Until the sun was high enough for a morning shot, his dead-reckoning position would grow more and more inaccurate. Still, he must not correct his track. Although current was almost certainly setting him toward Huahine Island, somewhere to the west, the boat and Lindy were both in the same vast mass of water drifting over the ocean floor. If he tried to fight the set and return to the same geographical position at the end of each run, she would simply drift further and further from the path he patrolled.

The two terns had stayed with him since dawn. At first he had guessed that they assumed he was a bonnitier, fishing far from Tahiti, and that they were waiting for him to jettison bait. But, through the hours, they had become his friends and allies. They wheeled now in intricate chandelles to starboard, very high, as if searching for her in waters his eyes could not reach.

He climbed stiffly down the ratlines to turn south, finally admitting that she could no longer be anywhere ahead. Before he turned back to search the track again, he ducked below for an instant to try once more to call Radio Mahina in the peaks behind Papeete. Nothing came back but a crackling buzz. The invisible crags of Moorea, soaring sixty miles southeast between him and Tahiti, still blocked him.

He considered clearing out of the area to call for help. Planes and choppers from Faaa could be here in an hour, and a French destroyer in two. But it would take half the morning to move clear of interference with the hidden mountains to the east. And there was still no assurance that he would be heard. Her chances were better if he stayed.

He drew on shorts to protect his raw skin from the spreader. His raw toes were a problem. He went barefoot at sea and wore sandals ashore. It had been months since he had had on shoes, and his feet were swollen from dangling aloft. His deck-shoes would not go on, so he left his feet bare.

He considered brewing more coffee, knowing what fatigue would soon do to him. But, here below, he was getting jumpier by the moment. He glanced at his watch again. He was sailing through waters she could not be in, and he wanted to reverse course. He decided to skip the coffee.

Before he climbed topside he took another quick look for the logbook. The cabin was already a shambles from his search for his sunglasses: he completed the destruction in the new search for the log, and still found nothing. A mystery, but he had no time to mull over it now, so he scrambled to the cockpit.

He disengaged Irwin, spun the wheel, and tacked to the SSE course, hard on the wind again, and pounding.