At dawn on the eighth day, she awakened to the swishing of the palm, which was blessing her, Pope-like, with green fronds edged in early-morning gold. Mitch slept deeply, on his bunk a foot away. Her gaze fell from the hatch above her bunk, through the open door, to the main salon. She almost screamed.

Sitting on the companionway steps, staring at her intently, was the tiny black imp from the pier. His head was larger than the rest of his face; his jaw and snub-nose were infantile beneath a bulging forehead. His chin rested on his oversized guitar. The body was ten; the eyes were forty.

A coconut fell somewhere. The palms sighed. She sat up, stark naked, remembered, and grabbed her sheet. The little boy’s glance never wavered.

“Mitch!” she whispered. She reached across and shook him. "Mitch!"

He awakened instantly. He followed her glance and sat up. “Get lost!”

The child regarded him soulfully. “Bonjour, mon capitaine,” he said, with enormous respect.

“Mon p’tit! Fiche le camp!” barked Mitch.

The little boy flinched. He hiked up his cut-offs over his ebony tummy, dropped the guitar, picked it up, and started up the companionway. He paused and turned his eyes on Lindy. She had the impression of sad and boundless wisdom.

“Bonjour, madame capitaine?” he ventured.

“Bonjour,” she smiled.

“Hey!” A little-boy grin flashed on her like sudden morning sun. “Hey, you want to fuck?”

Mitch lay back. “I’ll be,” he muttered, “a son of a bitch.”

Louie had come to lead them from the Garden of Eden. Her paradise was lost.

Mitch sat at breakfast in the salon, next to Louie. Louie had been trudging, apparently, along the reef since dawn. He was hungry. He had already eaten five of the bananas that had hung in their cockpit since the Marquesas, and he was eyeing a sixth. There were none on these atolls, and his bones must be absorbing them, for he had already exceeded his apparent volume.

He had dipped his fingers in Mitch’s bowl of Ralston, tried and rejected it. Now he pointed to the cockpit. Lindy winced and tore down another stalk of bananas. He yanked one off and ate it, while his drum-tight belly swelled and Mitch began to wonder how they would clean up the mess in the cabin when he burst.

He was, he told Mitch, sent by the village chief. The chief would like it very much if the pretty yacht would tie up to the town dock, where yachts customarily stayed, and where they could be properly welcomed. But the chief was very shy and had no wish to intrude, so he had sent Louie.

Mitch doubted it: why Louie? He asked him, as delicately as he could. The enormous eyes regarded him, and the shoulders went back. The tiny chest swelled, almost matching the belly. “Mon père,” he announced solemnly, “il est Américain!”

“His father’s American?” asked Lindy, from the sink.