She screamed at them silently. She was not a fish, or a whale, she was Lindy...

A coltish whitecap slurped into her face, up her nose, into her throat, strangling her. She coughed and retched. She had to have air, she was strangling. She struggled erect.

Down-sun, emerging from a squall, she saw Linda Lee. Then it was gone. It was immense. She fumbled for her whistle, coughed out the last of the water. She blew with all her might.

The whistle was silent. She spluttered it dry and got out three feeble shrills before she ran out of air. Then she flopped back into the horseshoe. Nothing was left at all.

From the spreader, he watched the next squall approach. The drone of the aircraft put hopeless walls on the search. He was sure they would not stay past sunset, and he willed the sun to hang forever where it was.

His bare right foot, braced against the yardarm and slimy with sweat, slipped. He almost pitched from the mast. He grabbed it impulsively. But what was the difference, and why the hell not? He glanced downward. Twenty feet below, Linda Lee knifed heedlessly through the swells. She took a special roll and almost flung him off again. Her mainsail chuckled softly.

To port he heard the sudden shrill cry of a bird. It was very weak. The terns? A whistle? He struggled to his feet on the yardarm.

Bobbing in the water, 100 yards down-sun, he saw the man-overboard pole. He saw nothing else, but that was enough.

“Lindy!”

He heard nothing, saw nothing in the glare beyond the crest of the swell, only the top of the pole and the fluttering faded flag.

“Lindy!” he screamed. He slid down the shrouds, letting go to drop the last ten feet. He doused the jib, loosed the mizzen as he grabbed the wheel, yanked Irwin out of command, started the engine, and spun the wheel into the plummeting sun.

He lost the flag in the glare. He spotted it again, and then the horseshoe-buoy, and her face turned skyward, and the spill of burnished hair on the rim of the buoy.

He turned well clear, brought the bow into the wind, and let the boat go dead. Lindy was twenty feet away. He cut the engine so that she could hear him, for she showed no sign of knowing-that he was here. He tossed the orange life ring, attached to the boat with a long floating line, in a perfect soaring arc. It dropped within five feet of her. “Lindy!” he shouted. “Grab it!”

She raised her head. She seemed dazed. He yelled again. She seemed to see the ring. She slipped from the horseshoe and tried for it. It was not three feet away from her when she reached out, floundered, and went under.