Graham, the protest vessel’s skipper, lounged on his disheveled bunk. He was a bearded young man with calm brown eyes. He was a steady, well-balanced seaman. When the French destroyer had rammed him off Mururoa, instead of abandoning Star of Peace, he had organized a collision drill and saved her. But now he seemed indecisive and subtly shaken.

From forward came a shriek and a groan as his ancient bilge pumps began to work. There was a squawk and a whistle from the ham rig. Graham’s mate, Dennis, sitting on a crate of Leopard beer empties, jammed earphones on his head and began to make notes. A woman’s voice, with a faint Canadian accent, crackled through the static. The Canadian yacht Golden Dragon was anchored at Nuku Hiva, 800 miles northeast. She reported mare’s tails in the northern sky, a large fifteen-second swell, and a pumping barometer which was hard to average. But she thought it had dropped a tenth of an inch in the last hour. The wind was gusting to thirty knots. Golden Dragon was battening down and trying to decide whether to go to sea or stay in Taio Hae Bay.

Mitch spotted a greasy blue Bowditch in the bookcase over Graham’s bunk. He found in it a table which told him that one tenth of an inch an hour meant that Golden Dragon was 100 miles from the eye of the hurricane.

If there was a hurricane. The last tropical cyclone to hit French Polynesia was in 1961. Twelve years, almost...

“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?” complained Graham. “In the Cooks or bloody Fiji, one would know. Here, one can’t tell whether to shit or go blind.”

Graham slipped from his bunk, moved to a chart table, and plotted a position 100 miles north of Nuku Hiva. From it he sketched a typical southern-latitude hurricane path, southwest, then south. He did not finish the line, but if it recurved east, as hurricanes often did, Bora Bora would sit nicely astride it. Mitch’s tongue felt dry.

“The French Navy started it,” Dennis decided, popping a beer. “With a nuke, just to get us before we left. The rain will be radioactive and sterilize us all.”

Graham flushed. He had seemed unflappable, but now he turned on his mate.

“It’s not funny, you know.” He drummed his fingers on the chair. “Mitch, if it is...will you run to sea, or stay?”