A gimballed mahogany easy-chair rocked by a rosewood chart-table. Above ticked an ancient U.S. Navy clock. A brass-and-mahogany barograph with a cracked window was mounted beside it, tracing a wavy line of atmospheric pressure around a clockwork drum. Mitch noted that the graph was rising: no hurricane here, regardless of what was happening to the west.

Jean-Paul displayed none of his own carvings in the salon but he mounted the best he had of other carvers. A Maori three-fingered tiki from New Zealand, with its tongue idiotically lolling in greeting, simpered down at them from a bulkhead. An intricate tortoise crawled along the starboard cover-board. It was carved by Purvis Young of Pitcairn Island, sixth linear descendant of Fletcher Christian’s lieutenant. A warclub, carved by one of Jean-Paul’s Marquesan students, hung over an open bronze port. Full of fruit, on the galley counter, stood a kava bowl from Fiji, about to be flung aloft by three leaping porpoises.

On a deck-beam, engraved on a brass plate, were Coleridge’s lines on Xanadu from Kubla Khan.

They were Mitch’s favorite lines of poetry; Xanadu was his second favorite boat.

Dinner was poisson cru, taro, breadfruit, baked fei bananas, and mahi mahi. Jean-Paul poured a heavy red pinot from his home province, near Dijon. They ate Polynesian style, sucking their fingers clean. Taarii, sitting at one end of the polished teak table, had marketed for five, before Mahura learned of her flight to Honolulu. He kept pressing food on Mitch, who ate too much again.

While Lindy helped Taarii wash dishes in the galley, Jean-Paul offered Mitch a cigar.

“He has fallen in love with you,” he observed, smiling. “He would, in fact, like to give you a carving.”

“I can’t take it.”

“You must, n’est-ce pas? After Quinn’s?” He led Mitch into his workshop aft.

Mitch had to stoop, for the massive beams were low. A kerosene lamp flickered softly overhead. To starboard was a wide double bunk. To port, a waist-high bench of white oak, polished and scarred with use, ran the length of the compartment. A tall work-stool was set into the cabin sole. In racks behind the bench glittered chisels, knives, and gouges. A worn hand-grindstone and a series of sharpening stones were set in the workbench edge.

Tacked to a sheet of beaverboard behind the workbench were charcoal sketches of nudes, of Mahura, of lined market-crones, Chinese merchants, beer-bloated fishermen from the quays. There were anatomical sketches of hands and feet and buttocks. A magnificent Tahitian with great wide shoulders and sleek thigh muscles stood poised, casting a net.

Jean-Paul opened a drawer under the bench. From a mass of carvings he drew an intricate chess set. He opened the box. “This, someday, we will sell to a rich Parisian or a New York stockbroker, to have brandy spilled on after dinner. I carved one side, he the other. Now, which is the master’s and which the pupil’s?”