CHAPTER I
The Jaws of Gravestone Rock

• 3 June 1939 •
off greybeard island
Hard a’lee, me boys!” shouted Nick McIver over the wind, “or be smashed to smithereens in the jaws of Gravestone Rock!”
The dog Jip barked his loud agreement.
Nick, at the helm of his small sloop, Stormy Petrel, that af­ternoon, was almost at the end of his .rst day-long voyage around Greybeard Island. He was hard on the wind, making a good seven knots as he tacked homeward. Just now, he was approaching the treacherous reefs that guarded the entrance to Lighthouse Harbor. Jip, on the bow, was howling into the strong headwind, enjoying the pounding sprays of seawater every bit as much as his skipper.
But now Nick was watching the western sky and the rap­idly rising seas uneasily. Maybe he should have nipped inside the huge Gravestone Rock, in the lee of this wind. Probably should have known better than to sail the long way home in weather like this. Should have done this, should have done that, he silently cursed himself. He did know better, in fact.
But he and Jip had been having such a splendid time, bound­ing through the waves, he’d simply ignored the storm warn­ings. A little cold spot in the pit of his stomach was growing. He hated that cold feeling. He’d not even spoken its name.
But it was fear.
The glorious empty bowl of blue that had been the morn­ing sky now featured stacks of boiling cumulus clouds, all gone to darkening greys and blacks. Billowing towers of pur­ple clouds loomed on the western horizon, swiftly turning the colors of an ugly bruise. In the last hour, clouds of spume came scudding across his bow and through the rigging of Stormy Petrel. Above the howl of the elements was the high keening whistle of wind in the sloop’s rigging. Salt spray stung Nick’s eyes. But he could still see the sky overhead, boiling and black.
Nick leaned hard into the Petrel ’s tiller, putting the weight of his lean body against it, .ghting to keep his bow to wind­ward of Gravestone Rock. He had both hands on the tiller, and they’d gone clammy and cold. Looking up in awe at the giant rock now looming before him, he wiped .rst one hand, then the other, on his soaking trousers. The Gravestone. A terrible thought shuddered unpleasantly through Nick’s mind. Would that famous stone tower today mark still an­other watery grave? His own, and his beloved Jip’s? He cursed himself for his stupidity and leaned into his tiller with all his might. Hopeless. The bow refused to answer the helm, to come up into the wind.
However could he keep his small sloop to the safe, wind­ward side of the massive stone looming ever larger before him? And to the leeward side lay the Seven Devils. On a calm day, Nick might pick his way through these treacherous
reefs. But now, in a blow, they were deadly.
He was fresh out of options.
“And you call yourself a sailor, Nick McIver!” he cried aloud. But not even his dog heard his bitter cry of frustration above the roar of wind and water. He should have known bet­ter. There was a terrible price to pay for carelessness at sea. Especially when you were anywhere near the Gravestone.
It was a towering monument of glistening black granite that now rose before him. Thrusting from the sea like some angry tombstone, it had claimed the lives of skippers and sailors a good deal saltier than Nick and Jip. As Nick had known from earliest childhood, countless ships and men had gone to the bottom courtesy of the Gravestone Rock. Or the seven deadly spines of rock spreading like tentacles in all di­rections from its base. The Seven Devils, the reefs were called, and not for nothing either. Here was as .endish a bit of coastline as ever there was.
This perilous coast had .nally led to the building of Nick’s home. Even now, the great Greybeard Light sent yellow stabs streaking overhead through the darkening sky. This .ashing tower atop the cliffs off his port bow held special meaning for Nick McIver. It was both a warning to stay away and a sum­mons to come home.
For Nick lived atop that lighthouse, he was a lighthouse keeper’s son. And now it looked as if the famous rock below it might claim the boy, if the boy didn’t think of something, and quickly. if the gravestone doesn’t get you, the seven devils will! read the legend carved into the mantel at the Greybeard Inn. And the long-dead British tar who had carved it there knew well whereof he spoke. At that moment, Nick wished he himself had carved those ancient words of warning into the pitching deck he now stood upon.
“We’re not going to make it, boy!” shouted an anguished Nick. “I can’t keep her pointed high enough!” Indeed he could not steer, nor will, the bow of his small boat to wind­ward of the ever larger Gravestone. For every foot of forward motion Petrel gained, she was losing two feet to side-slipping. Adrenaline poured into Nick’s veins as he realized the poten­tial for total disaster in what he was about to do.
A whispered prayer to his long-dead hero escaped his lips.
Nelson the Strong , Nelson the Brave, Nelson the Lord of the Sea.
Nick faced a terrible decision. The most brutal maneuver any sailor could make in such a dreadful blow was a jibe. Jib­ing meant turning the boat away from the wind, instead of into it, so that its brutal force passed directly behind the mainsail. The huge mainsail and heavy boom would then come whipping across the cockpit with a violence that could easily rip the mast from the boat. But what choice did he have? The terrible decision was already made.
“Jibe HO!” he shouted to his shaggy crew. He pulled sharply back on his tiller instead of pushing against it. The bow swung instantly off the wind. “Mind yer heads!” Nick bellowed. The stout wooden boom and violently snapping mainsail came roaring across the small open cockpit like the furies of hell. “Down, boy!” Nick cried, and ducked under the heavy wooden boom at the last second, narrowly avoiding a blow to the head which would have sent him, unconscious, overboard. The lines, the sails, the rigging, every plank of his boat was screaming, at their breaking point. She’d been built of stout timber, but he could feel Petrel straining desperately at her seams. If a plank should spring open now, this close to a rocky lee shore, they were surely done for!
But she held. Looking aloft, he saw his mast and rigging mostly intact. By jibing the boat, he’d gained precious time to think.
Nick feverishly eyed his options, now rapidly dwindling to nil. There had to be a way out of this! Nicholas McIver was not a boy destined to die such a stupid, unseamanlike death. Not if he could help it. He had a healthy fear of dying, all right, but now, staring death square in the face, he was far more afraid of letting them all down. His mother. His father. His little sister, Katie. His best friend, Gunner.
Wasn’t that a fate even worse than death, he wondered? For a boy to slip beneath the cold waves without even the chance to prove to those he loved that he was a brave boy, a boy des­tined to do great things in this world? A boy who might one day be—a hero?
The already fresh wind had now built into something truly appalling. Petrel was rapidly running out of sea room. The sickly...