Otis starts from Manila on a short cruise that turns into weeks and months as his sloop sails further and further into the Pacific Ocean. He is somewhere east of Fiji when he passes through the barrier reef of an island he doesn't know the name of because he doesn't have a chart. He has left a lot behind and now he thinks only of sailing home. But the island he has arrived at won't let him leave, not until he finds out what happened on the Far Atoll.