about?”

We sold the zoo, lock, stock and barrel. To a new country, a new life. Besides ensuring our

collection of a happy future, the transaction would pay for our immigration and leave us with a

good sum to make a fresh start in Canada (though now, when I think of it, the sum is laughable-how blinded we are by money).”

and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw

something in the water.

I cried, “Richard Parker, is that you? It’s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop! Richard

Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!”

sight. The sharks prowled but did not lunge. The waves splashed me but did not pull me off.

I watched the ship as it disappeared with much burbling and belching. Lights flickered and

went out. I looked about for my family, for survivors, for another lifeboat, for anything that might

bring me hope. There was nothing. Only rain, marauding waves of black ocean and the flotsam of

tragedy."

quarters all day. It put its front legs on the zebra’s side, reached over and gathered a fold of skin in

its jaws. It pulled roughly. A strip of hide came off the zebra’s belly like gift-wrap paper comes off

a gift, in a smooth-edged swath, only silently, in the way of tearing skin, and with greater resistance.

Immediately blood poured forth like a river.

through my weakened system, bringing me a new lease on life, also brought me the strength to see

how desperate my situation was. I awoke to the reality of Richard Parker. There was a tiger in the

lifeboat. I could hardly believe it, yet I knew I had to. And I had to save myself.”

body lay on the floor of the boat. Richard Parker had amply supped on him, including on his face,

so that I never saw who my brother was. His eviscerated torso, with its broken ribs curving up like

the frame of a ship, looked like a miniature version of the lifeboat, such was its blood-drenched and

horrifying state."

heavy. I heard thunder far away. I thought it would stay at that. But a wind came up, throwing the

rain this way and that. Right after, a white splinter came crashing down from the sky, puncturing the

water. It was some distance from the lifeboat, but the effect was perfectly visible. The water was

shot through with what looked like white roots; briefly, a great celestial tree stood in the ocean. I

had never imagined such a thing possible, lightning striking the sea. The clap of thunder was

tremendous. The flash of light was incredibly vivid."

I fell overboard.

The combined shock of solid land and cool water gave me the strength to pull myself forward

onto the island. I babbled incoherent thanks to God and collapsed.

But I could not stay still. I was too excited. I attempted to get to my feet. Blood rushed away

from my head. The ground shook violently. A dizzying blindness overcame me. I thought I would

faint. I steadied myself. All I seemed able to do was pant. I managed to sit up.

“Richard Parker! Land! Land! We are saved!” I shouted.

The smell of vegetation was extraordinarily strong. As for the greenness, it was so fresh and

soothing that strength and comfort seemed to be physically pouring into my system through my

eyes.

What was this strange, tubular seaweed, so intricately entangled? Was it edible? It seemed to

be a variety of marine algae, but quite rigid, far more so than normal algae. The feel of it in the hand

was wet and as of something crunchy. I pulled at it. Strands of it broke off without too much effort.

In cross-section it consisted of two concentric walls: the wet, slightly rough outer wall, so vibrantly

green, and an inner wall midway between the outer wall and the core of the algae.

search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this

murderous island. I filled my stores with fresh water and I drank like a camel. I ate algae throughout

the day until my stomach could take no more. I killed and skinned as many meerkats as would fit in

the locker and on the floor of the lifeboat. I reaped dead fish from the ponds. With the hatchet I

hacked off a large mass of algae and worked a rope through it, which I tied to the boat."

happy about it. We had great difficulty landing. The lifeboat nearly capsized in the surf. I streamed

the sea anchors–what was left of them–full open to keep us perpendicular to the waves, and I

tripped them as soon as we began riding a crest. In this way, streaming and tripping the anchors, we

surfed in to shore. It was dangerous. But we caught one wave at just the right point and it carried us

a great distance, past the high, collapsing walls of water.