'No.' Drinkwater hauled himself gingerly into the leeward mizen rigging and felt the wind catch his body as a thing of no substance. He clung on grimly and stared out to starboard. The thin veil of cloud which showed the gibbous moon nearly at the full was sufficient to extend a pale light upon the waves as the wind tore their breaking crests to shreds and sent the spume downwind like buckshot. With the greatest difficulty he made out what might have been the grey line of a cliff out on the starboard beam. He could only estimate its distance with difficulty. Perhaps a mile, perhaps not so much.

Then the moon sailed into a clear patch of sky. It was suddenly very bright and what Drinkwater saw caused his mouth to go dry.

A point or two on their starboard bow, right in their track as they sagged to leeward, rose a huge grey pinnacle of rock. In the moonlight its crags and fissures stood out starkly, and at its feet the breakers pounded white. But in the brief interval in the cloud Drinkwater became aware of something else. Atop the rock, perched upon its highest crag, a buttress and wall reared sheer from the cliff. Immediately he knew their position and that the danger to the ship and her company was increased a hundredfold. For beneath the ancient abbey on St Michael's Mount, stretching round onto their windward bow, the breakers pounded white upon the Mountamopus shoal.

There are few periods of anxiety greater in their intensity than that of a commander whose ship is running into peril, waiting for his people to complete their preparations. On the one hand experience and judgement caution him not to attempt a manoeuvre until everything is ready; upon the other instinct cries out to be released into immediate action. Yet, as the sweat prickled between his shoulder blades, Drinkwater knew that to act hastily was to court disaster. If the ship failed in stays there would be no second chance. It was useless to speculate upon the erroneous navigation that had brought them to this point, or why Rogers stank of rum, or, indeed, whether the two were connected. All these thoughts briefly crossed his mind in the enforced hiatus that is every captain's lot once orders have been given.