Free Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez

something in which to catch it. It was what landlubbers call a night that isn’t fit for a dog. At sea, it should be called a night that isn’t fit for a shark.
    After nine, an icy wind began to blow. I tried to escape it by lying in the bottom of the raft, but that didn’t work. The chill penetrated to the marrow of my bones. I had to put my shirt and shoes back on and resign myself to the fact that the rain would take me by surprise and I wouldn’t have anything to collect it in. The waves were more powerful than they’d been on February 28, the day of the accident. The raft was like an eggshell on the choppy, dirty sea. I couldn’t sleep. I had submerged myself in the raft up to my neck because the wind was even icier than the water was. I kept shuddering. At one point I thought I could no longer endure the cold and I tried doing exercises to warm up. But I was too weak. I had to cling tightly to the side to keep from being thrown into the sea by the powerful waves. I rested my head on the oar that had been demolished by the shark. The others lay at the bottom of the raft.
    Before midnight the gale got worse, the sky grew dense and turned a deep gray, the air became more humid, and not a single drop of rain fell. But just after midnight an enormous wave—as big as the one that had swept over the deck of the destroyer—lifted the raft like a banana peel, upended it, and in a fraction of a second turned it upside down.
    I only realized what had happened when I found myself in the water, swimming toward the surface as I had on the afternoon of the accident. I swam frantically, reached the surface, and then thought I would die of shock: I could notsee the raft. I saw the enormous black waves over my head and I remembered Luis Rengifo—strong, a good swimmer, well fed—who hadn’t been able to reach the raft from only two meters away. I had become disoriented and was looking in the wrong direction. But behind me, about a meter away, the raft appeared, battered by the waves. I reached it in two strokes. You can swim two strokes in two seconds, but those two seconds can feel like eternity. I was so terrified that in one leap I found myself panting and dripping in the bottom of the raft. My heart was throbbing in my chest and I couldn’t breathe.
My lucky star
    I had no quarrel with my luck. If the raft had overturned at five o’clock in the evening, the sharks would have torn me to pieces. But at midnight they’re quiet. And even more so when the sea is stirred up.
    When I sat down in the raft again, I was clutching the oar that the shark had demolished. Everything had happened so quickly that all my movements had been instinctive. Later I remembered that when I fell in the water the oar hit my head and I grabbed it when I began to sink. It was the only oar left on the raft. The others had disappeared.
    So as not to lose even this small stick, half destroyed by the shark, I tied it securely with a loose rope from the mesh flooring. The sea was still raging. This time I had been lucky. If the raft overturned again, I might not be able to reach it. With that in mind, I undid my belt and lashed myself to the mesh floor.
    The waves crashed over the side. The raft danced on the turbulent sea, but I was secure, tied to the ropes by my belt. The oar was also secure. As I worked to ensure that the raft wouldn’t overturn again, I realized I had nearly lost my shirt and shoes. If I hadn’t been so cold, they would have been at the bottom of the raft, together with the other two oars, when it overturned.
    It’s perfectly normal for a raft to overturn in rough seas. The vessel is made of cork and covered with water-proof fabric painted white. But the bottom isn’t rigid; it hangs from the cork frame like a basket. If the raft turns over in the water, the bottom immediately returns to its normal position. The only danger is in losing the raft. For that reason, I figured that as long as I was tied to it, the raft could turn