She turned back to the window. Ingram returned to the co-pilot’s seat. He unrolled the chart, penciled a mark on it where their course intersected the hundred-fathom curve, and set a clip-board in his lap.

As they came over the drop-off, Avery banked in a gentle right turn, steadied up on the new course, and checked the time. “Two-seven-oh,” he said. “Ten twenty-six.”

“Right.” Ingram wrote the figures on the pad attached to the clip-board without looking down as his eyes continued their search of the surrounding sea—ahead, starboard, out to the horizon, and below. The wind was out of the southeast with a light sea running, dotting the surface with random whitecaps that winked and were gone, but as far as the eye could see there was only emptiness. Fifteen minutes went by. They banked to the right and headed due north. Ingram noted the time and course. At the end of seven minutes they turned right again. “Ninety degrees,” Avery called out as they steadied up. They were now flying back parallel to their first course and approximately ten miles north of it. Between changes of course, no one spoke. Avery flew mechanically while he searched the sector to port along with Mrs. Osborne. They came in over the Bank, turned north again, and then west once more. There was no sign of life, no craft of any kind, anywhere in the emptiness below them.

An hour dragged by. An hour and a half. They came up to and passed the area where the dinghy had been found. His leg began to bother him, and his eyes ached from staring. Once they sighted a small dot far to the westward and changed course with sudden hope. It was a commercial fishing boat over the Cay Sal Bank on the opposite side of the Channel. They picked up the pattern again, and went on, twenty-five miles west, ten miles north, twenty-five east, and then north again, squinting against the sunlit water below them and straining to pierce the haze of distance far out on the horizon. At 12:15 p.m., Avery made a last check of the fuel gauges, and said, “That’s it for now.” They flew back to Nassau and re-fueled.

They took off again, made the long run down across Andros and the Bank once more, and were back in the search pattern shortly after three. It was almost hopeless now, Ingram thought. They were already north of where the dinghy had been picked up, and working farther away from the area all the time. They went on, not speaking, eyes glued to the emptiness below and on all sides of them.

At 4:35 p.m. they were on an eastward leg. As they came in over the edge of the Bank, Avery checked the time and the remaining fuel, and said, “Best make the next leg a short one. Only about thirty minutes before we have to start back.”

Ingram nodded.