The Stranger in the Lifeboat

Sea

Benji realizes that Jean wrote him a farewell note in his diary while he slept. He had caught a giant fish and left it in the boat before he disappeared. Reading this, Benji breaks down and weeps. He tries to ask the stranger why he had not stopped Jean from going overboard:

‘How could you let him take his life? Why didn’t you talk him out of it?’ He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Why didn’t you?’ I began shaking with rage. ‘Me? I couldn’t! I didn’t know! It was something he decided to do on his own!’ ‘That’s right,’ the Lord said, softly. ‘He decided to do it on his own’ (163).

Some point later the survivors see a plane for the first time since they were stranded at sea, but it is far too high to notice them. Lambert, however, refuses to believe this and abandon any hope, so he grabs for the flare gun in their meager pile of supplies and launches a flare into the air. The rest of the group prevent him from wasting any more flares as the plane disappears.

Benji relates how he has thus far failed to mention anything in particular about the little girl they had picked up, who had not spoken a single word the entire time. He relates how at this point he is far more disturbed by the thought of her death than even of his own. At this point, however, they have eaten all of Jean Philippe’s fish and drank almost all of their water. The extreme thirst has even recently driven Lambert to begin drinking seawater.

In the following pages of the diary Benji relates how there are now only two of them left; death has consumed almost the entire group.

Land

LeFleur and the commissioner drive back from the beach where they had picked up the raft and were taking it back to the station. By now it was three hours past when LeFleur had planned to meet Rom, and he contemplates the fact that at some point in the near future he will have more explaining to do. Pulling up to the station he is met by his secretary, Katrina, who tells him hurriedly that the man he had been waiting for, Rom, has disappeared.

Three days go by with no sign of Rom; with reporters hounding LeFleur and the police station, his commissioner is proved right in figuring that this story would very quickly explode with interest. So far LeFleur has still managed to keep the diary from the raft a secret, but it wracks him with anxiety:

His knotted stomach confirmed that he was breaking the rules—the strict ones of police protocol, and the unwritten ones of a trusting marriage. But the notebook had narcotized him. He fell into a spell when he read it, and he needed to know how it ended (177).

Later in the evening LeFleur goes to a local bar to think when a stranger also enters the bar, whom LeFleur immediately notices is not a local. When LeFleur leaves he notices that the stranger has followed. Stopping in the street to confront him, LeFleur demands to know who the man is. The stranger explains exactly why he has been following him: “‘I knew someone. On the Galaxy. He was my cousin.’ The man exhaled deeply. ‘My name is Dobby’” (180).

News

Ever since the sinking of the Galaxy there had been no news, but that has now changed. It is reported that a life raft from the yacht has been found washed ashore on the small island of Montserrat in the Caribbean, nearly two thousand miles from the site of the yacht’s disappearance. So far, nothing else has been discovered and foul play is not suspected, but the investigation is ongoing.

Sea

By only Benji and Alice remain, but Benji makes sure to relate just how that occurred. Lambert had taken to drinking the seawater and with this, severe dehydration and delirium had set in. At a certain point he loses all control and begins to threaten the other castaways, grabbing a knife and standing over the stranger. Convinced everyone else is a threat, he screams but the stranger stands and attempts to calm Lambert. Furious at the stranger who has not been any help, Lambert “whipped himself backward, his arm outstretched, and slashed the knife across the Lord’s neck” (187).

Immediately after, Lambert picks up Alice and throws her into the water. Geri dives in after the little girl and, at the same time, Lambert lunges for Benji. Benji ducks out of the way leaving Lambert to fall into the water. Feeling a final prick of sympathy, Benji dives into the water after Lambert, but he isn’t strong enough to make it back to the raft with Lambert, who sinks beneath the waves and drifts away. With a final burst of strength Benji is able to haul himself back into the boat just in time to help Geri lift Alice back into the boat as well. Before he can help Geri back into the boat, however, she is viciously attacked by two sharks and is killed.

Benji stares in horror, clutching Alice to himself as he realizes that they had never escaped the sharks at all, they had simply been waiting. Crying out, Benji realizes that they are now all alone. “‘They’re all gone, Alice! Even the Lord.’ Which is when the little girl finally spoke. ‘I am the Lord,’ she said. ‘And I will never leave you’” (192).

Land

Confronted with the man from the diary, LeFleur is taken aback. The man calling himself Dobby explains that his cousin Benjamin had been a deckhand on the Galaxy and was hoping now that he could find out more information since the lifeboat had been found. LeFleur tells him that there was nothing on or in the boat, but he wants to see if he can find out more about this man Dobby, so he invites him back to his home for supper.

At home, LeFleur sits at the dinner table with Dobby and his wife Patrice. LeFleur asks Dobby several questions, trying to walk a fine line between getting as much information as possible without making the man suspicious. Without realizing how, his wife and the stranger began to discuss their daughter Lilly, who died when she was four. After dinner LeFleur drops Dobby off at the guesthouse where he is staying but decides to stay out in the car to keep watch; as he sits in the car, he thinks about his wife and daughter and the tragedies they endured.

After the death of his daughter, Patrice had clung to her faith, but he had lost his:

There was no comfort in invisible forces, not for LeFleur. There was only what got put in front of you and how you dealt with it. Which is why this notebook had so engrossed him—and at times frustrated him. A group of shipwrecked people think they have God in the boat? Why not pin Him down? Hold Him accountable for all the horrors He allowed in this world? LeFleur would have (201).

When LeFleur read through the diary, he stopped when he got to the point where Alice finally spoke. Realizing that it was his late daughter’s birthday, LeFleur retrieves a small stuffed animal from the trunk of his car that had once been hers and breaks down into tears.

The next morning LeFleur takes Dobby on a trip; telling Dobby they are going to the ocean. LeFleur drives them both to a deserted part of the island to confront him. Making an excuse to stop in an abandoned church, LeFleur confronts Dobby about his role in the Galaxy’s sinking.

News

With the breaking news of finding a lifeboat from the Galaxy, demands to renew the search for the missing vessel begin to surface. Lambert’s former investment firm, Sextant Capital, announces that it will mount a search mission in order to attempt to find the remains of the ship on the ocean floor.