The lights on the wharf and over on the boardwalk seem more distant in the cloak of rain and mist that covers the area. Even the fog horn moaning at the end of the wharf seems distant. It is a fine spooky wildness. I go out on the rear deck that is covered by a wood-slat roof and blue tarp and do what anybody crazy enough to ride out a storm in a boat would do. I pick up a fishing rod and cast out into the night. My neighbors, the sea lions, have left the rickety sail boat they were on. I enjoy the storm myself. Surely, one of these other flimsy boats in the area will break loose during the night, I think.

About 11:30, I decide to try and sleep. I check the knot on the tie-down at the bow before diving under my sleeping bag and congratulate myself on the clever attachment of the knot to the buoy and boat. I pile into the cushioned fo'cile at the bow and start to merge with the heave and warp of the foaming water. I smile to think that my own boat is strong enough and fastened enough to ride out anything thrown at it tonight.

Of all boats, I am securest in the Por Favor, rider-outer of storms, bastion of great fishermen, and writer of novels. I cast with the night.

The waves begin to take on that lumbering seethe when the wind attains a certain force and breathes into the mobile mass of the water. The waves begin to hiss and coil like dragons. The foam crests of waves that slap over the sides and roil down the deck continue to hiss and forage on with a strange will of their own. Suddenly the boat lurches to port with a slam out on the deck. My eyes open to the deck roof above me. "Naw, nothing happened," I tell myself. Just for the hell of it, I get up, naked, to look around.

The very axis of the earth has changed. The boats around me have switched position, unlikely as constellations at night vaulting to opposite sides of the sky. What could not happen has happened. The Por Favor is drifting quickly through the moorings and boats toward the shore break. A wink link in the mooring chain has snapped.

Every guilt and misdeed and shabby risk I have taken and bungled in my life points a finger at my soul. "You fool, you cheat, you tempter. Your reward." The crashing white surf approaches and the boat swings around in the wind.