Mitch was nervous. The deal was not set, not at all. He was afraid to say anything that might trigger Dugan and give him an excuse to back out. “Beautiful. Just beautiful.”

Dugan whirled away suddenly and escaped to the clapboard windlass-shack, where his brother was preparing to lower Lorelei.

Mitch touched his pocket. His checkbook was there. Dugan was trapped in the shack, and his older brother would be an anchor if he started to drift. He entered. “Mr. Dugan, what do you want for her?”

The carpenter looked down the tracks at his boat. His brother, face frozen, punched a circuit-breaker, peered down the tracks, called the yard workmen to their launching positions through a loudspeaker. The winch motor groaned into life.

“I better ride her in,” Andrew Dugan muttered, bolting for the door. “Got to take the lines.”

Mitch grabbed his arm. “Goddamn it, how much do you want?"

"John?” Andrew Dugan pleaded to his brother.

“Go on down,” John Dugan said softly, “and we’ll get her in the drink.” He glanced at Mitch. “He wants $16,481. And 91 cents.”

Andrew Dugan, face stricken, strode from the shack. Mitch almost called him back.

He had been ready to go thirty, perhaps thirty-five thousand. And he did not understand the odd dollars and cents.

But something told him not to test his luck. He braced his checkbook against the winch-housing and began to write.

He had grabbed a flood tide of fortune, it seemed. Within two weeks Lindy’s brother had the house in escrow. In accordance with the tenets of his profession, he carefully kept them from meeting the phantom buyer. They paid off the mortgage and kept $95,000.

By the next week Bobby had scored again. He had lined up a buyer for the beach property at Fort Bragg. Mitch tried to salve his conscience by writing in a deed restriction prohibiting commercial zoning, but the buyer of course balked. Mitch gave up without another shot: he wanted no property taxes over his head when he cut loose. He found himself suddenly a quarter of a millionaire, and he had not yet even sold out his law partnership.

That was a problem that he and Bernie avoided. The dissolution of their business life simmered under a lid of civility. But sometimes Mitch caught Bernie at lunch with clients or in a conference with the juniors, regarding him speculatively, from under lowered brows.

In the meantime the list of items to do and get before they could leave for the South Pacific began to grow like cancer on their lives.