The Raft

Robie continues to cling to the side of the raft as it bobs through the nighttime’s stormy ocean. She gets sick several times and eventually falls asleep, waking again when it is morning. It is cold, and her clothes remain soaked. She removes her socks. She looks around the raft:

The raft was bright yellow and six sided. Max’s head lolled on the side of the raft and, with knees curled and arms crossed, he seemed to be sleeping. In that position he looked like a little boy. Some kind of yellow ditty bag was attached to his arm with a bracelet of blue bungee cord (50).

Shortly after noticing Max’s ditty bag, Robie finds another bag in the raft. This is a yellow and blue bag attached to the inside of the raft. It’s labeled COASTAL COMMANDER. While it doesn’t contain the bottled water she is hoping for, it does contain four flares, a little yellow cup, a small square mirror, a flashlight, a sponge, seasick tablets, and a first aid kit. Robie, who doesn’t know how she can benefit from this stuff, complains: “How stupid to make a survival kit that didn’t actually help you survive” (51).

She tries to talk to Max again, and though he is still unconscious and unresponsive, she thanks him for saving her life, before admitting to the reader that she is freezing cold, and also has to pee. 

Robie starts talking to herself, for comfort. She feels ambivalent about Max waking up, worried that he remains upset about Larry, and that she truly doesn’t know him, but also hoping that he will take charge of the situation and help with a plan.

She is glad he is unconscious to the extent that it gives her privacy when she pees off the edge of the raft. As she figures out how to do this, she expresses a bit of levity for the first time since the crash. Later, when the sun comes out, she expresses not only a sense of humor, but genuine happiness.

When the raft starts to fill with a bit of water, she uses the cup from the Coastal Commander bag to bail it out.

Worried that Max will be getting chilled and sick with his wet clothes, she starts to peel off his outer layers, only to get sheepish. She says, “I shook my head to clear it, and tried to take on the mental tone of a caregiver” (55). She proceeds to get his shirt off, and notices that he is wearing an oblong silver pendant on a black chord. The pendant is engraved with the impression of a thumbprint on each side, one larger, and one smaller. She also notices a long scar down the side of his body.

She turns her attention back to her own clothes, and gradually works to get them dry, while also remembering stories she’d heard about people surviving in rafts. While this initially buoys her mood, it also brings up anxieties. She thinks of threats like dehydration, madness, and sharks. She fixates on the sharks most of all, describing a memory of witnessing one eat an albatross. She says that tiger sharks are “the true monsters of the sea” (59). After indulging in this train of thought, she cannot fall asleep.