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over and over again: "Wake up! You're dragging!"

We were beginning to wonder whether we were going to be able to board his boat and deliver our wake-up call personally by the time he finally emerged. Good thing we didn't - he emerged from his cabin in the full glory of his birthday suit, blinking and looking around him in wonder. It was not a pretty sight. Then he looked at us, almost close enough to touch him. "Did I drag?" he said.

"Yes!" The answer was loud and quick and that seemed to startle him a little; he woke up enough to amble up to the bow, perhaps to see if his anchor was still attached. It was, for all the good that was doing all of us. My husband continued to fend his dinghy off our bow and kept an eye on the proximity of his stern and propeller to our anchor chain.

He came slowly back to the cockpit. Or maybe it just seemed slow to us. We, after all, were fully awake and had been for a while - he clearly was not. We took it as a good sign that he started his engine. Then he must have noticed that it was chilly, because he grabbed his jacket and put it on. Nothing else. Finally, finally he went up to the bow and started pulling on his anchor chain. His boat moved slowly away and we stood and watched him go, but we could not relax yet. We needed to know where in this crowded harbour he was going to anchor next. Our sleep depended on it. As it turned out, we didn't have to worry.

The last we saw of him he was headed back into the marina from whence he had come, still dressed only in his jacket. We saw the flame of a lighter, then the glow of a cigarette as he went. When we saw his mast moving behind the breakwater as he headed for the berth he had left the day before we breathed a sigh of relief. And tried to picture him docking among all those other boats as we had last seen him. The picture of him dealing with dock lines in his semi-undressed state was an interesting one, but at least we didn't have to see it. We put it out of our minds and went thankfully to bed and to sleep.

Learn more about this author, Margaret Mair.
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