Summary
Part six begins with another repetition of the correspondent’s internal monologue. The narrator comments that, during such a depressing night, a man could reasonably conclude that the gods do intend to drown him after all, despite the injustice of making him work so hard to stay alive.
The narrator suggests that when a man realizes nature is indifferent to him, and that his life is insignificant, he wishes to engage in iconoclasm by throwing bricks at a temple. The man becomes particularly angry when there are no bricks nor temples around. But his mood may change and he will pray to a star in the sky. The narrator suggests that all the men on the boat have spiritual thoughts, but they only discuss matters pertaining to the boat.
The correspondent suddenly remembers a few lines of verse from “Bingen on the Rhine,” a poem by Caroline Norton. The poem is about a soldier dying on the battlefield in Algiers. The correspondent is familiar with the poem, but he had never felt sorrow for the soldier; now, he could picture the dying soldier in detail, and he felt sympathy for the soldier’s pain.
The shark that had been circling the boat goes away. The wind is still strong. The correspondent sees a fire on the shore. The captain wakes up and comments on the long night. They discuss the shark and the correspondent says he wishes he had known the captain had been awake. The correspondent trades place with Billie. The cold seawater and the space next to the cook is so comforting that he falls instantly asleep. The sleep seems to pass in a moment before Billie asks him to switch again.
The light in the north vanishes but the captain gives directions. The captain makes them move further out to calmer waters so that the two rowers can sleep simultaneously. The cook takes over; the shark returns. The boat drifts too close to shore for the cook to manage rowing, so he switches with the correspondent. The captain gives the correspondent whisky and water. Part six ends with the correspondent and Billie switching out yet again.
Part seven opens with the correspondent waking to a gray dawn. Soon the sun rises, its light resembling flames on the crests of the waves. The men scan the shore to see a windmill and cottages but no humans or animals. The captain determines that no help is on its way. They head for shore.
The correspondent thinks about the tall wind-tower, which represents to him the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual. At that moment, nature doesn’t seem cruel, but simply indifferent. With this perspective, he wonders if he would have made better choices in his life were he given another opportunity to live it. He wonders if he would have been friendlier.
The captain outlines the plan: get the boat as close to shore as they can before it swamps, and don’t jump ship to swim until the boat has definitely swamped. Billie takes over the oars and suggests that he turn the boat around and back them in: the boat will stay afloat longer with waves breaking toward the bow as opposed to the stern.
The waves get higher the closer they come to shallow water, but the men are not agitated or frightened. The correspondent is too exhausted to truly fear drowning: he thinks it would merely be a shame. The captain reminds them to jump clear of the boat when they abandon ship.
A tall foaming wave crests, spinning the boat sideways. Water rushes in over all sides. The captain commands the cook to bail the water out. Billie says the next wave will be the one to capsize them. It does, swallowing the dinghy as the men tumble into the sea. The correspondent holds in his left hand a piece of floatation belt.
The January water off the coast of Florida is colder than the correspondent expected. The cold water saddens him. He comes to the surface conscious of little more than the noisy waves. He sees Billie swimming strongly. The cook’s large back is floating, and the captain is holding onto the overturned boat. The correspondent paddles slowly to land with the life belt under his chest. The captain calls out to the cook, telling him to turn onto his back and use an oar to paddle. He does so, moving as if his body were a canoe.
As the men move toward shore, the correspondent is caught in a current. He wonders if he will drown and speculates that perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature. But a wave moves him out of the current and he makes progress again. He paddles over to grab the boat alongside the captain, reflecting that once a person grows weary from trying not to drown, to finally give yourself over to drowning must feel comfortable and relieving.
The correspondent sees a man running on the shore, quickly removing his clothes. As he reaches the boat, the correspondent is surprised when a wave sends him flying gymnastically over the hull. He lands in water that only comes up to his waist, only to be knocked over and pulled at by the undertow. The naked man runs into the water and drags the cook ashore. He heads next for the captain, who waves him off toward the correspondent.
The naked man appears to have a halo over his head. Just as he is about to heave the correspondent out, the man sees Billie lying facedown in the shallows, his forehead touching the sand between waves.
When the correspondent reaches safe ground, he falls to the sand with such exhaustion that it is as if he is falling from a roof. But he is grateful. The beach is full of men and women with blankets, clothes, coffee, and food. Amid this welcome scene, Billie’s dead body is carried dripping from the water. The story ends later that night: the narrator compares the wind to the sea’s voice; the men, now on shore, believe they can interpret what the voice says.
Analysis
Rowing alone while the other men sleep, the correspondent is alone with his thoughts. A fragment of the internal monologue addressed to the gods returns, suggesting that the correspondent is idly considering his mortality and man’s place in nature. In the dark and depressing night, he is more likely to believe the gods are not looking after his life and that they will be cruel enough to let him struggle for hours only to drown.
The correspondent battles with his thoughts; on one hand, he wishes to express his anger at nature’s indifference by throwing a brick at a temple—a way of rebelling against an institution that suggests the universe controls the fates of humans. But he may also become suddenly hopeful and turn to prayer: in the absence of any usual place of worship, the correspondent may also pray upon a star, personifying an inanimate object and turning it into a god.
He remembers an old poem about a dying soldier. Having been put through the trial of worrying for his life, the correspondent suddenly develops sorrow for the dying soldier. He finds his cynicism replaced by sympathy and understanding of human suffering.
When they point the boat toward shore, knowing that it will capsize, the correspondent sees the windmill and thinks about nature. The windmill, standing tall with its back “to the plight of the ants,” represents nature’s indifference. Whatever is happening to “the ants” (i.e. humans), the windmill stands resolute. The correspondent comes to a new conclusion about nature, deciding that it has no capacity to be treacherous or kind; nature is unconcerned with what happens to humans. This revelation leads the correspondent to reassess his life: he wonders if he would have been kinder to other people.
At the story’s climax, the narrator reveals that Billie has drowned. The situation is ironic: the cook is overweight, the captain injured, and the correspondent a simple reporter, while Billie is the strongest swimmer and most capable seaman.
Billie’s death illustrates the story’s overall thematic concern about nature’s indifference: even though Billie worked the hardest to row the boat, the universe does not reward him for his efforts. Rather, the exhaustion likely sealed his fate. The final lines continue the motif of personifying nature: the traumatized men who survived think of the wind as the sea’s voice.
