He would find her dead, if he found her at all. He twisted to look back. She was already fifteen feet away, limp on her back on the face of a cresting swell. He glimpsed her cheeks, bronze in the late sunlight. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was open and her teeth gleamed whitely.

He let go and stroked for her, head high. “Lindy!” he called.

Her eyes opened once. She saw him. A cresting wave hung over her head. She seemed to try to speak, and then she was gone.

He filled his lungs, porpoised high, and dove. He sliced downward. He saw nothing but shards of brassy sunlight lancing the depths.

Once he heard a low-pitched throb and cleared his ears: the beat remained, and he recognized the drum of distant screws.

He curved deeper. The agony of airlessness was brief; he was already through the level of no return. He recognized the edge of narcosis: for a while he was gloriously happy, soaring in a cobalt void, and then he glimpsed a pale form drifting below him.

Languidly, he spiraled down. Her body was blurred and ghostly until he reached for it. He brushed her arm and she seemed to come alive. Her skin was soft and pliant; he felt her hair sweep across his cheek. He clasped her around the waist and let her guide him down. Suddenly the depths exploded in a chaos of sapphire and gold.

And then he finally saw it all: his own body writhing in agony, hers at ease and quite content. He saw it from outside himself, with her.

They were, at last, eternally in each other’s arms, and one.

Glossary

GLOSSARY

apparent noon: instant at which the sun peaks at a given location. If you shoot the sun at that moment, a simple calculation yields your latitude. Thus, ancient mariners always knew their latitude; longitude was another matter.

bilge: the internal part of a boat under the floorboards and below the waterline. By extension, the lowest part at a given point, excluding the keel (as under the auxiliary engine).

binnacle: the enclosure, usually lighted, in which the compass is mounted. By extension, the stand supporting such enclosure.

boomkin: a short projection, sometimes of flat planks and sometimes like a bowsprit pointing aft, providing a good purchase-point for control of the mizzen sheet and thus of the mizzen sail on a yawl or a ketch.

broach: to broach is to lose control to a wave from astern, then swing wildly as it sweeps your stern around, and end up helplessly parallel to the next swell.

catenary: the curve an anchor chain assumes as it hangs more or less freely between the anchor and the vessel. The same curve you see on half the span of a suspension bridge.

chainplates: points of support at deck-level for shrouds and back-stays.