Spiess was his last hope of proving Lasker-Schüler wrong. It had come down to that. In one of the letters, Hans had mentioned writing Spiess. This was the last lead Murnau had. In any event, securing the proper cast and locations would mean travel among the islands. His plan was to comb the groups east to west for Europeans fitting Spiess’s description, and then to keep an ear out once shooting began.

The Bali was long and slim, sixty-five feet by sixteen feet, drawing eight and half feet of water. She belonged to the Gloucester Fisherman class, with two sails and a fifty-horsepower engine. Below, beside the galley and the crew’s quarters, there was a dining room, a stateroom, a lavatory, and a pantry. She flew both the American and the German flags. On her stern Murnau had painted a blood-red heart.

The Mainsail luffed and billowed above him in the darkness. The helmsman, Bill Bambridge, had one leg encased in plaster and leaned on his crutch like Long John Silver. He hadn’t spoken in hours.

When Pal needed to defecate, he climbed up on the back deck and did his business off the taffrail in calm seas. In rough seas he sat around whining. At such times, David murmured his general disbelief at the dog’s presence.

For Murnau the whole trip had been a blessed relief from physical infirmities. He’d rigged a collapsible silken canopy for the cockpit, and for long stretches he would close his eyes and relax his body and listen to the hissing rush of water along the hull. In his journal he copied a verse from the American Emerson: And the lone seaman all the night / Sails astonished among stars. When he dozed, he dreamt of their departure from San Pedro, and the California mud on the anchor flukes as it came up. When he woke, there always seemed to be an extra stillness in the air. The only sound was the musical liquid noise of their wake. In the east over the stern, the lower quadrant was the orange of embers, the binnacle lamp already dull against the coming brightness of the day. There were stirrings below. David climbed up the companionway and replaced Bambridge at the helm with a pre-dawn regard for silence. Pal gave himself a good shake and went below for water.

Murnau stood and worked out the kinks. He was stiff and chilly. He stretched. He checked the stars to assure himself that he’d truly arrived at this place so far from what he knew, then headed forward. The breeze smelled of morning. He settled on the foredeck between the windlass and an open hatch, his knees pulled to his chin. Eddy, their Japanese cook, clanked around below making coffee. There was a clinking in Pal’s dish.

That was how he was sitting, smelling coffee and flowers and the sea, when he sighted landfall: Taio-haie, on Nukahiva.