In his own oblique way, Smith is helping a woman who received a message in a bottle. He arranges for a man named Smith to be shanghaied on the boat she has chartered to track down the author of the message. His idea is to escort the woman secretly because her crew is what's known as motley, ethically. The boat reaches an island where an exiled general has gone nutty and rules a few bewildered natives and castaways. Smith's client said she was looking for her lost husband, but she knows the general too. And she notes with interest that the general emptied his country's treasury on his way out. She thinks the island emperor needs a consort. Some think the island needs a regime change. Smith thinks everyone needs a jailbreak. In the end, Smith philosophizes that few searchers have the good fortune to learn that there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow-and adds that, of course, every rainbow has two ends.