"Twenty miles," Andy hollered and checked the lashings on the dinghy overturned on the cabin top. He sat on deck to lower himself into the cockpit then raised his lanyard over Mitchell and the tiller and with a carefully measured stride he was down to starboard to haul on the jib sheet and grind the winch, flattening the big sail. The gear strained loud as the sloop plunged into wild sea. Christ, Mitchell thought, I feel like a kid again rushing out the back door.

A mile off the starboard bow a sea-going tug was pulling a fortress-size iron barge at the end of a hundred yards of steel hawser. Mitchell sheered off to give the tug the right of way and a speedboat rocketed into his field of vision, its high-gloss blue hull bouncing on the swells as it raced toward the tugboat.

"Andy?"

"I see it," Andy shouted.

The tugboat’s hawser swung like a jump rope. The speedboat bounced on a wave and fell, catapulted under the hawser. "Crazy bastard," Mitchell said.

Andy climbed on deck with handholds then slid forward alongside the dinghy to sit before the mast, bent in the wind like a sapling. Mitchell glanced at the compass and checked the rigging and orange and black flashes forced his attention aloft to the shrouds above the spreaders. Two monarch butterflies were tumbling delicate and determined against the blue sky.

"Andy! Andy!"

Wind drowned Mitchell’s voice and howled wild and thunderous across the ocean. He watched the monarchs entwined in the headlong flight of the rigging and his awed mind was released from time and the long haul. I swear I’ll never curse this life again he thought. Fool I am for swearing I know, but I’ll tell you this old world, today is enough.

The sloop climbed sideways through spray up the dark faces of big swells, wind so loud in the rigging Mitchell heard its voice, more powerful than thought, cajoling his heart. This was the call of the sea, beyond human endeavor, beyond faith, beyond wonder. This was the giver of life, the one who stirs every bit and shapes it into breath that is truly alive, quickened by all that would have been forgotten. This was the companion who licks the wound, the one who buries its friend.

Mitchell was blameless here, his failures scattered like chaff before the wind. He was an equal, the argument refused, out of place here as long as his courage held and his hand at the tiller was unwavering. He had no desire for acceptance here, no longing for his country and his people to invite him home. This was his home, his gift, his freedom. His heart was loosed here from the bondage of aimlessness. The grain of his palm and the grain of the tiller were the same now, one muscle straining in accord with the fabric of all things.

Andy raised himself on one knee and reached for the mast. Mitchell looked past him at the red and yellow flags spaced widely in huge circles appearing and disappearing in steep ridges of sea. Andy’s voice blew aft over Mitchell. "Nets!"