"What do we do now?"

"Call the Coast Guard," Mitchell said. The words just came out, he hadn’t moved and he didn’t want to. Andy lifted the folds of mainsail onto the boom. I should look alive Mitchell thought and lifted his head, the tendons were taught and hard in his neck. He opened his eyes. Andy was flaking the main. Mitchell thought why bother? Say to hell with the whole goddamn disaster. Scuttle it and go home.

Andy lashed down the sails while Mitchell waited in a strange fractured impatience, his attention fleeing from one visual to another, the mast, the sky, the shrouds, the sea and the deck. He closed his eyes. I’d dive overboard if I could. Swim to the beach, lie down and stretch out. Just a blanket. Roll it up and walk away.

"Here." Andy passed the handset up from below.

Mitchell raised the Coast Guard on the VHF and gave the sloop's description, its condition and position. A dispatcher advised him to issue life jackets before she opened the radio channel to the tow boat operators who monitored distress calls from Newport and afar, Point Judith and Block Island. Immediately they auctioned their services. Mitchell talked with one then another and another and still another, each of them listening to the other’s offer. He talked them down until finally he agreed to a fifty dollar tow into Newport.

Andy was below, collapsed in a sitting position on the starboard couch. Mitchell dropped the handset onto the seat between his legs. Sunlight glittered golden on the green sea and he clung to the terror and the beauty of it. "I'll miss you," he whispered. An echo of something inside.