As in:
When Ben finally awoke it was daylight, he was flat on his back in the sand, and he was shaded by a small palm and a thickly leafed tree of a kind he’d never seen before but which someone else might recognize as wax myrtle. But you could just add that to the longer list of things he didn’t know.
The main thing he didn’t know is just what a preposterous miracle it was that Ventine du Marques had come along to rescue him.
Forty eight hours earlier, it was Ventine who was close to death. He’d fled Haiti in his motorized canoe two weeks earlier determined to reach Miami, or die at sea, and he’d come very, very close to getting his second choice. He’d run out of water before he ran out of petrol, or dried fish, and for this he’d made landfall on an uninhabited island in the upper keys to try to resolve his thirst with coconut milk. This had worked so long as there were coconuts, at least enough to revive him, and now he’d gone back out to sea, in search of a new way to Miami, and a fresh fish or two, when he’d motored precisely into Ben. Under the circumstances, Ventine thought to himself, it was better luck to encounter a barely floating American, than it was to land a good sized snapper.
Ben also didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious. Nor did he know that Ventine spoke only French fluently. He certainly didn’t know what had become of The Bluefin and Charisse. It was as though he’d changed planets, or worlds at least. The only things he recognized in his surroundings was the sound of seagulls and the feel of a warm breeze against his face.
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