By the summer of 1928, the Pacific Command of the U.S. Navy had grown accustomed to assisting American flyboys on their harebrained adventures. After all, it was in the nation’s interest to promote aviation and thereby encourage the development of the world’s best airplanes and pilots; you never knew when another war might break out and such things would be required without delay. Last year there was the Dole Air Derby to Honolulu—what a circus that was—and before that you had several individual attempts to span the Pacific from San Francisco to Hawai’i, some of them foolhardy and some of them heroic, and some of them both at once. So the navy knew how to communicate with men in the air, and it knew how to fish them out of the water.

Tracking them down on some scrap of an island in the middle of the Pacific, now. That was a new one.

As it happened—and this should come as no surprise to those familiar with the pattern of threads linking just about every paid-up member of the American Anglo-Saxon aristocracy with all the others—Admiral John Smith, the officer in command of the South Pacific fleet in the middle of 1928, was an old friend of Mr. George Morrow, the two of them having prepped together at St. Paul’s in the first decade of the century. They had worked closely together in the arrangements for the landmark Mallory–Foster flight to Australia, and when the first garbled Morse code came through to the USS Farragut at 0323 local time on the morning of the second of August (something about an engine, possible detour) Admiral Smith immediately sent a relay on to Mr. Morrow, who had been delivered to Sydney by ocean liner a day earlier.

We can only imagine Mr. Morrow’s true feelings as he received this message in the middle of the Australian night, from the comfort of his hotel suite overlooking the harbor. History records only his official reply to Admiral Smith, which was sent nearly two hours later, sometime after Sam and Irene had landed on Howland Island:

COMMENCE SEARCH WITH ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCES STOP INFORM IMMEDIATELY OF ANY DEVELOPMENTS WHATSOEVER

It’s also worth noting that the Sydney Morning Herald had, during this period of time, somehow obtained the details of the accident and duly broke the news in its early edition, which carried the following headline:

PILOTS MISSING OVER PACIFIC!

Aircraft Disappears During the Night

U.S. Navy Sends All Available Ships in Search of Flying Pair

Possible Crash Landing at Sea; Rescue May Take Weeks

Australian Navy Gallantly Offers Assistance

The news electrified the world.

Back on Howland Island, the Flying Pair at the center of all these radio transmissions and newspaper headlines were busy unloading cargo from the fuselage of the Centauri, which was heating rapidly under the scorching sun. They made an inventory of supplies. There were five gallons of drinking water in a lightweight aluminum canister, specially designed by the Carnation milk company in exchange for promoting the many nutritional properties of Carnation condensed milk, of which they also carried a dozen cans. (Mr. Morrow had made this arrangement, of course.) Before their departure from Honolulu, the head chef of the Moana Hotel had personally prepared two dozen Hawaiian ham sandwiches, with his compliments. Sam and Irene, pausing for lunch, each ate one and pronounced it delicious. That’s some ham, Sam said, licking his fingers, and in fact this became the slogan for the Hawaiian Canned Ham Company after the whole affair was over, except that Irene’s photograph appeared in the first advertisement, tanned and smiling as she held up a sandwich. (The terms of this deal were also negotiated by Mr. Morrow, on Irene’s behalf.)

Beyond the water and the condensed milk and the sandwiches, there wasn’t much in the way of emergency supplies. Difficult decisions had had to be made as regards that all-important trade-off between comfort and weight, and once they’d committed to carrying a radio set equipped for both short-and long-range transmission, they’d had to sacrifice other items. Already they’d drunk the remaining coffee in the Thermos containers, which had turned lukewarm anyway. They had a bottle of concentrated lime juice, as recommended by an expert on diseases of nutritional deficiency; two pounds of chocolate, supplied by the Hershey Company; two pounds of powdered eggs; five pounds of ship’s biscuits, courtesy of the navy; and a can of peanut butter from the Pond Company, made according to a new process that churned the butter smooth and kept the oil from separating. Irene had never tasted peanut butter, but Sam said it was delicious, rich in protein and vitamins, a fine choice for emergency rations.

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Irene.

Sam shrugged and held out the tin to Sandy, who sniffed it delicately and thoroughly before lashing out her pink tongue for a sample. “Sandy likes it,” he said.

“That’s because she’s hungry.”

“You might be pretty hungry yourself in a few days.”

“In a few days, we’ll be on our way to Australia.”

Sam covered the tin of peanut butter and set it back in the food locker, which was made of the same lightweight aluminum as the water cans. “I certainly hope so,” he said.

“Hope so?”

Sam brushed a little sand from his clothes and stood and stretched. Sandy wound around his legs, sniffing for more peanut butter. Irene stared at his profile while he reached into his pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes—among their emergency rations were a dozen cartons of same—and lit himself up. He strolled to the beach, and Irene rose to follow him.

“Tell me something,” she said. “That race to Hawai’i last year. How long were you out there floating on the ocean, before they found you?”

“Eleven days.”

“Why’d it take so long? They knew where to find you, more or less.”

“Because it’s a big ocean, Irene. If they pick the wrong spot to look, why, you’re on your own. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Of course she knew that. It was just something you didn’t want to admit to yourself, didn’t want to think about when you were starting on your journey, deciding what to pack and what to leave behind, making all these plans and calculations. Now here they were. It wasn’t the worst that could have happened, not by a long shot. They were still alive and uninjured, except for a couple of scratches. They were on solid ground, a charted island known to mariners. Undoubtedly the navy was on its way to rescue them. It was all just a matter of staying alive! Irene folded her arms and stared at the reef, bubbling and frothing in the rising tide.

“Anyway,” said Sam, exhaling smoke, “at least we’ve got each other. We’re not alone. That’s something.”

The sun beat fiercely on the crown of Irene’s hat. Birds squawked overhead, looking for lunch inside the coral. Beyond the reef, the water was calm and blue without end, the horizon perfectly flat. Sam’s shoulder was round and sturdy next to hers.

“That’s everything,” she said.

Night fell suddenly, the way it does in the middle of the ocean. One minute they stared, stunned, at a monumental sunset, and the next minute they were sunk in darkness. Sam lit a cigarette that flared bright orange out of nowhere.

“Does it ever seem to you like an article of faith,” he said, “that we’ll see the old thing again tomorrow morning?”

Irene laughed. “That’s not very scientific.”

“There’s more to life than science, Foster.” He stretched and lay back in the sand. “Look at all those stars. You don’t see stars like that in Los Angeles.”

Irene lay back too. They’d spent the afternoon taking apart the right-hand engine, trying to find the source of the trouble, and she was tired enough to fall asleep right there, in the open air. Sam was right about the stars. They were dazzlingly profuse, a spill of diamond dust. Behind the crown of Irene’s head, the moon rose gracefully from the eastern horizon.

“What we need right now is a bottle of champagne,” said Sam. “There’s nothing like an ice-cold bottle of champagne on a beach at night.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t like to drink, on account of my father.”

“Aw, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s who you are, right? Your childhood and everything. That’s what the shrinks say, anyway.”

The smoke curled around the two of them. Until she met Sam, Irene had always disliked the smell of cigarette smoke. Now it was familiar and safe, the scent of Sam; not when he was flying, because he didn’t smoke when he flew, but when he was unwinding after. When he was unwound. After a moment of contemplation, he added, “You never had a drink? Not once?”

“Never.”

Sam put his hands behind his head and said, “Bertha drinks.”

Irene thought, Bertha? Who’s Bertha? Then she remembered.

“A lot?” she asked.

“You could say that. It’s hard to say how much. She hides it.”

“That’s a bad sign, hiding it.”