He reached across and squeezed her hand. She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her skirt. She was soaked in gasoline, choking with it, stinging with its caustic bite. She had an impulse to open the window for air and began to fumble with the latch.

He grabbed her arm and shouted, "No! Leave it closed!" He began to cough. In a strangled voice he added, "Exhaust manifold fire... can't... risk... letting the flames in here."

He was banking, and steeply. She felt a lightness in the pit of her stomach, a queasy, vacant sense of disembodiment. She was thrown against her seat belt toward the ceiling of the plane.

The world was suddenly all askew; the blazing sun was below them, the glittering turquoise sound gyrating above. She heard him curse.

A Klaxon began to croak endlessly. It was the stall-warning horn he had told her of the previous day, the first signal of a spin.

They were spinning, then, and it must be the end.

He eased the yoke forward and fought the rudder pedals. "He hit a control cable... knocked it off its pulley, I should think... steady, steady, steady..." He murmured to the airplane as a rider gentles a horse. "Steady, poor old thing...."

The island, the sea, the point, all swung swiftly around them, again and again and again. The engine slowed, and Ellen could hear the whisper of the slipstream past the wings, and it increased in pitch, rising to a shriek.

"Easy, old girl," he muttered, still speaking to the plane. "Easy does it, dear old kite, we haven't bought it yet...."

Slowly the plane straightened out. The pressure on her seat belt eased. Soaked in gasoline, she peered out of the windshield.

Somehow, miraculously, he had brought sense to a world gone insane. They were over Masthead Sound but very low. Down to her right she could see Neptune's Folly, even spot the men aboard. She saw Jake's big frame drop into the rubber dinghy, then pause, riveted, as they passed overhead.

On the stern, Mike was waving frantically. Ellen's heart went out to him. He must feel more helpless watching the burning, crippled plane than she did in the cabin herself.

Sitting erect, impassive, Hoagie was serene but attentive, listening to voices from his stricken plane that only he could hear. In some way she caught his tranquillity.

The smoke was filling the cabin. She could barely see out. She heard him coughing. "Going to try a deadstick landing. Daren't use the engine with that fire."

He cut the engine, and it was suddenly deathly silent in the cockpit. They were very, very low. Once again she could hear him murmuring his checklist.