He dreamed that he threw the cat overboard. He felt himself pitching forward over the glowing binnacle. He snapped awake. He checked his compass heading and found it had drifted ten degrees off while he dozed. He heard the clock chime once, and for a moment could not remember whether it was a half-hour past midnight or a half-hour past four. He glanced at his watch. Four-thirty. He had been on his feet or aloft and searching for over twenty-five hours. He quickly checked the eastern horizon for the first faint hint of dawn.

It was still pitch-black to the east. He did not know whether to be sorry or glad. He was still afraid that the strobe was out, or had sunk, or was simply too far away to see, and yet he kept hoping for it, as a marker if nothing else. Soon it would be too light.

The cat was glaring at him from the hatch, mewing. So at least he hadn’t drowned it in his sleep. It was probably starved, as he was; he could not remember whether he had fed it yesterday, or had only intended to.

He sent it a mental warning: you are not out of danger yet. If you think I am going to stop while I crack a can of catfood, you’re out of your silly mind. Then he repeated the message, aloud, too loudly, in English and French. The cat only complained more angrily. He lunged at it, to scare it into silence. It stalked below.

To stay awake, he began to lay plans. With daylight, Bernie’s emergency radio would become potentially useful again, as the Tahiti-Bora Bora flights began. He had lashed the transmitter to the crosstrees, for elevation, and left it on all night. If the beacon was any good, and if the pilots bothered to guard the emergency frequency, he might well have a plane homing on him by dawn. There might, too, be French Navy patrols aloft on training flights out from Tahiti.

He searched for a plan to communicate, assuming the plane slipped down to investigate. He had used up his flares on the bonnitier, and the man-overboard flag was waving from its pole somewhere in the waters surrounding him, but he could hoist the national ensign, upside-down, to buttress the signal from Bernie’s transmitter.

At dawn, he would do that, while the cat saluted.

He found himself giggling. His laughter woke him up again. He was losing his marbles, and he had somehow to hang on until dawn.

He swept the horizon. He could see a faint paling of the eastern sky.

He tensed. He thought he had caught a distant flash off the port bow. He dropped the wheel, rushed forward, and began to climb the ratlines. Linda Lee wobbled off course, so that suddenly he did not know where to look. He should have taken a compass bearing immediately.