Pincher Martin by William Golding

flapped away and immediately a glossy picture swept the blue sky and the stone out of sight. This was a bright patch, sometimes like a figure eight lying on its side and sometimes a circle. The circle was filled with blue sea where gulls were wheeling and settling and loving to eat and fight. He felt the swing of the ship under him, sensed the bleak stillness and silence that settled on the bridge as the destroyer slid by the thing floating in the water—a thing, humble and abused and still, among the fighting beaks, an instrument of pleasure.
    He struggled out into the sun, stood up and cried flatly in the great air.
    “I am awake!”
    Dense blue with white flecks and diamond flashes. Foam, flowering abundantly round the three rocks.
    He turned away from the night.
    “Today is a thinking day.”
    He undressed quickly to his trousers and sweater, spread his clothing in the sun and went down to the Red Lion. The tide was so low that mussels were in sight by the ship load.
    Mussels were food but one soon tired of them. He wondered for a moment whether he should collect some sweets but his stomach did not entertain the idea. He thought of chocolate instead and the silver paper came into his mind. He sat there, chewing mechanically while his mind’s eye watched silver, flashing bright.
    “After all, I may be rescued today.”
    He examined the thought and found that the whole idea was neutral as the mussels had become, harsh and negative as the fresh water. He climbed to the water-hole and crawled in. The red deposit lay in a band nearly two inches wide at the nearer edge.
    He cried out in the echoing hole.
    “It will rain again!”
    Proof of identity.
    “I must measure this pool. I must ration myself. I must force water to come to me if necessary. I must have water.”
    A well. Boring through rock. A dew pond. Line with clay and straw. Precipitation. Education. Intelligence.
    He reached out his hand and prodded down with the finger. When his hand had submerged to the knuckles his finger-tip met slime and slid. Then rock. He took a deep breath. There was darker water farther on under the window.
    “A fool would waste water by crawling forward, washing this end about just to see how much there is left. But I won’t. I’ll wait and crawl forward as the water shrinks. And before that there will be rain.”
    He went quickly to his clothes, took out the silver paper and the string and climbed back to the Dwarf.
    He frowned at the Dwarf and began to talk into the blotting-paper.
    “East or west is useless. If convoys appear in either of those quarters they would be moving towards the rock anyway. But they may appear to the south, or less likely, to the north. But the sun does not shine from the north. South is the best bet, then.”
    He took the Dwarf’s head off and laid the stone carefully on the Look-out. He knelt down and smoothed the silver paper until the sheet gleamed under his hand. He forced the foil to lie smoothly against the head and bound it in place with the string. He put the silver head back on the Dwarf, went to the southern end of the Look-out and stared at the blank face. The sun bounced at him from the paper. He bent his knees until he was looking into the paper at eye-level and still he saw a distorted sun. He shuffled round in such arc as the southern end of the Look-out would allow and still he saw the sun. He took the silver head off the Dwarf again, polished the silver on his seaboot stockings and put it back. The sun winked at him. There stood on the Look-out a veritable man and one who carried a flashing signal on his shoulders.
    “I shall be rescued today.”
    He fortified and deepened the meaningless statement with three steps of a dance but stopped with a grimace.
    “My feet!”
    He sat down and leaned against the Dwarf on the south side.
    Today is a thinking day.
    “I haven’t done so badly.”
    He altered the arch over his window with a frown.
    “Ideally of course, the stone should be a