babe with the knockers. She was the one seen him.’ This called forth a chorus of whistles, universal gestures, and cries of ‘Mamma mia!’ and ‘Sweet Jesus!’

‘All right, all right, that’ll do!’ Lind’s voice, though good-humored, cut through the ribaldry with a parade-ground authority that brought silence.

It all seemed to Goddard to be coming from far away through a dreamlike and winy haze compounded of total exhaustion and the euphoria of alcohol and tobacco. He drew on a pair of shorts, took one more long drag on the cigarette, and reached toward the tray of food. ‘There’s a woman aboard?’ he asked.

‘Two,’ Lind said. ‘It was Mrs. Brooke that sighted you. We’re a real gung-ho crowd on here; with a radar and a crew of thirty-eight, we find out from the passengers what’s going on.’

Goddard drained the glass of milk and put it down with elaborate care. He’d never been this drunk in his life. For an instant he was back there on the raft watching the ship draw away from him in the night, and it started to come for him. Gripping the pipe railing of the bunk so they couldn’t take it away from him, he looked up at the big mate with profound solemnity.

‘Eternal vigilance,’ he said, ‘is the watchword of the successful passenger, Mr. Lind. Suppose I’d swum over to a ship that didn’t carry any?’

He pitched forward. Lind caught him and stretched him out on the bunk.

* * *

He was aboard the raft in a kidney-shaped pool swinging the Jack Daniels bottle at a succession of sharks hurtling out of the water at him while a nude but faceless woman suntanned on a mattress at the pool’s edge, watching boredly and murmuring an occasional and indifferent olé. He awoke, thrashing and shiny with sweat. It was daylight, and heat was stifling inside the room. He saw the pipe bunks and blue bedspreads, and for a moment he was transported back across a quarter century and it was the fo’c’sle of the old Shoshone and he was an ordinary seaman again. He remembered then where he was—except, he thought sardonically, he didn’t know where he was, or even where he was going. Nobody had told him the name of the ship or where she was bound.

In effect, he mused, he was reborn, as innocent of information and at the moment as schooner-rigged as the standard day-old infant. He had on a pair of shorts somebody had given him and a Rolex watch as a legacy from the previous avatar that by all logic had ended when the ship started to go off and leave him in the night, and that was about it. He glanced at the watch. It said nine eighteen, which was the local apparent time of his longitude the day the Shoshone had gone down, and wouldn’t necessarily agree with the ship’s time, but it should be within an hour. Almost at the same moment he heard three bells strike. He set the watch to nine thirty; chronologically at least, he was now meshed with his new existence.

He was conscious of being ravenously hungry, and sat up, wondering if they had left the tray of food. Vertigo assailed him The faintness and black spots passed in a moment, and he saw there was a bowl of fruit on the desk. He quickly peeled and ate two bananas and then an apple, and lighted a cigarette. He could get a complete hot breakfast simply by opening the door and letting them know he was awake, but he wanted to be alone a few minutes longer. It wasn’t every day you were reborn, and he’d like to examine the phenomenon. Of course, sitting here he wasn’t going to find out where he was bound, but that was unimportant; he found he didn’t care in the slightest.

The cigarette was making him light-headed again. Traditionally, he thought, life was supposed to take on some deep and newfound significance now that it had been given back to him. If it weren’t already in the script, somebody would bring it up at the first conference. I’m just spit-balling, fellas, but to me right here is the turning point for Liebfraumilch—we gotta find a better name for him, let’s make a note of that—not just some penny-ante resolution he’s gonna stop knocking back the sauce with both hands and screwing everything in sight, but I mean, you know, something big. Of course, he’s too old for the Peace Corps, unless