A hundred yards from the harbor entrance, Mac saw the huge outbound yacht rise up out of the water.  Its captain, oblivious to the safety of other vessels, had clearly pushed his throttles to the stops.  The vessel’s wide stern dug in; it’s twin turbines churning a wall of water.  In the narrow channel, there was no escape.  “Brace yourself!” Mac shouted.

Sails flailing like the wings of a wounded bird, Madness rolled to starboard, tried to right herself, then rolled again.  Below, books jumped over fiddles and flew across the cabin.  The half-full percolator sailed from stovetop to opposite bulkhead, crashing onto the chart table.  Coffee rained.  Mac swore.

As the series of waves surged beneath her keel, Madness settled into a final trough.  Alison peeked below.  “Augggh!” she moaned.  “What a mess…”

“Leave it,” Mac grumbled.  “I’ll clean it up when we get in.”

“No, I’ll get it.  You steer.”

The main cabin looked like it had been stirred with a spoon.  Alison methodically returned each item to its proper place, then began mopping up a sea of coffee.  When she reached the pot’s final resting place, she noted the open log and sopping pages.  Reaching to blot them, her eye came to rest on Mac’s morning entry.

Having sought her at dawn and found her, once again, on the bow, Mac had simply watched as the gauzy white thing she slept in billowed out in the freshness of the morning breeze.  Translucent, it had offered a pleasant view of her ripening outline, back lit by the dawn.  He wrote:

April 1                         0640

Little Whale Cay

“When we have laughed to see the sails conceive

And grow big bellied with the wanton wind;

Which she with pretty and swimming gait

Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--

Would imitate and sail upon the land,”

                                                                        Wm. Shakespeare

                        And I am the wind.  I love you.   M

Tears rolled down her face as she read.  It did not seem possible that anyone could love her that much.  Patty was right, she thought.  Mac was a strange man.  Strange and wonderful. Alison wiped her eyes on her sleeve and headed for the cockpit. . 

Mac, noting the dampness on her lashes, frowned. “You okay?”

Alison nodded, sniffling.  She kissed him.  “I read your note.”

Mac only smiled. Though spoken words were still difficult for him, Alison, happily, was a not a women who constantly demanded verbal reassurance.  She simply took the evidence of his love as it was given.  And yet, aware of his great need to be loved in return, she spoke often of her feelings for him, in the quiet moments of each day and always in the throws of passion when the message of her heart burst unbidden from her lips.