They have been running before a north wind (though it seems to've shifted a few points westwards) for over an hour. The southern limb of Cape Cod is dead ahead, barring their path. But long before reaching the shore, Minerva would run aground in coarse brown sand. So they have to come about now and begin to work to windward, towards the open Atlantic. These simple terms – "come about,' for example – denote procedures that are as complicated and tradition-bound as the installation of a new Pope. Great big strong men are running toward the bow: the foreyard loosers and furlers, and the headsail loosers and stowers. They take up positions on the forecastledeck or shinny out onto the bowsprit, but politely step aside for the wiry foretopmen who begin their laborious ascent up the fore shrouds to work the topsails and things higher up the foremast. It is a bristling and tangled thicket of nautical detail. Like watching fifty surgeons dissect fifty different animals at once – the kind of stuff that, half a century ago, would've fascinated Daniel, sucked him into this sort of life, made him a sea-captain. But like a captain reefing and striking his sails before too strong a wind, lest it drive his ship onto the shallows, Daniel ignores as much of this as he can get away with, and tries to understand what is happening in its general outlines: Minerva is coming round toward the wind. In her wake, a mile abaft, is the sloop, her sails lying a-shiver, leaving the little ship dead in the water, drifting slowly to leeward, as pirates try to beat out flames with sopped canvas whilst not stepping on any of those caltrops. Several miles north of that, four more ships are spread out on the bay, waiting.