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It was getting a little lighter, the sky paling in the eas
t.
Monk peered into the ever-moving shadows ahead. Was that the outline of a ship, or only wind patterns on the waves? Then he saw the green riding light. The red port light should be to the left of it. Only it was to the right! The ship was coming toward them.
He shouted back to Gillander, waving his arms.
Gillander pulled the wheel, throwing his weight against it. As they listed heavily to port, Monk had to scramble to gain his balance.
The other ship swept past them, twenty yards clear. It was a three-masted schooner heading south, toward the flat Kent shore, which they couldn’t see in the gloom.
“Scuff!” Gillander shouted above the roar of the wind and water.
Scuff turned immediately. He was longing to help.
Gillander waved. “Go help Monk shorten sail, then tell him to come back here and take the wheel. I’m going to see if I can get the jib up, too. We need to go faster if we’re to catch the Spindrift.”
Scuff obeyed instantly.
Monk watched him. He knew by the stiffness of his arms and back that he was afraid. They all knew that a man overboard in this sea was lost. No matter how hard anyone tried, they would never come about in time and go back to the same spot to find a lost body in this heavy and pitching sea.
He clambered forward, conscious of the line about his waist, and finally reached Monk.
“He says to shorten the sail!” Scuff shouted.
Monk signaled that he had heard, and with gestures rather than words he instructed Scuff how to balance his weight, brace his body, and hold the rope.
Watching him, Gillander brought the ship around tighter into the wind and for a moment the sails felt slack. They worked hard and fast. Gillander swung them round again gently and the sail billowed out, hurling them sideways and all but pitching Monk over the side. He lunged forward and caught Scuff as he lost his footing. Spray flew up and stung their skin like pellets of ice. They were under way again, moving forward fast.
Ten minutes later they saw the riding lights of a two-masted schooner ahead of them. The light was clearer now, as the dawn was paling in the east, right above the prow. The other ship was moving fast, east by southeast, across the wind, as they were.
“The Spindrift!” Gillander shouted above the whine in the rigging, and the surge and break of the water. “That’s her.”
Monk felt as if time had disappeared. He was on the Barbary Coast again with the surge of the Pacific under the keel and the endless horizon stretching all the way up to the Arctic Ocean and the great white mountains of Alaska. Every man was alert with his skill, pitched against the sea, and yet in a way deeper than any understanding of the mind, at one with it.
On the land any man might be your enemy, your rival for fame or gold or the love of a woman. Out here he was your brother in war against the sea.
They worked together, Monk, Gillander, and Scuff, speeding forward, then keeling over, swinging the boom, righting up again, and tacking the other way. Tightening sail, driving forward, always closing the distance between them and the Spindrift. The wind was blowing harder, whipping up white crests on the back of every wave, hurling the Summer Wind forward. They were flung up, and jarred down again crashing on the water as if it were stone. How the ship did not break under the impact Monk would think about only afterward.
Then, he thought with amazement, does it matter? His vanished years might have all kinds of treasures, or ugly stretches haunted by loneliness and error. So has everyone else who has ever seized life and ridden it into the storms, and the light beyond. If he had forgotten the good, then he had forgotten the bad as well. He had come so close to absolute desolation standing in the dock, unable to speak for himself, afraid of everything, even the truth.
And his friends had saved him—partly because they cared, and partly because the truth was good, difficult, but so much brighter than he had feared. It was time to accept help, love, error, and be grateful for all of it.
They were closing on the Spindrift. What the devil was Gillander going to do when they caught up?
One more tack and, if they judged it exactly right, they would be alongside. Then what?
Monk waved his arms, pointing toward the ship now only a hundred yards ahead of them and to their right. He turned his hands up in a gesture of question.
Gillander took his right hand off the wheel and waved it in the air as if he had a sword in it.
Scuff gave a whoop of joy.
“You’re going to stay here and hold the ship,” Monk told him. “Someone has to.” He saw Scuff’s face drop. “And defend the ship against boarders,” he added. “Don’t know how many crew they’ve got. You’ll be the only man here.”
Scuff’s face became very sober.
The broadening light was gray on the wave caps now, and dark, shining shadows ran across their unbroken backs and the white spume here and there was less fierce.
