All have stepped up sea and air patrols as well as garrisoning isolated atolls and floating patrol bases.

Grating rumbles carried through the shattered window-fromwar engines that had somehow crossed the broad Pacific undetected, all the way to this rich, isolated atoll.

It flew westward to Johnston Island, an isolated atoll in the South Pacific, a federal bird refuge that now served as a nuclear test site.

Details about their health and their 1,600 km (1,020 mile) drift were not immediately available from the isolated atoll.