the elements allowed me to go on living. the lifeboat didnot sink. richard parker kept out of sight. the sharks prowledbut did not lunge. the waves splashed me but did not pull meoff.

i watched the ship as it disappeared with much burbling andbelching. lights flickered and went out. i looked about for myfamily, for survivors, for another lifeboat, for anything thatmight bring me hope. there was nothing. only rain, maraudingwaves of black ocean and the flotsam of tragedy.

the darkness melted away from the sky. the rain stopped.

i could not stay in the position i was in forever. i was cold.

my neck was sore from holding up my head and from all thecraning i had been doing. my back hurt from leaning againstthe lifebuoy. and i needed to be higher up if i were to seeother lifeboats.

i inched my way along the oar till my feet were against thebow of the boat. i had to proceed with extreme caution. myguess was that richard parker was on the floor of the lifeboatbeneath the tarpaulin, his back to me, facing the zebra, whichhe had no doubt killed by now. of the five senses, tigers relythe most on their sight. their eyesight is very keen, especiallyin detecting motion. their hearing is good. their smell isaverage. i mean compared to other animals, of course. next torichard parker, i was deaf, blind and nose-dead. but at themoment he could not see me, and in my wet condition couldprobably not smell me, and what with the whistling of the windand the hissing of the sea as waves broke, if i were careful,he would not hear me. i had a chance so long as he did notsense me. if he did, he would kill me right away. could heburst through the tarpaulin, i wondered.

fear and reason fought over the answer. fear said yes. hewas a fierce, 450-pound carnivore. each of his claws was assharp as a knife. reason said no. the tarpaulin was sturdycanvas, not a japanese paper wall. i had landed upon it froma height. richard parker could shred it with his claws with alittle time and effort, but he couldn't pop through it like ajack-in-the-box. and he had not seen me. since he had notseen me, he had no reason to claw his way through it.

i slid along the oar. i brought both my legs to one side ofthe oar and placed my feet on the gunnel. the gunnel is thetop edge of a boat, the rim if you want. i moved a little moretill my legs were on the boat. i kept my eyes fixed on thehorizon of the tarpaulin. any second i expected to see richardparker rising up and coming for me. several times i had fits offearful trembling. precisely where i wanted to be most still –my legs – was where i trembled most. my legs drummedupon the tarpaulin. a more obvious rapping on richardparker's door couldn't be imagined. the trembling spread tomy arms and it was all i could do to hold on. each fit passed.

when enough of my body was on the boat i pulled myselfup. i looked beyond the end of the tarpaulin. i was surprisedto see that the zebra was still alive. it lay near the stern,where it had fallen, listless, but its stomach was still pantingand its eyes were still moving, expressing terror. it was on itsside, facing me, its head and neck awkwardly propped againstthe boat's side bench. it had badly broken a rear leg. theangle of it was completely unnatural. bone protruded throughskin and there was bleeding. only its slim front legs had asemblance of normal position. they were bent and neatlytucked against its twisted torso. from time to time the zebrashook its head and barked and snorted. otherwise it layquietly.

it was a lovely animal. its wet markings glowed brightly whiteand intensely black. i was so eaten up by anxiety that icouldn't dwell on it; still, in passing, as a faint afterthought, thequeer, clean, artistic boldness of its design and the fineness ofits head struck me. of greater significance to me was thestrange fact that richard parker had not killed it. in thenormal course of things he should have killed the zebra. that'swhat predators do: they kill prey. in the present circumstances,where richard parker would be under tremendous mentalstrain, fear should have brought out an exceptional level ofaggression. the zebra should have been properly butchered.

the reason behind its spared life was revealed shortly. itfroze my blood – and then brought a slight measure of relief.

a head appeared beyond the end of the tarpaulin. it looked atme in a direct, frightened way, ducked under, appeared again,ducked under again, appeared once more, disappeared a lasttime. it was the bear-like, balding-looking head of a spottedhyena. our zoo had a clan of six, two dominant females andfour subordinate males. they were supposed to be going tominnesota. the one here was a male. i recognized it by itsright ear, which was badly torn, its healed jagged edgetestimony to old violence. now i understood why richardparker had not killed the zebra: he was no longer aboard.

there couldn't be both a hyena and a tiger in such a smallspace. he must have fallen off the tarpaulin and drowned.

i had to explain to myself how a hyena had come to be onthe lifeboat. i doubted hyenas were capable of swimming inopen seas. i concluded that it must have been on board allalong, hiding under the tarpaulin, and that i hadn't noticed itwhen i landed with a bounce. i realized something else: thehyena was the reason those sailors had thrown me into thelifeboat. they weren't trying to save my life. that was the lastof their concerns. they were using me as fodder. they werehoping that the hyena would attack me and that somehow iwould get rid of it and make the boat safe for them, nomatter if it cost me my life. now i knew what they werepointing at so furiously just before the zebra appeared.

i never thought that finding myself confined in a small spacewith a spotted hyena would be good news, but there you go.

in fact, the good news was double: if it weren't for this hyena,the sailors wouldn't have thrown me into the lifeboat and iwould have stayed on the ship and i surely would havedrowned; and if i had to share quarters with a wild animal,better the upfront ferocity of a dog than the power and stealthof a cat. i breathed the smallest sigh of relief. as aprecautionary measure i moved onto the oar. i sat astride it,on the rounded edge of the speared lifebuoy, my left footagainst the tip of the prow, my right foot on the gunnel. itwas comfortable enough and i was facing the boat.

i looked about. nothing but sea and sky. the same whenwe were at the top of a swell. the sea briefly imitated everyland feature – every hill, every valley, every plain. acceleratedgeotectonics. around the world in eighty swells. but nowhere onit could i find my family. things floated in the water but nonethat brought me hope. i could see no other lifeboats.

the weather was changing rapidly. the sea, so immense, sobreathtakingly immense, was settling into a smooth and steadymotion, with the waves at heel; the wind was softening to atuneful breeze; fluffy, radiantly white clouds were beginning tolight up in a vast fathomless dome of delicate pale blue. it wasthe dawn of a beautiful day in the pacific ocean. my shirt wasalready beginning to dry. the night had vanished as quickly asthe ship.

i began to wait. my thoughts swung wildly. i was eitherfixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed bypain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands at myhead.