He had let the mizzen jibe. If he had been erect instead of sagging at the wheel, he would have been knocked unconscious.

Instantly awake, he looked around. He let the mizzen jibe back, too tired to handle the sheets. He glanced at his watch. Still forty minutes to go to the point at which she’d gone in, four miles, at his speed under both canvas and power. But no excuse for not searching enroute.

He popped up, turned, forgetting the boom, and almost jibed again. He fought the boat around to SSE, and the canvas steadied. The helm was heavy, under sail and power; too heavy to trust to Irwin, who swung idly behind him.

A dash of salt water, flung high off the port bow as she headed into the seas, stung his cheek.

He was chilled, and the water was cold. Jesus, how must it be for her in the black emptiness ahead? He needed his jacket. He eased the throttle a moment, so that the torque of the screw would not take the boat too quickly off course. He dashed below and was back at the wheel wearing the jacket within seconds.

He began to sense a change in the sea. He could actually see nothing at all, but there was a heave and a drop to the swells that had not been there before. A line-squall was thrashing the water somewhere nearby.

I am coming from the northwest, he told her, I’m not far off.

There were delays: for one thing, I couldn’t find the goddamn logbook. But I did, and I’m on my way...

Now, on impulse, he closed his eyes and flipped everything on: running lights, bow-light, masthead light, spreaders. He left them on for ten or fifteen seconds. Then he turned them off and opened his eyes. In a few minutes he did it again.

If she were up ahead, and looking northwest, she might spot a glimmer and it might give her hope, and soon he would be there, OK?

She saw Jean-Paul for the first time at Henri’s. Afterward, his presence vitalized the memory of the place itself, so that she found it difficult to visualize it as it actually was: a grubby little bar in a general store on a dirty road in a one-street village on an island that the world had forgotten. The building squatted behind bales of drygoods and barrels of fuel and crates of Manuia beer.

A huge white dog lay on the porch. In some ancient accident he had lost a rear leg. As she approached with Mitch, the dog arose laboriously, as if courtesy demanded it. He creaked to the pile of beer cases. He urinated. He had no leg to raise, demonstrating the uses of adversity. He hobbled back and collapsed again.