Deep blue ocean waters lapped against the bow of the tiny wooden lifeboat.

Inside laid a large blond man dressed in a dirty white shirt and tattered black pants, sleeping. A particularly large wave struck hard against his safe haven causing him to waken. He did so with an audible groan.

            Christopher Grissom sat up slowly wiping the gum from his eyes. He glanced up squinting at the giant cycloptic eye staring down at him, unrelenting, as it had for the five previous days.

            His water had given out three days before and he knew what that meant. He just preferred not to think about death, if that were possible.  

            For lack of much else left to do Grissom turned his mind back to the sinking of the Sandobar. It had been a nightmare. He could still hear the screams of the dying. They haunted him not just when he slept but in his waking world as well.

            The fire had been quick and harsh sparing none of the twenty crewmen, save Grissom, who had somehow fallen into the ship’s lone lifeboat. They had been taking cargo from England to South Carolina. This was to be his last voyage. Now, he lay in the tiny bit of humanity floating in the Atlantic. He felt like a fly in a coup bowl.

            He thought of his good fortune turned bad. Yes, he had survived, but now he would die a slow painful death.

            Grissom smiled making his swollen, chapped lips crack. He could taste blood in his mouth. He spat once.

            Gulls flew overhead calling to him waiting. He rose with the final fury of a man dying on the battlefield wanting so desperately to live.

            “Get away! Damn you! Get away! I’ll not die like some damned fish. Do you hear me you bastards!” The gulls flew higher.