18

The following week Walter Selby boarded a transport ship bound south for the Gilbert Islands. Riding on the back of the giant grey-green ocean he waited patiently to die, to be cut in half by a shard of metal come whistling down from the empty sky, to be thrust upward on a column of fire, to tumble overboard and drown in the deep—not so much because he deserved it as because he was out of moral luck. Instead, the seas turned gradually blue, the islands appeared, the gorgeous jungles, coral reefs, a lagoon, a beach; forward and forward, under the palms and pandanus and in the event, he discovered how clever he was at killing men, and he killed every man he could.