The Drowned World

Riggs and his men pacify the situation. By the following morning, Strangman and the freebooters have been disarmed and placed under Macready’s watch. Riggs had suspected that Strangman was present, he tells Kerans, so he ordered his men to turn around, as he was concerned for Kerans, Beatrice, and Bodkin. When he asks about Bodkin, Kerans realizes that he has “callously” forgotten about the deceased scientist (178). He has not forgotten, however, about the desire to go south, a desire seemingly shared by Hardman and Bodkin.

Riggs explains to Kerans that he cannot arrest Strangman because the freebooters can claim that they were protecting themselves against Bodkin and his bomb. Nevertheless, Riggs is well aware that Strangman is a “nasty piece of work” (179). Even so, he may still receive a reward for managing to drain the lagoon. Had Strangman killed Kerans, he might have claimed that Kerans was working with Bodkin. Kerans is confused as to why Riggs is being so tolerant toward the pirates. The gulf between himself and Riggs, he feels, is widening. Kerans explains that Strangman is like “a white devil out of a voodoo cult” (180), which is why he is so shocked that Riggs plans to turn him free. Riggs is astonished by Kerans’s presumption that the lagoon will be flooded again. He has no such plans, he explains, as reclaiming cities like London is “a Class A1 priority” (180). Having shown the capacity to drain lagoons, Riggs explains, Strangman may even be elevated to the position of governor-general. Kerans is horrified. The lagoon must be flooded again, he claims, regardless of the law. The revealed streets are nightmarish, Kerans says; they belong to a world that is “dead and finished” (180). Strangman has done little more than try to resurrect a corpse. Riggs says that he will leave the following day. Strangman will stay behind. When Riggs remarks on Kerans’s luck that he returned just in time, Kerans responds that Riggs returned “too late” (181).

Strangman throws another party. As it is underway, Kerans listens to the distant sounds from an office two stories above the freebooters. Riggs and his men have joined Strangman’s party, with Strangman having agreed to stay in the lagoon at least until Riggs’s departure. Kerans appears at the party briefly, though he remains apart from Strangman. He cannot hide his revulsion for the pirate, who seems to him like “a decaying vampire glutted with evil and horror” (183). Kerans stares out beyond the lagoon. He feels drawn to the south, to the heat and the submerged lagoons that are located near the equator. Going down to a balcony, he observes the gigantic bank of silt that has piled up beside the terrace railings. He leaps over the railings and breaks into a sprint, running until he reaches a loose flagstone. Kerans has spent the day searching for this; he correctly believed that Bodkin had left behind a hidden stash. Beneath the flagstone, Kerans finds the six sticks of dynamite.

Kerans lights the fuse of the dynamite as he hears the helicopter’s engines starting up. He places the explosives, at which point he is spotted by Macready. The sergeant shouts at him to back away and then shoots Kerans in the leg. Kerans urges Macready to leave, as the dynamite will soon explode. His words are drowned out by the sound of the helicopter. Limping on his injured leg, Kerans counts down the remaining time as he jumps over the terrace. The dynamite explodes. The water begins to flood back into the drained lagoon, filling the empty streets and collapsing the buildings. Riggs shouts for Kerans, who pulls his gun out and fires at Riggs. As Riggs ducks behind cover, Beatrice sees Kerans and runs toward him, urging him to flee before Riggs arrives. As he watches the water with satisfaction, Kerans asks Beatrice to apologize to Riggs on his behalf. He plans to travel to the south “towards the sun” (187), and he knows that she cannot go with him. Nevertheless, he promises to keep her in his heart. Kerans hugs Beatrice and then runs for the silt bank, leaping out of the way of Riggs’s gunfire. He pulls his catamaran free and into the water, sailing away as he looks back at the lagoon a final time. Beatrice waves to him until he can no longer see her. All he can see are the giant letters, painted by the freebooters on the side of a building. The words read “Time Zone” (188).

The catamaran drifts south as Kerans tends to his wounded leg. He swallows a morphine pill that puts him to sleep. When he wakes up the next day, a helicopter is above him. The people on the helicopter are shooting at the island below them. Kerans guides the catamaran beneath a tree and watches. Every 30 minutes, the helicopter reappears. Kerans can see that Riggs is aboard, studying everything below. Eventually, the helicopter leaves and does not return. Kerans paddles south, “pursued by strange visions” (189).

The following day, the temperature falls as storm clouds gather above. Kerans sails south until he reaches shore. Feeling exhausted, Kerans slips into sleep. When he wakes, he disassembles the boat and goes ashore with his limited supplies. In the south, any evidence of human presence is increasingly swallowed by sea, silt, sand dunes, and jungle. For three days, Kerans travels through the “phantasmagoric forest” (192). He barely stops to sleep, even though his leg aches. He finds the ruins of a temple and tries to shelter inside from the storm. That night, he hears a faint, inhuman cry that could be an injured animal. Behind the altar, Kerans finds a man. He is emaciated and burned to the point that Kerans assumes he must be dead. Above them, the pulsing sunlight filters through the cracks in the temple roof. The man is shouting at the sunlight, Kerans realizes. The man’s eyes are “almost completely occluded by corneal cancers” (194), so he can likely see nothing but the light of the sun. The man senses Keran nearby and asks for help. He wants Kerans to help him follow the sun, opening up his hand to reveal a compass just like those back on Riggs’s base. Kerans suddenly understands: The man is Lieutenant Hardman, though the conditions have made him almost unrecognizable. Kerans identifies himself to Hardman and urges him to rest. Not acknowledging Kerans’s identity, Hardman begins to rest. Kerans constructs a ramshackle shelter around Hardman to keep him safe from the rain.

Over the next three days, Kerans stays with Hardman. He sprays penicillin into Hardman’s eyes and feeds him berries. Hardman cannot remember Kerans; he refers to him simply as “Soldier” (196). After three days, Hardman has recovered. Kerans is not surprised when Hardman vanishes in the night, though he wonders whether he will see him again as they both travel south. For two more days, Kerans stays in the temple just in case Hardman might return. When Hardman does not return, Kerans prepares to resume his journey. He has no medical supplies left; he has only two bullets for his gun and a bag of berries for sustenance. Kerans uses his watch as a compass and makes a notch in his belt as each day passes.

The increase in temperature tells Kerans that he has journeyed more than 150 miles to the south. Hardman will die soon, he believes, and Kerans himself might not be able to survive in the jungles that await him. He reflects on the events that brought him to this place and that set him “upon his Neuronic odyssey” (198). Kerans thinks of Beatrice and Strangman as well. Before he leaves the temple, Kerans carves a message into the wall. He has been traveling for 27 days, he writes, and he will continue south. After a few days of this journey, he becomes lost in the jungle. As he searches for the lagoons, bats and alligators attack him. He has become “a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn sun” (198).