"That's one way to look at it," Pitt had said. He'd figured she would think that, and he'd been right.

Pitt went up the anchor chain, copying the style of a Polynesian native climbing a palm tree after coconuts. He soon reached the hawserhole and peered over the rail. He hesitated, listening and watching for any movement in the shadows. Not a soul was visible. The foredeck was deserted.

He swung over the side, crouched low and moved silently across the deck to the foremast. The blacked-out ship was a blessing. If the cargo loading lamps had been on, the midships and foredeck would have been bathed in a flood of white light; not the best circumstances for sneaking around unnoticed. Pitt was also thankful that the darkness blotted out his dripping water trail across the foredeck. He paused, waiting for the expected sounds and movements that never came. It was quiet, far too quiet. There was something else about the ship that didn't jell in Pitt's subconscious mind, but he couldn't pin it down. It eluded him for the present.

Pitt reached down, unsheathing the diver's knife strapped to his calf, and moved aft, holding the seven-inch stainless blade well out in front of him.

It seemed incredible, but Pitt had a clear view of the bridge and, as far as he could see, it was abandoned. He melted into the shadows and climbed the ladder to the bridge, his feet padding noiselessly on the steel steps. The wheelhouse was dark and empty. The spokes of the wheel reached out in dark loneliness, and the binnacle stood like a mute, brass-plated sentinel. Pitt couldn't make out the wording, but he knew from the angle of the pointers that the telegraph stood at All Stop. In the dim light from the stars he was able to make out a rack attached to the ledge below the port window. His fingers played over the contents; Aldis lamp, flare gun, flares. Then he got lucky. His hand touched the familiar cylindrical shape of a flashlight. He slipped out of his swimtrunks and wrapped them around the lens till the light offered nothing but a faint glow. Then he checked every foot of the wheelhouse; deck, bulkheads, equipment. The tiny indicator lights of the control console showed the only glimmer of life.

The curtains were drawn in the chartroom at the back of the wheelhouse. It was inconceivable that any chartroom could be so clean. The charts lay in orderly stacks, their fields of squares and numbers crossed by precisely drawn pencil lines. Pitt slipped the knife back in its sheath, propped the flashlight against a copy of Brown's Nautical Almanac and scanned the chart markings. The lines coincided exactly with the Queen Artemisia's known course from Shanghai. He noted the fact that there were no mistakes or erasures by whoever figured the compass corrections. It was neat, too much so.