* * * *
In the blackest part of the night they heard the rumble of breakers ahead. Felic sprang into action. He brought the helm over to bring the yacht parallel to the wind. The foresail, trimmed to windward, caught the wind on its fore side and cracked back to lee with mast-shaking force.
Giving Chessa the tiller, he ran forward and eased the sheets. But the sail had acted as a brake. The Sun-Eagle wallowed, her momentum lost. He trimmed in the two sails, searching for the right angle that would get the yacht moving. She heeled sluggishly. The breakers sounded closer.
"Ease off downwind. a little," he called to Chessa. "Let her get some way on."
Chessa did as she was told, but the tiller was dead in her hands. There was no forward motion, no flow of water past the blade of the steering oar. Felic worked with the sheet lines. He let the sails out, then brought them in slowly, trying to induce a forward motion. But the weight of the water in the hull had reduced the yacht to an uncontrollable hulk. She drifted majestically downwind, cocked sideways and listing.
They saw the breakers then, angry lines of foam just visible in the. starlight. They watched without hope as the yacht moved inexorably to her destruction.
As they drifted closer the long seas became shorter and steeper. The yacht picked up speed, pulled forward by a riptide, and the bow swung in the direction of the current. Felic, who was bitterly cursing the yacht, the elements, and the world in general, broke off to leap to the tiller. The yacht had steerage again. He brought the bow in line with the least tumultuous area ahead and they were swept into the shoal water. Steep waves broke in roaring cascades on either side. The main deck of the yacht was buried in rushing water. The hull found bottom, and they felt a series of dragging scrapes as the yacht was battered ahead by the following seas. Foaming white water crashed over the stern and boiled across the quarterdeck, drenching them. He felt a shuddering wrench on the tiller, then it was ripped from his grasp. He heard the crack of splintering oak as the steering oar was crushed between the hull and the rocks. The Sun-Eagle was being lifted and slammed against the bottom by each succeeding wave. Then came a long agonizing grind of keel against rock, and suddenly she was free, rushed into deeper, calmer water. The breakers were now behind them and they drifted into the lee of a tongue of land. The black mass of a wooded peninsula was discernable in the darkness. Chessa slipped in beside Felic and dropped her head against his chest. Her hair hung in dripping strings. "The gods are kind to us, Felic."
Felic answered by enfolding her in his arms. They held each other, silent, their love strengthened by the common bond of survival. For an extended moment they stood thus, then Felic broke away. "We're still sinking, Pigeon. I've got to beach her."
They were in the placid waters of a natural harbor. He could make out the lighter line of the shore in the starlight. The sails were luffing, flapping uselessly. Felic trimmed them to help push the yacht toward the beach. When they were less than the length of their anchor's rode from shore, he dropped the hook and paid out the line.
As the yacht lurched to a halt on the sandy bottom, he took up the slack with the capstan, turning it until the anchor was firmly entrenched. Then he tied the end of a light line to a hawser and went over the side. The Sun-eagle had taken the ground in water over his head.
He struck out for the beach and his feet soon found bottom. With the light line he pulled the heavier rope ashore and secured it to a log, of driftwood wedged in the rocks. Then he collapsed on the sand, too bone-tired to care that his teeth were chattering from the cold swim.
The receding tide left the Sun-Eagle in shallow water, and Chessa, first up the next morning, waded ashore. She didn't have the heart to disturb Felic who was still asleep on the beach.
They had grounded on the largest of a series of islets. The harbor was a tiny U-shaped bay protected by the wooded ridge of the island on the western side, diminishing to grassy dunes to the north and finally hooking around to a spit of tumbled rocks half buried in the sand. Across the spit, in the distant east, Chessa could see the Antillian mainland. The rugged, snow-capped mountains were unfamiliar. The breakers still boomed on the seaward side of the islet, reminding her of the terror of the past night.
She shook the thought from her head and relaxed on the sand beside Felic. The morning sun was warm on her skin. She leaned back on her elbows and closed her eyes, listening to the cry of the gulls and savoring the odors of the shore. She felt Felic stir beside her and she looked down into his open eyes. Without a word she bent down and kissed him--first his forehead, then his eyes, working her way along the bridge of his nose with soft little pecks, wandering around his mouth, teasing, to finally nestle against the stubble of his three-day beard.
"You know this being shipwrecked is not so bad," he murmured.
Chessa moaned in delicious contentment and nibbled his ear. "I want you. I want all of you, now. I want to feel you inside me, connected in our love. Please me, Felic. Oh, please me!"
They were interrupted by the sound of Gwenay's voice, hailing from the yacht. Chessa started to get up.
Felic pulled her back. "Let her yell for awhile. You've got me stirred up."
"That's nice," Chessa giggled, "but shouldn't I go help her?"
She twisted away and started to get up. Felic connected with a parting slap on her shapely rear, and then let out a yell of pain. He had forgotten the condition of his hands.
"Serves you right," Chessa laughed.
Felic pulled her back down.