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by dropping briefly over the side every few hours while the others kept a sharp eye' out for sharks. The cooling sensation generated by lying in wet clothes under the shade of the boat cover helped fight the misery of dehydration as well as the torment of sunburn. It also helped to dissolve the coating of salt that rapidly accumulated on their bodies.
The elements made Pitt's job of navigating fairly simple. The westerly winds out of the Roaring Forties were carrying them east. The current cooperated and flowed in the same direction. For determining his approximate position, a rough estimate at best, he relied on the sun and stars while using a cross-staff he'd fashioned of two slivers of wood cut from the paddle.
The cross-shaft was a method of determining latitude devised by ancient mariners. With one end of the shaft held to the eye, a crosspiece was calibrated by sliding it back and forth until one end fit exactly between either the sun or star and the horizon. The angle of latitude was then read on notches carved on the stag. Once the angle was established, the mariner was able by crude reckoning to establish a rough latitude without published tables for reference. To determine his longitude-in Pitt's case, how far east they were being driven-was another matter.
The night sky blazed with stars that became glittering points on a celestial compass that revolved from east to west. After a few nights of fixing their positions, Pitt was able to record a rudimentary log by inscribing his calculations on one end of the nylon boat cover with a small pencil Maeve had fortuitously discovered stuffed under a buoyancy tube. His primary obstacle was that he was not as familiar with the stars and constellations this far south as he was with the ones found north of the equator, and he had to grope his way.
The light boat was sensitive to the wind's touch and often swept over the water as if it were under sail.
He measured their speed by tossing one of his rubber-soled sneakers in front of the boat that was tied to a five-meter line. Then he counted the seconds it took the boat to pass the shoe, pulling it from the water before it drifted astern. He discovered that they were being pushed along by the westerly wind at a little under three kilometers an hour. By rigging the nylon boat cover as a sail and using the paddle as a short mast, he found they could increase their speed to five kilometers, or an easy pace if they could have stepped out of the boat and walked alongside.
"Here we are drifting rudderless like jetsam and flotsam over the great sea of life," Giordino muttered through salt-caked lips. "Now all we have to do is figure out a way to steer this thing."
"Say no more," said Pitt, using the screwdriver to remove the hinges on a fiberglass seat that covered a storage compartment. In less than a minute, he held up the rectangular lid, which was about the same size and shape as a cupboard door. "Every move a picture."
"How do you plan to attach it?" asked Maeve, becoming immune to Pitt's continuing display of inventiveness.
"By using the hinges on the remaining seats and attaching them to the lid, I can screw it to the transom that held the outboard motor so that it can swing back and forth. Then by attaching two ropes to the upper end, we can operate it the same as any rudder on a ship or airplane. It's called making the world a better place to live."
"You've done it," Giordino said stoically. "Artistic license, elementary logic, idle living, sex appeal, it's all there."
Pitt looked at Maeve and smiled. "The great thing about Al is that he is almost totally theatrical."
"So now that we've got a particle of control, great navigator, what's our heading?"
"That's up to the lady," said Pitt. "She's more familiar with these waters than we are."
"If we head straight north," Maeve answered, "we might make Tasmania."
Pitt shook his head and gestured at the makeshift sail. "We're not rigged to sail under a beam wind.
Because of our flat bottom, we'd be blown five times as far east as north. Making landfall on the southern tip of New Zealand is a possibility but a remote one. We'll have to compromise by setting the sail to head slightly north of east, say a heading of seventy-five degrees on my trusty Boy Scout compass."
"The farther north the better," she said, holding her arms around her breasts for warmth. "The nights are too cold this far south."
"Do you know if there are landfalls on that course?" Giordino asked Maeve.
"Not many," she answered flatly. "The islands that lie south of New Zealand are few and far apart. We could easily pass between them without sighting one, especially at night."
They may be our only hope." Pitt held the compass in his hand and studied the needle. "Do you recall their approximate whereabouts?"
"Stewart Island just below the South Island. Then come the Snares, the Auckland Islands, and nine hundred kilometers farther south are the Macquaries."
"Stewart is the only one that sounds vaguely familiar," said Pitt thoughtfully.
"Macquarie, you won't care for." Maeve gave an instinctive shiver. "The only inhabitants are penguins, and it often snows."
"It must be swept by colder currents out of the Antarctic." '
"Miss any one of them and it's open sea all the way to South America," Giordino said discouragingly.
Pitt shielded his eyes and scanned the empty sky. "If the cold nights don't get us, without rain we'll dehydrate long before we step onto a sandy beach. Our best approach is to keep heading toward the southern islands in hopes of hitting one. You might call it putting all our eggs in several baskets to lower the odds."
"Then we make a stab for the Macquaries," said Giordino.
"They're our best hope," Pitt agreed.
With Giordino's able help, Pitt soon set the sail for a slight tack on a magnetic compass bearing of seventy-five degrees. The rudimentary rudder worked so well that they were able to increase their heading to nearly sixty degrees. Buoyed by the realization that they had a tiny grip on their destiny, they felt a slight optimism begin to emerge, heightened by Giordino's sudden announcement.
