field, in the boxing ring. Nat wasn’t a stylish fighter, like Bob Fitzsimmons, but he would win on intentness alone, his eyes fixed on his opponent in a way that reminded you of Trajan’s eyes when he was poised to spring on vole or mouse.

“You and Drew get the fisherman’s staysail, have it ready to send aloft,” he said.

“The staysail!”—Eliot, incredulous, no, outraged. “Big brother, if we crowd on any more sail, if we fly a goddammed shirt right now, we’ll bust a topmast, for sure.”

“It’s not for now. It’s for just in case. You just have it ready and haul it up when I give the say-so. Get to it!”

I have got to be a little daft myself to be going along with this, thought Eliot, crouched low in the fo’c’sle, coaxing the staysail out of the saillocker, while the ship slammed up and down. The deck jumped under him, he cracked his head against the locker’s hatch frame and, cursing Nat and himself and the lumpy seas, dragged the sail through the passage and back on deck. Sure enough, the wind had veered; almost due south now, barreling through the gap between Vinalhaven and Isle Au Haut and straight up the bay.

Drew wasn’t much help rigging the staysail. Looked very peaked, and as if he wouldn’t have minded being tossed overboard if that gave him relief from his tumbling guts, the feeling that his skull was a soup tureen, sloshing back and forth. Nothing worse than seasickness, Eliot recalled from the few times it had gripped him. Made you feel as if you had never been well in your life and never would be again. With wind and tide running against each other, the seas were confused: a range of colliding mounds. The boat banged into a big one, slewed off to leeward, and a sheet of cold, salty spray drenched Eliot and Drew as they worked amidships. There, they left the staysail loosely furled and went aft.

“Sorry for the dousing,” said Nat, without looking at them. “Lousy chop.”

But one, Eliot realized, that was working to Double Eagle’s advantage. In the short, steep seas, some defect in Black Watch’s steering system or sail trim was causing her to swing, as much as a couple of points in either direction. Like a drunk determined to get where he was going, she lurched, first to starboard, then to port, while she labored to go forward. Double Eagle was designed for work like this, and though she yawed a bit now and again, she mostly brushed the conical waves aside and rode quite finely through all that mixed-up water, drawing behind her a roiling line of foam as straight as could be hoped for, in such conditions. She rode in a way to make the gulls weep—that’s what the old man would say when she cracked along. “D’you see how she rides, boys? Oh, she rides so that the gulls weep in shame!”