She floundered for the horseshoe-buoy. There was another searing flash to her left, before she reached it. She lunged blindly, felt the slippery plastic cover of the buoy, and lost it again in the rush of water off the crest of a swell. She took two brave strokes downhill into the white foam and snatched the buoy tumbling down the slope.

She lifted it over her head, worked her arms through, and snapped the stainless cable across its open end.

She had swallowed too much water, and now she gagged. She kept slipping through the horseshoe because her arms were too tired to stay up on the rim. And, relieved of the need to kick, she was cold again in minutes.

She had little hope that he would spot the flag at dawn. She doubted that she could hang on until then, anyway.

There was much more hope in the flash, if only he would hurry.

All night long she had waited for morning. Now she wished that it would never come.

For four hours he had been zigzagging, back and forth, over his wake. This was the area, if his navigation and the logbook were right, where she had fallen. Now that the logbook had told him this, the dark swells seemed more threatening.

He teetered on the coaming, steering with one foot, letting the necessity to balance keep him awake.

The empty crosstree, ready to crucify him again when he could climb the mast, raked the moon.

He had only an hour until the eastern sky would lighten and, he hoped, bring back the trades.

He decided to heave-to in the surge, replace the ruined jib, and take a look at the sodden chart below.

As he nudged the bow into the wind, he heard M. le Chat mewing and saw his dark shape in the starboard scupper. He had not had time to feed it at all. He still blamed it for Lindy.

The cat glared up at him. Its eyes shone ruddily in the binnacle light. It stretched, crouched, and shifted its gaze back to the lazarette.

Mitch put out a bare foot and prodded him forward, out of danger. He didn’t really want to lose it. The cat regarded him with contempt and slunk forward.

Mitch followed him, dragged the spare jib topside through the forward hatch, and unhanked the tatters of the old one drooping from the forestay. He began automatically to cut loose the hanks to save them. They were hard to find in Tahiti, expensive anywhere. He froze, appalled.

To save sailing gear was to give up. He was selling the boat. Only if he didn’t find her would he sail on. He saw himself cruising endlessly, lonely in the company of a succession of Mahura’s, draining him as they themselves grew old before his eyes.

He flung the hanks into the sea. She was there, alive, and he would find her, and they were heading home. He would need no hanks, or anything else.