Midnight
With high noon , too , came the summer westerly , screeching and whistling and lashing the Gulf to a brief fury . It was the regular summer wind , a yachtsman 's gale . Four days out of six its cycle ran the same , a breeze rising at ten o'clock , stiffening to a healthy blow , a mere sigh at sundown . Midnight would find the sea smooth as a mirror , the heaving swell killed by changing tides . So the _ Blackbird _ ran down Squitty , rolling and yawing through a following sea , and turned into Squitty Cove to rest till night and calm settled on the Gulf . When her mudhook was down in that peaceful nook , Steve Ferrara turned into his bunk to get a few hours ' sleep against the long night watch . MacRae stirred wakeful on the sun-hot deck , slushing it down with buckets of sea water to save his ice and fish .