The rain began with a rush, paused, and returned in torrents. For a moment, she opened her mouth like a bird and tried to drink the cold, fresh water pouring down. She grunted in relief, traded water to cup her hands, almost lost the jug. She held it up to catch more. But it was all too much, it was in her nose, her eyes, her mouth. She began to think that, surrounded by salt water, she would drown in fresh. The rain was solid, driving her under. There was no up, down, or sideways; she was in a liquid maelstrom, with only enough air to keep her alive, strangling and coughing.

She finally sensed a slackening, and that gave her heart to fight, and then there was a calm, and when the rain began again, the guts had gone out of it, and the wind which began was from a new direction and more kindly. The dark anvil-shape had moved away from over her and she could see the Southern Cross again, crystal-clear.

The rain, cold and brutal, had almost drowned her. But her thirst was eased, and having endured the squall, she felt more confident and awake. The struggle with the breakers had warmed her. She looked around.

Below the Southern Cross she saw a flash. Perhaps lightning—but the storm had gone the other way. She rolled onto her back and began to move her legs, traveling south, imperceptibly but steadily.

She glimpsed the flash once, and again, and again. She caught a certain rhythm to it.

If it was lightning, it was strange lightning, because it was parked below the Southern Cross and not moving at all.

Her fish-poisoning in Nuku Hiva, if that was what it was, was not the classical Polynesian variety, for her taste buds never failed and there were no tingles in her skin and no rash. The government doctor, being on rounds on another island, got back too late to diagnose its earlier stages, and never pinned it down. But her fever and diarrhea and delirium were so swift and violent that, she found later, everyone was afraid that she might die.

She had awakened on the dinghy in oppressive sultriness, hot and fevered, with a thermometer in her mouth and Mitch’s hand on her forehead. She had a temperature of 104 degrees. He rowed her in and carried her in his arms up the dusty road to the island hospital.