I looked around the cabin. No-one was panicking. The locals slept through it, or unconcernedly bounced children on their laps. There was no announcement from the captain, other than to politely ask passengers to fasten their seatbelts and the cabin crew to ready the cabin for landing. Breathe. It was 10, perhaps 15 long minutes before something, anything, interrupted the monotony down below: an arc of white waves, kilometres long, broke not upon land but upon the ocean itself. Then, finally, Rodrigues, and its sleepy little airport at the western end of the island, came into view.