Sorry awakens at sunset and walks toward the barrier reef with a spear. After backing away from a large hak guarding its nest, he spears a blacktail snapper and eats some of it raw. At twilight, he studies his magazine again, wondering why people with advanced machinery cannot live peacefully.

After dark, he waits for the near-full moon to rise so he can hunt lobsters on the shallow inner reef shelf. He spears 11—one for each family on Bikini—and secures them in a tide pool for the morning, satisfied to have completed the coming-of-age tradition as his father had.

He senses August’s presence nearby and, recalling his grandmother Yolo’s stories about Micronesian demons and spirits, believes August remains present on the island and reflects that the war caused his death. Overcome with grief, he weeps for August and then for his father until he falls asleep.

At dawn, he sees a lone Laysan albatross fly past and moan. Remembering Jonjen’s story that such a sound preceded a devastating typhoon long ago, he interprets it as a warning that something terrible is going to happen to the atoll.

When Sorry returns to Bikini, he tells Jonjen about the moaning albatross. Jonjen says it is not a good omen, and links it to a past typhoon that flooded the island and forced everyone up into the palms, describing it as a warning from God, while Sorry’s mother offers a different explanation. Other families gather to see what Sorry brought back from Nantil; Chief Juda will divide the items, except for a wooden chair Sorry’s family will keep.

A month later the rainy season arrives, bringing needed rain after a period of limited water, followed by a large storm with unusual thunder and lightning and strong winds that shake the dwellings and fill the cisterns. The rainy season ends in November without a typhoon, and no storm like the earlier one occurs that year.

Two months after the albatross sighting, Sorry’s uncle Abram Makaoliej unexpectedly sails into the lagoon, having traveled alone from Eniwetok, 170 miles away. He had deserted an American merchant ship there and taken a canoe. Jonjen summons the village with his conch to welcome him, as he had long been presumed dead. When Abram learns that Badina, Sorry’s father, died years earlier while spearing along the reef, he embraces Sorry’s mother and says that Badina was a good man. When he hears that seven Japanese soldiers had been on the island, he regrets not being there to kill them himself. Sorry’s mother says she is glad he was not—none of them would be alive.

Abram insists on wearing a loincloth instead of Western clothing. That night the village holds a feast; he plays guitar and flirts, and everyone dances. Sorry notices a large scar on Abram’s side and resolves to ask about it. Tara watches Abram with clear interest. Abram also speaks English.

The next morning, Abram dives naked into the lagoon, forgetting the missionary-imposed rule that men must bathe on the ocean side. After proposing that he and Sorry hunt for a shark the next day, he walks the island alone to revisit his memories.

Sorry’s mother then reveals that fifteen years earlier, Abram speared a tiger shark off the Rojkora barrier reef, became entangled in the harpoon line, and was dragged underwater. He cut the line with his knife, but the shark attacked him and left the scar on his side. Abram has been waiting ever since to settle the score. Sorry wonders if the same tiger shark might still be there.

Despite his mother’s warning, Sorry insists on going with Abram, and she reluctantly agrees, with Tara also expressing cautious agreement. Sorry teases Tara about her interest in Abram, and she laughs and admits he is handsome.

Sorry and Abram sail south to the Rojkora barrier reef to hunt the tiger shark. As they travel, Abram sharpens the steel head of Badina’s favorite harpoon and tells Sorry about surviving a torpedo attack that killed most of his crew. Disillusioned with the outside world, he has come home to live out his life on the island. He warns Sorry that the Americans may give gifts but could also take away the land.

At Rojkora, Sorry rattles coconut shells against the canoe to draw sharks. An enormous tiger shark—at least fourteen or fifteen feet long—rises beside them. Abram recognizes it as the same one and can see his old spearhead still embedded in its back. He stands poised to strike but, after a long moment, lowers the harpoon. The shark has carried the spearhead with honor all these years, he explains; they are now even. Sorry does not understand the decision.

On the sail home, Abram asks about Tara, and Sorry tells him everything he knows. Back on Bikini, Sorry’s mother confides her fear that Abram has come home to die—she has seen him carrying a large bottle of pills from London and says he carries a smaller bottle in his pocket—and asks Sorry to say nothing.

Over a year after his return, Abram has repaired the Japanese radio in the barracks and translates the daily English-language news from Kwajalein for the village each evening.

One evening in August, Abram is visibly shaken by a broadcast reporting that the Americans have dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, destroying the entire city and killing thousands almost instantly. He struggles to comprehend how a single bomb could cause such devastation. At the council place, he relays the news to the assembled villagers. Later, Sorry asks Tara if the Americans are happy about so many deaths; she explains that war is personal. Abram notes that Marshallese people also died when Americans attacked various atolls, and Jonjen laments that old hand-to-hand combat was better than bomb warfare. That night, Sorry has nightmares about the explosion and wakes up screaming.

Three days later, Abram reports that a second atom bomb has been dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 140,000 people. On August 14, he announces Japan’s surrender, and the villager’s cheer. The world war is over.