And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi, Bruce Henderson

indicator of things to come on their “island paradise.”
    Thirteen days into the trip, Jennifer was down below calculating their position when Buck yelled for her to come topside. At last he had begun to feel better and had been spending more time on deck helping sail the boat.
    On deck, she found him struggling with a line. From the frenetic splashing in the water, this was obviously a big catch. She was overjoyed at the thought of fresh fish for dinner. But this fish had other ideas. Suddenly, it made a lurch under the boat, but Buck, lightning-fast, bent over the stern and jerked on the line. His powerful arm hoisted the wildly thrashing, silvery body into the air. With a net, he swooped aboard a tuna weighing thirty pounds at least. Laughing, he grasped it by its gaping mouth.
    “Goddamn!” he shouted with pride.
    But his exhilaration was short-lived. “Fuck! The hook’s in my thumb.”
    “Oh, no.” Jennifer gasped, stiffening.
    Somehow, Buck managed to wrest the tuna off the hook. It dropped to the deck, flip-flopping helplessly.
    Coolly and deliberately, Buck pushed the hook through his thumb until the curved end with the barb was visible on the other side.
    Jennifer felt faint.
    “Get the file,” he said evenly.
    “Oh, God!”
    “You’ve got to file down the barb,” he said. The beads of sweat popping out on his forehead belied his calm voice.
    Bravely controlling her own squeamishness, Jennifer tried, but every time she moved the file across the barb, Buck’s whole body tightened. Clenching his teeth, he took it stoically at first. But soon he began to moan, softly. Jennifer trembled as she scraped metal against metal, making more blood flow.
    “Try doing it with your eyes open, Jen.” Somehow, he’d managed a wisecrack.
    “I just can’t…hurt you like this,” she stammered, turning away.
    Without a word, Buck grasped the eye of the hook with pliers and snapped it off. He took a deep breath and yanked out the bloody hook.
    A relieved Jennifer dabbed antiseptic on the wound and dressed it quickly.
    She now understood what she had heard about ocean cruising being “days of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” She also felt she knew a little bit more about Buck. For all his self-pity and fecklessness on the trip so far, he could be very composed and self-sufficient when necessary. He was a survivor.
    The next day, they had a memorable moment of a very different kind; in a flurry of cheerful splashing, the sea around the Iola became alive with porpoises.
    Chattering like squirrels, playfully vying with each other to be seen and heard, the smiling mammals raced in front of the bow, aimed their blunt snouts skyward, and jumped several feet into the air, flashing their white underbellies in a precisely choreographed aquatic ballet.
    Beautiful as this welcoming visit was, the performance of the porpoises reminded Jennifer that she and Buck and the Iola were intruders. This huge, unpredictable expanse, teeming with secret and dangerous life, was another world. They would be outsiders, always.
    At the sight of the porpoises, Puffer and Buck’s two big hounds went crazy. They barked and barked, but the porpoises seemed to fly even higher. Jennifer and Buck, who seldom wore clothes on pleasant days, stood naked and smiling under the warm sun. The scent of the sea about them, they lovingly held hands.
    “Look at us,” Jennifer said. “We’re as brown as berries.” By now, any patches of angry red burn had turned to tan. Buck’s thick neck and powerful shoulders were almost mahogany; her softer skin was a glowing nut-brown. The beard he’d started since being at sea was coming in a reddish blond, and she playfully stroked his stubble, happily surprised at how soft it was already getting.
    They laughed and kissed, as if they’d just found each other again.
    A diffuse lemon sunlight filled the air. This was the kind of balmy and beautiful day that made Jennifer enjoy being on a sailboat in