There were two flights a day between Papeete and Bora Bora, and he was hardly twenty miles from their track. And hourly flights, too, between Papeete and Moorea, all day long. He flicked it on. Its tiny red eye began to pulse, telling him that it was transmitting.

He took it aloft with him, suspended by a lanyard from his neck, along with the binoculars. Once on the yardarm, he began to tremble as the truth struck him. Washed with the most violent guilt he had known all day, he began to sweat.

All the inter-island flights were daylight ones. The sun was dropping to port already.

He should have turned the little radio beacon on twelve hours ago.

As the water warmed at noon, she became more comfortable. She dropped into a rhythm of dipping her head every few minutes to ease her forehead from the blazing sun, then emptying the jug of whatever had trickled in, then lying back again and simply waiting. Sometimes, when the swell swept her to a crest and widened her horizon, she remembered to swing her head for a quick look for the ketch.

Through the midday hours she seemed actually to have gained strength. Her thirst was awful, but if only he found her before the water cooled, she would be OK. She dreaded the chill that darkness would bring.

She raised her head, glanced at the descending sun, and heard a distant low rumble. Airplane? Boat? As she dipped again, the noise dropped, but she could hear it faintly still, through her body more than her ears.

She still saw nothing, but within five minutes she was hearing the grumble strongly. It seemed to be coming from all directions. She knew now that it was a boat engine, but too powerful for Linda Lee. A fishing boat, perhaps, or an inter-island schooner.

All at once she spotted it. Diving into sheets of spray, its long bamboo poles lashed quivering to the cabin-top, it was less than a quarter-mile away, much closer than Mitch had come before he turned.

She was in its path, and for a crazy moment she was afraid that it might hit her. She jammed her whistle in her mouth and shrilled with all her strength. She lost sight of the boat, as she dipped, and then it was almost on her a hundred yards away. It slewed from its course, rolled, and gave her a view of a cockpit full of glistening gutted fish and an immense Mahi-Mahi.

If it didn’t hit her, smash her down and carve her in the screws, it had found her, she was saved.

She began to yell, waving her arms: she whistled: she screamed and thrashed. The bow loomed in her vision. It was almost on her—no, it would leave her to starboard, but where was everyone? The roar became overpowering.