Buoyantly, he made sail. He brought the boat on course back to Bora Bora, where they could make repairs, pick up their passports, rest a while, take on stores, and go. Lindy dragged topside. She was pale and haggard, which didn’t surprise him. He knew he himself looked like the tail-end of a two-week drunk. But her eyes were lifeless, and though she smiled when she saw the pretty sunrise, she saw none of her cloud-people in it. She wanted to help with the tiller, but she could not seem to keep her mind on the course, so he sent her below for more rest.

They slogged back to Bora Bora. It took them three days. Star of Peace, despite her shelter, had lost her mizzenmast to a flying coconut limb. Hans had lost two cottages and the pier was a pile of rotting timbers on the inland side of the road.

Mitch cleared out the chaos below, repaired the steering cable, secured the generator, and patched up Irwin, whose workings had been strained. He would have sailed then, but Lindy was not ready, so they found a lone anchorage near a motu at the pass. They dove and swam and fished. They made love. He exorcised Jean-Paul, in his own mind, anyway, and, she swore to him, in hers.

It became almost impossible for him to recall the details of Arlene, or the fear he must have known huddled on the cabin sole. It was all lost somewhere in the triumph of surviving. It seemed equally impossible for her to forget. A great question hung between them, and he could not bring himself to ask it.

One night in the cockpit, sipping scotch, she brought it up herself. “Let’s level, Mitch. Can we?”

“I hope.”

“What are we getting ready for?”

“Well, Raro, the Cooks—” Something in her face, in the light from the open hatch, stopped him. “What is it, Lindy?”

“All alone?” she gulped. “All by yourself?”

“Of course not.”

She began to cry, softly. His gut felt cold. He knew, and there was no use dragging it out of her. “You’re through?” he asked.

“Fiu, Mitch. While it balances out for me. The gales for the days in the trades, and that pass at Takarava for the lagoon inside, and the doldrums for that day rowing up the river, remember? Arlene for ... I don’t know.”

“For Jean-Paul?”

“No. Arlene for the look you had when you found the boat.”

A coconut crashed on the motu. The surf boomed into Te Avenua Pass, gently now but still with the voice to move him, belly-deep. She had been trying to tell him this, and he hadn’t let her close enough to hear. “OK,” he said thickly. “We’ll beat back to Tahiti and sell her.”

“Mitch, it’s awful! I wrecked one dream.”