The force of the wind seemed to pick up the light craft and toss it bodily sideways against the unyielding sea. I started to shout a warning. Sailhardy never heard. I swung to face it-a searing, breath-robbing mask of spindrift, salt and foam choked me. Something scaly hit me. It could have been a dead bird or fish. I spat out its briny clamminess. Tristan vanished. I could not see Sailhardy. The wind reached inside my windbreaker. I fought against being lifted. I tried to fall down, but the wind held me upright, like a man falling free in space. I hooked one foot under the tiller. The boat seemed to lift with me. I was torn loose. As I went over the side a noose and bowline slid over my chest. I found myself dragged against the daubed canvas side of the boat.

I still couldn't see Sailhardy. He was crouched away from the wind under the bulwarks. I grabbed the gunwale. Sailhardy's arm reached over and held me. A jerk, and the bowline was a steel band round my chest. Then I was gasping on the gratings.

Sailhardy knelt beside me. An inch of water sloshed in the bottom of the boat. It was useless trying to speak, even to shout. In the brief time it had taken him to get me aboard, his ocean-bred survival instincts were at work. The same titanic challenge of the storm had been thrown at the men of New England when they had broken open the ice continent in their clumsy, stinking New Bedford sealers a century and a half ago. On their way they had rested at Tristan and sired sea-chasteners like Sailhardy.

He fought the wild object which I identified as the mainsail. I saw the sweat break out on his forehead as he held the bucking thing. He half knelt, his arm about it. The animated fabric jumped and thrust to break his iron hold. I lay and retched salt water. The splintered strake worked along the cracks. I was numb with shock and the tumult. I saw what was frustrating Sailhardy, and tilting our lives in the balance: the mainsail halliards ran through holes bored through the mast. One had snarled up, and the islander could not get at it. I edged along the gratings and got my fingers to it. It whipped free. In a moment Sailhardy had the sail captive and lashed a bight of rope round it. The boat lay over on its port side. The sea poured in.