Blackbeard’s name was Jean-Paul, and he sailed alone or, lately, with one Tahitian crewman: “My mahoo, my student. A carver of wood, and he cooks, also.”

“Mahoo?” asked Lindy.

“Man-woman,” Jean-Paul remarked. Lindy sagged visibly, but the Frenchman’s eyes were bland and steady. “Here in Polynesia, that does not matter.”

It was hard to think of Jean-Paul himself as a homosexual, but Mitch found himself trying. He regarded Lindy silently. OK, my sweet, he thought. That’ll cool you.

But it obviously hadn’t.

She had caught Mitch’s look, and it irritated her. There was nothing gay about the Frenchman: he was radiating interest in her from every pore. Her eyes were level with his, and he was looking into them as if the two were alone. “And your voyage,” he was saying gently, “it was bad, I think, and good, and already you are forgetting the bad, is it not so?”

Her lips were moist but her throat was tight. She would squeak if she talked, and could not trust herself to answer. So she nodded, and he went on, waving his hand at the table of yachtsmen: “Some will not forget how bad it was, and they will drop out at Papeete. And some will grow too full of confidence and lose their boats before Fiji. And some will go round the world on the trades, like a carousel—”

“And Jean-Paul will stay in the Marquesas forever,” Henri cut in, setting the jug, full of murderous-looking red wine, on the window sill. “Like Gauguin, Henri and Cape Martin. The four of us, looking always out to sea.”

“Do not count on it,” Jean-Paul said softly. “Don’t bet on it, my friend.”

“He must not leave,” said Henri. “Security demands you stay. Who will teach us to whittle spears and clubs for the Force Nucléaire?”

“Your financial security demands me to stay,” rumbled Jean-Paul. He suggested that teaching the natives to carve what the market demanded was simply giving them money to spend in Henri’s store for chocolate to rot their teeth or wine to rot their bellies. “If the radioactive dust from Mururoa does not kill them all, perhaps this man will!”

“Merde!” Henri snorted. He snapped his towel at the boar’s tooth dangling at Jean-Paul’s bare chest and went back to the bar.