Flippers churning, he felt scabby links rake his thigh as he powered for the surface, weighted by anchor and chain. He fought upward through brown water to tan, glimpsed Xanadu’s chain leading to the distant dark hull hovering over him—he must swerve to avoid her bottom, she was encrusted with barnacles, high time for the haul-out, green sunlight somewhere, he had better let go, the grey shape of the raft, air, he needed air...

Clinging to his anchor, he broke surface a foot behind the raft. Desperately, he lunged for the handline draped on its side. He gripped it. Weighted down, both hands occupied, he managed to push back his mask against the rubber hull.

Jean-Paul was in the raft with Lindy. They were at the other end, staring down into the water. They did not see him. Jean-Paul was poised to dive. “Oh, God,” he heard Lindy wail. "Go!"

Mitch, near fainting, took a deep breath. “Hey guys?” he managed.

Jean-Paul whirled, lumbered down the raft, and gasped: “Your h’anchor?" He dropped flat, plunged his arm into the water, and grappled for the shank. With Mitch’s feeble help, he heaved it aboard. “C’est formidable,” he breathed. “C’est impossible."

Mitch could not find the strength to slither aboard. Hanging on to the side, he looked up at Lindy. She was ghost-white. She stared down at him, eyes wide with shock. She had never looked so angry. “You son of a bitch!”

Startled, he muttered: “Easy, kid!”

“Tell me why you did that!”

“Well, we’d have had to haul it up later to reset it...”

“Do you really,” she asked softly, “think that’s what I mean?”

He felt his cheeks go hot with shame. “I guess not.”

“Then why in hell pretend to?”

He winced. Jean-Paul turned scarlet and elaborately checked their anchor shackle. They dropped him at his boat, rowed out and reset the hook, and never mentioned the dive again.

They had come on a three-month visa, and extended it once. Jean-Paul was sure that they could get another extension if they wrote the governor; French bureaucrats in Polynesia were a loose and pleasant breed, and glad to have foreign boats decorating the quay as long as their crews were sobre and their funds held up.

Funds were no problem to Linda Lee, although Papeete prices were astronomical by U.S. standards. Compared to the families in the other thirty-odd boats tied to the Quai des Yachts or anchored close-by off the Protestant Church, Mitch and Lindy were affluent. They held to the life-style of their neighbors so that they would not lose their ties with the floating community. She bought her fish fresh from the bonnitiers at the quai, chose small Chinese shops instead of the air-conditioned French stores like Aline’s or Donald’s, and felt guilty when they dined at Pitate in sight of the boats.