Sea

On the 12th day the remaining members of the boat discuss the sudden storm that had come upon them after Nina’s conversation with the stranger:

‘Do you think he created that rain?’ Yannis whispered. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Lambert said. ‘We still don’t know how he survived in the ocean,’ Geri said. ‘He got lucky. So what?’ ‘He gets hungry and thirsty like we do,’ I said. ‘And he sleeps,’ Yannis added. ‘Why would God sleep?’ (102).

Meanwhile Nevin’s condition continues to worsen, and he asks Benji to write a note to his children, telling them that he is sorry for not being a better father.

Shortly after this exchange, Benji records that Nevin has died. While some try to offer a few words of remembrance, the stranger breaks in and begins to speak: “Did he love others […] Did he tend to the poor? Was he humble in his actions? Did he love me?” (110). Lambert however is repulsed by the stranger’s continued self-referential speech about his own divinity.

The next day Benji records a dream he had the night before, a dream where he saw all the passengers from the sunken ship greeting him, asking where he had been. Upon waking he begins to reflect on his own death and the seeming impossibility of it. The stranger seems to sense that he is in contemplation, and speaks to him about his mortality, assuring Benji that he will always be there for him. Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is going, Benji tells the stranger to leave him alone.

Land

LeFleur returns home late that night and is confronted by his wife, wondering about what happened that day and why he had left so abruptly that morning. Their conversation is terse, and LeFleur stays up late that night. Under cover of watching a soccer game, he instead retrieves the notebook he had brought home and begins to read further along in the story. While reading the phone rings, it is a reporter from The Miami Herald asking questions about the boat that washed up on shore. LeFleur refuses to give any information and hangs up the phone.

Sea

Finally able to begin laying out his secrets, Benji admits in the diary to knowing what happened to the Galaxy. He relates that it was in fact his friend Dobby that blew up the ship in a quest for justice and revenge against the rich and powerful on the boat who never did anything to help anyone else. “They think they can gather like lords of the planet,” Dobby tells him, “decide what’s good for the rest of us” (119). Dobby had made his way onto the boat as one of the workers and had brought along an explosive mine. Knowing that they would both die along with everyone else, Dobby was willing to go through with the plan anyway. In the diary, Benji admits that even though he did not actively help, he did nothing to stop Dobby either.

Benji continues to write in the diary, contemplating the meaning of salvation and wondering what the stranger is really there to do, and who he really might be. For the first time the castaways actually spot a bird and manage to capture it and kill it for food. Benji is the one who manages to capture the bird but breaks down into tears when he sees it killed.

Benji next records in his diary several days later, telling Annabelle in the diary that he has not had the strength or heart to do so recently. They had butchered and eaten the bird raw, the only way they could. Benji notices that Nina and Yannis comfort one another gently, and he thinks about Annabelle and what she meant to him. His thoughts drift back over the course of his life: Born in Ireland, he came to America as a young boy when his mother—who raised him on her own, as Benji never knew his father—brought him to live with her sister in Boston. Her mother planned to find his father in America and confront him, but she was rejected. Having seen his mother lose love, he remarks that he had always looked for love and finally found it in Annabelle.

Land

LeFleur’s wife Patrice asks who had called on the phone, and LeFleur finally admits what he found that day on the beach. Naturally, his wife realizes that the ship had sunk over a year ago and asks who had made it into the raft.

LeFleur left the house the next morning already planning on when to find time to read more of the diary. Arriving at the police station he is met by the police commissioner who wants to talk about the life raft and what it might mean, having also brought along a man who had worked for Jason Lambert, the owner of the missing yacht.

News

The next installment of memorial pieces investigates the life of Yannis Papadapulous, a Greek businessman who had attended Princeton. Successful and known as a kind of international playboy, he had eventually been elected to the Greek parliament and had become heavily involved in global politics, eventually helping to drag Greece out of its financial crisis.