Overfall

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The small jib was taut and straining in the northerly wind, the weather turning, the sky azure in the evening sun but for the near purple of the approaching dark clouds. To the east lay Tribune Inlet, a long fjord bounded by steep mountains and creating a great funnel that ended in a narrow, rock-walled passage called Devil’s Gate, where wind and water rushed, making dangerous work for sailors.

Before him, the sea was already starting to mound, as if little hands were forming humps in flattened dough. The whitecaps made logs and other debris harder to see, causing Sam to squint and stare over the bow of Silverwind, his custom-made, forty-eight-foot cruising sailboat.

There was the sound of parting water, and of spray falling back to the sea, the quiet thunder of wind in sail, the rise and fall of a gentle swell that underlay the chop, and a slight harmonic vibration as he drove the boat north and east to windward across the mouth of Tribune Inlet. The wind was unsettled, the barometer falling, but that was expected to change as a new high-pressure system built.

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