The sun broke from behind the roil of her coiffure and turned the water to windward into a lane of hammered brass. It was impossible to search it with the naked eye. He dashed below for his Polaroid sunglasses. When he could not find them, he tore into his drawer and flung clothes, handkerchiefs, and socks around the cabin. He discovered them finally where he always kept them, in a net above his bunk. He barged back topside.

Now there was even less time to strike the mainsail before the blow. He was afraid even to leave the wheel. The squall hit in a blinding sheet of rain and spray. For five minutes he could not see upwind at all, and to leeward not more than a hundred feet. Somehow Linda Lee slogged through it. The wind shifted, and when he thought they were safe, another squall blustered through, with thirty-knot gusts.

When the wind shifted again he checked the sails. Incredibly, there were no torn seams. After the squall line passed, the trades began again, gently at first, and finally with enough power for Irwin.

Quickly he placed the vane in charge. He pulled binoculars from a plastic sheath on the mizzenmast and slung their strap over his neck. He climbed the ratlines to the spreader, clenching the shrouds as the roll swept him port and starboard and port again. Gauging the motion, he got a foot over the yard and pulled himself to a sitting position on its flat upper surface, clinging to the mast to maintain his seat.

He glanced down at the empty cockpit. The bronze binnacle, still sparkling with rain, stood lonely in its center. He put his binoculars on it and found that he could read the after-lubberline on the compass. Irwin, towering in the stern, was holding course precisely, as if he could see the compass too.

He brought the glasses up and tried to study the water up-sun. He was dazzled by dancing gold. He let his binoculars swing from his neck and searched with the Polaroid glasses alone.

The Polaroids helped, but the glitter tempted him to concentrate on the restful blue to the west, and he had to force himself to study the water to windward.

Two white terns were flashing off his quarter, spiraling upward together to perhaps two thousand feet, striving for a wider horizon. He put his binoculars on them for a moment. They were delicate, ethereal creatures with translucent wings, always in pairs. The Tahitians called them love-terns, itatae, and the bonnitiers steered for them to find mahi-mahi. Itatae seldom flew alone. Lindy had wondered what happened to one when the other was lost in a storm.

(The sensitive lawyer, man of words and infinite feeling, had an answer for her, of course: “They find somebody else, honey. One good tern deserves another.")

He winced. He dropped his binoculars to the area of ocean beneath the birds, looking for whatever kept them over that particular spot.