When she went overboard the ship was sinking into the soft waters of the south Pacific. She slipped into the water in her lifejacket and cocktail dress and swam north of westward underneath strange subequatorial stars she didn’t know. The lights remained out on the ship, and there were no alarms; her sabotage had so far escaped notice. She had spotted an island north by northwest yesterday, bright green and hazy through the humid air, and it was for this spit of land that she made. After thirty minutes she turned and watched the cruiser, now riding quite low in the water, and still dark and silent. Would they never wake up? Would they pass into the salt sea dreaming, unconcerned, unknowing? She chewed her lip and bobbed in the water. A light flickered on high and forward, then another, and another, then, more slowly, over the water came the noise of tumult and distress. She folded herself into the water and tugged and tore at her dress and let it drift down with the ship. She sighted on the weird but constant stars and set out swimming again.