It was the cabin-top of a powerboat, hull-down beyond the horizon. It was cutting across his own course, apparently bound for Tahiti. In the crazy, bounding field of the binoculars, he could soon see long bamboo poles bundled on her cabin-top. He recognized her as a Tahitian bonnitier, a long way from home. Perhaps she had been trolling near Tubai Manu to the south.

He lost her in the binoculars in a sickening roll which almost pitched him from the spreader. He dropped the glasses and grabbed backward for the mast. He missed and flopped forward to his stomach, hugging the yardarm. The binoculars dangled below.

He got back astride the spreader and found the fisherman again. Her bow flung the great swells back and hurled a white sheet of foam aside. She was charging northwest at twelve or fifteen knots, to make Papeete before dusk.

There was no way to cut her off at his own crawling speed. He scrambled down the rigging, slid below, and shouted out a Mayday on the radio.

He waited, got no answer, and called again. He found himself babbling, in English and French, into the deaf void: “J’ai perdu ma femme! My wife is overboard! Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Elle est tombée à la mer!”

He charged topside. The bonnitier had not changed course. He had been stupid to think that the fishing boats carried radios, or that a nonchalant, breezy Tahitian fisherman would guard the distress frequency even if he had one. He groped in the lazarette, found the Very pistol and a box of flares. He pointed it straight up and fired. It kicked in his hand like a.45. The flare arose whitely, barely higher than his own mast, became lost in the blazing sky, and dropped into his wake. He fired all the flares he had. All were unspectacular. The fishing boat was almost out of sight.

He had one more card to play, a signal mirror they stowed in their life raft. He grappled for it by feel, unable to take his eyes off the retreating fisherman. He found it and lined up its peep hole with the target, but the sun was too low behind him.

He was jamming the mirror back into the raft when he felt a compact metallic box, hardly bigger than a pack of cigarettes, with a pencil-like projection at one end.

He froze, incredulous, recognizing the shape. “Shit!” he bellowed, drawing the object out.

It was a farewell gift from Bernie, a tiny emergency transmitter, preset to the international aircraft distress frequency. It was powered by little batteries. Private pilots were required to carry it in California.

Activated, it was supposed to transmit a warbling signal on international emergency frequencies, guarded by all planes in flight.