Around and Round

That explains it. The canvas is torn.

A tiny boat, no bigger than a life raft, spun round in circles about 15 minutes from shore. She was caught in the squaring-off between wind and wave and her sail, flapping wildly, unsecured and multiplying the chaos on deck, revealed a gash in its fabric that sliced from her groaning mast to the tether-turned-whip at its furthest edge. The rudder, though intact, was a minor deterrent to the crash of water coming overboard; the ballasts on her sides did little to steady her as the hurricane tipped her precariously, her starboard side exposed, her port dipped below the surface of the raging waters.

The little vessel was suspended, immobilized, out on that lake. She could do nothing to ease the storm's anxious strains as it relentlessly pitched her from one side to the other. Wind and wave met with a violence that the boat had never before encountered. It threatened to implode her; it struggled to pull her apart.

Give in, little floater, I'll protect you beneath; 

Never again will this wind haunt your sails. 

Give in, little swimmer, and I'll run you aground;

While at port you'll find rest in my gales.

Neither would settle for less than her all; neither sky nor sea could this maiden voyage please. With her control and choice wrecked she was at the mercy of the elements and though at war with each other, with her in their crossfire, both water and air thought their action was all to this little boat's best.

But there was something built into this small rocking ship that remembered a storm quite the same... A floorboard, perhaps, or an old rope on deck that had witnessed a reckless sea in ages past, a terrible tempest calmed by the gentle rebuke of a ghost.

Or they though he was a ghost, at first. He had captured all attention. The wind suddenly quiet; the waves as suddenly stilled. He was the master of them all. They obeyed his command. He saved the boat; he stopped the elemental war.

Oh, how this vessel begs of its Master another divine intervention. Bring order from chaos. Mend the sail, guide the boat, calm the wind and wave.