“I’ll leave the dock and put down every anchor I’ve got, and tie down the wheel. Then I’ll row ashore and lash myself to a barstool and get drunk with Hans.”

“You’ve been in one?” asked Graham.

Mitch shook his head.

“Well, I have,” Graham murmured. “I got a yawl out of Suva for Cyclone Bebe. So she hit me dead on. Thought I’d never bloody run to sea again.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Mitch.

“Until,” added Graham sweetly, “I got back and saw Suva.”

The pump creaked and the hull moaned. There seemed nothing more to say. “Thank you, Graham,” muttered Mitch. He rowed ashore and helped Hans, the hotel owner, board up the Oa Oa bar. The gendarme jeeped up with a hurricane warning. Hans, a nervous, sharp-eyed Swiss-American, begged Mitch to leave the dock by noon tomorrow. Apparently he didn’t want Linda Lee as a decoration in his lobby. They had a beer at the darkened bar and Mitch stepped aboard.

It was becoming very muggy. He was jittery and couldn’t decide where to start lashing things down. He got everything movable below. Topside, he secured everything but the dinghy, which he’d need to row back to shore, after he’d anchored. He removed his dorade scoops and screwed bronze plates in the holes they left. He doubled his lines for the night, although there wasn’t a ripple on the lagoon or a cloud in the sky, and battened the skylight hatch.

He poured a drink below and tuned the Zenith to WWV out of Hawaii. The cyclone had just been christened Arlene. WWV placed its center west of the Marquesas. He wondered if Golden Dragon had finally put to sea.

Arlene was still an infant. Her winds were only sixty knots near her center, and she was crawling baby-like at eight knots, already too fast to outrun, but nothing to what she’d do if she matured.

WWV gave her predicted position. Six hours from now she would pass north of Takarava. He wondered how Louie’s mother and the chief and the old pearl diver were preparing. A healthy hurricane wave, it seemed to him, could sweep the atoll bare.

Idly, he plotted the curve and extended it. It passed north of Tahiti but very nearly bisected Bora Bora. He erased the line. Cyclones were unpredictable, and there was no use showing this one the way.

He was glad he had not gone to Papeete to meet Lindy, as he’d planned before he began to worry about the swells. Unless Pan Am had held at Honolulu, she was at the Royal Papeete tonight. He walked to the Bureau de Poste. The postmaster was hammering boards over his windows. Mitch got him to send a cable to the Royal, telling Lindy to stay where she was.

He would rather have her in Papeete than here when the shit hit the fan.