Wasn’t there any way she could make them believe it? The captain had reached into a box below the bridge railing and lifted out a pair of binoculars. “Back there!” she cried out again, gesturing. “He was in the path of the moonlight! I heard him shout!”

The captain searched the area with the glasses. He lowered them and said, in the tone of one indulging a child, “It was probably a piece of dunnage, Mrs. Brooke. Or some weed.”

“Captain, I’m not an idiot, and I’m not drunk! It was a man! Wouldn’t he show on the radar?”

“Not on our radar.” It was the chief mate, who had emerged from the wheelhouse. He spoke to the captain. “Maybe she did see something. We’d better take a look.” Before the captain could reply, he stepped past them and lifted a life ring from its brackets on the rear railing of the bridge. It was attached to a canister. He ripped the canister loose from its supports and threw the whole thing over the side. Karen heard it splash in the water below them, and in a moment a torchlike flame appeared, lighting up the surface of the sea as it began to drop astern. The chief mate turned and called out to the helmsman inside the wheelhouse. “Hard left!”

“Mr. Lind!” the captain said angrily, drowning out the helmsman’s reply. It was obvious even to Karen that Lind had vastly exceeded his authority, since it wasn’t his watch and the captain was on the bridge besides, but the big man was completely at ease.

He winked at Karen. “Cap, it’ll cost us ten minutes to find out. If there’s nobody there, I’ll buy the company a new life ring, and Mrs. Brooke will give a cocktail party.”

The ship was already beginning to swing. The captain started to countermand the order, then shrugged and remained silent. Karen sighed with relief as she retreated from the bridge where she had no business. Lind, she thought, was something of a man.

And with a mocking and reckless sense of humor that could have wrecked it, she added to herself, thinking of the “cocktail party.” Captain Steen was a Baptist, a teetotaler, and a dedicated crusader against alcohol. She crossed to the port side of the boat deck where she could continue to watch the flare after they completed the turn, trying to sort out her reactions to the odd fact that she had probably saved a man’s life. What was that old Chinese belief? That if you saved somebody’s life you had meddled in his destiny and you were responsible for him from then on?

Goddard saw the flame blossom on the surface of the sea, and collapsed, shaking all over and too weak to do anything for a moment. He saw the ship begin to swing in her hard-over turn, circling to come back through the area, and when he had his breath back he slipped over the side again and began to push the raft toward the circle of light, some two hundred yards away. By the time he came up to it the ship had already reached the limit of her opposite course and was turning toward him again. He stopped in the edge of the illuminated area with the raft between the flare and the oncoming ship so he would be silhouetted against it, and climbed back aboard. He waved, knowing they would have their glasses on the light and would have seen him by now. Lying on his back, he fought his way into the soggy dungarees. He sat up, drank the last of the water in the bottle, and waited.

The ship came on.