She saw few birds: they were simply too far from land. But one morning a little sparrow-sized land-bird squatted on deck in the early-morning shade of the dinghy. It made no move to escape when she cuddled it. It had apparently decided that she was the least of all possible evils, but refused to drink their water. They decided that it must have been blown to sea from Clipperton Island, but there was no way to know. Anyway, when it was rested it fluttered its wings, took off chirping, and thrashed away to the east.

They tried to fish and caught nothing. The Times Atlas showed two thousand fathoms under the keel: over two miles, straight down, and too deep for anything but a chance encounter. A little striped pilot-fish who had adopted them somewhere skimmed along in the shade of their hull. His name was Elmer.

They were probably getting too insular, and would discuss such matters as a name for a new drink for hours, but there was no one around to sicken with their small-talk, so neither of them cared.

They were utterly alone. One glittering night Mitch called her topside, excitedly. He pointed out a satellite, streaking hurriedly from the west, arcing to the eastern horizon.

She resented it. She visualized some shadowy Russian officer, or some Pentagon bureaucrat, glancing at the image of their boat in a picture or on a TV screen and noting it ominously. Military or not, the satellite was man-made, an intrusion on their privacy, and the stars’.

The next day they saw their first and only ship, at high blazing noon. She called Mitch topside to look at it. They both waved innocently from the cockpit as it charged in from their port quarter. It was probably out of Panama for Aukland, New Zealand. A very conscientious gentleman, thought Lindy of the skipper, to race down to see that they were all right.

Mitch grew nervous as the ship approached. He studied it through his binoculars. Suddenly he dove for Irwin, releasing him and grabbing the wheel. “He’s got no fucking lookout,” he grated, coming right, “there’s no fucking watch, there’s nobody on the wing of the fucking bridge! He doesn’t see us!”

The ship was a giant freighter, with cargo containers stacked all the way to bridge height, fore and aft. It was throwing a bow wave as high as their mizzen, overtaking them at a good twenty knots. It crossed their bow, port to starboard, 200 yards ahead.

Only then did Mitch think of the CO2 horn. He groped in the lazarette, found it, and pressed the lever too late. The angry blast of it was lost in the chung-chung-chung of her screws.