Part 6 Summary

The men do not share their dire thoughts with each other, but think it would be awfully cruel of nature to let them die when they have worked so hard to stay alive. The correspondent thinks of a story he read once of a Legionnaire dying in Algiers. At the time, it meant nothing to him, but now, while he recalls it, it seems heart wrenching in its sadness and futility.

The correspondent spots a watch fire on the beach, and he keeps an eye on it until the captain tells him to take the boat a little further out to sea. The oiler replaces the correspondent on the rowing seat, and the correspondent drops into the soggy boat and falls asleep. After a while, the captain tells the cook to try the makeshift sail again, so that the oiler and the correspondent...