So they would simply surf each wave full-speed as it came, until he no longer had strength to fight the tiller. When the ultimate wave caught them, or Maupiti reef hove up ahead, or they speared a trough with their bowsprit and tumbled ass-over-teakettle to the bottom, at least he would not have held the boat still for the seas to rape.

When they foundered, he was damned if Lindy was going to be caught like a rat in a trap. He unlocked the hatch and pounded on the deck with his boot and she peeped out. He signaled her to get dressed and come topside.

In five minutes she was up, wearing one of his motheaten Navy watchcaps under the hood of her slicker. She was lost in the size of the thing. She stared for a moment at the seas astern, snapped her belt to a shroud and looked into his face.

“Mitch?”

Her voice was faint in the howling wind. He nodded, keeping his eyes on the oncoming seas.

“I love you. Nobody else. I want to stay your friend.”

He handled the wave, tore his gaze from the next, and regarded the nut-brown face. Fleetingly, he saw it on a pillow, cupped in Jean-Paul’s hands. The image faded, but he found that he could not speak.

He felt the surge of the next sea. He hauled at the helm. She put her back into it, too, and they slewed left, avoiding a broach. Linda Lee soared, gathered herself, and hurtled, breast high and stern low, to the southwest.

He began to hum Waltzing Matilda.

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

He could more easily search the glare to the east as the sun rose higher. The line of squalls, bearing down on the rising trades, still worried him, but he put Irwin in charge. He was under jib and mizzen. He left the mainsail down. He wanted to move slowly, so that when the French patrol planes came, or Air Polynésie returned, he would be close to where he had last been seen.

He was leaving the cockpit to climb to the spreaders when he heard the radio burst into life. It stunned him. He had not heard a word from it in thirty-six hours. “Yacht Linda Lee! Star of Peace, here, Zed El One Yankee Uncle—”

Star, having barely survived Arlene, even in the pen, was still at Bora Bora. Mitch dove down the hatch and grabbed the mike. “Graham! Go ahead!”

Air Polynésie, Graham said, had arrived in Bora Bora. Papeete had been informed that Linda Lee was in distress. Two search planes were on their way, and a French destroyer as well. Mahina Radio was trying to get him, but seemed blocked by Moorea.

Star of Peace herself was limping out the pass to help, whatever the problem was. Beating southeast, their ETA was another twelve hours, and there would be plenty of help by then.