With great reluctance he finally refolded the precious pennant and locked it back in the chest.

Soon, now, my love, he thought. Soon the Intrepid will enter the harbor, and from our widow’s walk you will at last see your bright red pennant flying proudly from my mainmast. Even so, there is something that you do not know. When I return home I will tell you that this is my last whaling voyage, for I can bear this life no longer. It is not just my terrible loneliness for you that fostered this decision, but also my ever-increasing loathing for the awful things we do aboard these ships. I remain unsure about how we will live, but I will find a way. All I know for now is that I will never again leave your side.

In truth, Adam’s disgust for his occupation had been growing for years. So much so that the grisly realities of whaling now seemed nothing more to him than a grotesque tragedy designed to slaughter God’s greatest of beasts with an arrogance that only mankind could muster. His mind made up, he would do no more of this. He believed that Constance would be overjoyed to hear of his decision, however that was small comfort, because his worries about their financial future haunted him day and night. But first, he thought glumly, we must again survive the rounding of Cape Horn. Just then Adam knew that something was amiss. Like any sea captain worth his salt, he sensed the impending danger well before being told about it.

Perhaps it had been the oil lamps in his cabin swaying excessively, or the extraordinarily loud and sudden moaning of the mast timbers. Or it could have been the unusually swift rise and fall of the ship’s bow. In the end the reasons mattered not, because just as he realized the arrival of the impending gale, he heard the first mate shout out: “All hands on deck! Batten down the hatches!”

After frantically donning his rain gear, Adam tore from the cabin and hurried topsides. The sky was pitch-black, and his crew was already scurrying about the deck and up the masts. His helmsman, a man he had known for some twenty years, was doing his best to hold the ship’s wheel steady against the growing storm. The sea was quickly turning into a black maw of ferocious power, its rising waves rivaled only by the terrible wind and stinging rain that now mercilessly pounded the ship. Without warning the masts shuddered horrifically again, and the Intrepid, her sails straining to their utmost, heeled dangerously to port as a huge sidelong wave nearly engulfed her. With her heavily laden hull groaning torturously against the pressure, she finally righted again.

Mere moments later, the storm unleashed her full intensity and the Intrepid became totally ensnared in her power. Adam went to help the helmsman hold fast the wheel, but even then it was all the two of them could do to keep it from spinning out of their hands. Adam knew that there was but one prudent course of action during a storm of such ferocious strength. He immediately lashed down the rain-soaked wheel amidships with heavy rope. The only way to survive such a maelstrom was to keep the rudder neutral then haul in the sails and let her go where she will, hoping that she could ride out the storm.

“Reef the sails, lads!” he screamed, trying his best to be heard above the raging storm. “And restrain all the booms, if you wish to survive!”

Suddenly terrified that his navigation had been imperfect, Adam now feared that they were uncontrollably nearing the dreaded Cape. Holding fast to the gunwale as he made his way along, he struggled inch by torturous inch toward the bow so that he might survey the churning ocean lying ahead. Once there he grasped a line in each hand and then spread wide his legs, trying to peer through the gale-force winds and rain. The bow was now rising and falling so violently that it was all Adam could do to keep from being swept overboard. The Cape was known for spawning terrible storms, but this fatherless nightmare had seemingly sprung out of nowhere, and he had been totally unprepared for it.

“Goddamn you!” he shouted defiantly into the violent darkness. “From which corner of Satan’s Hell were you spawned?”

As Adam had hoped, with her sails reefed and her wheel tied off, the Intrepid nosed directly into the wind.