Sea water was gushing in through unseen fractures in the hull. The flood quickly reached where Spoder was trapped, pouring with terrifying pressure around his head and over his face, surging around his chest. He struggled to be free of the bodies holding him down, but everyone around him was doing the same. They were trying to lunge upwards in the total darkness, fighting for air. An instinct made Spoder force his way in the opposite direction, down through the flailing limbs and the icy water. He slipped through a thicket of unseen kicking legs. He was swallowing the salty sea water, feeling as if he was inhaling it. Terrified, choking and spluttering, he was suddenly able to work himself free of the others. Still in absolute darkness he dragged himself and waded further away: the sounds of distress behind him were horrendous.

A glimmer of light ahead! Spoder pulled himself towards it. He was still floundering in freezing cold sea water up to his waist, sometimes deeper, clambering over the bodies of many others. The shouting was less now, as the water continued to flood in. After a long struggle Spoder saw the source of the light: one of the bulkhead hatches, firmly locked throughout the voyage, had burst open under the stress of the ship’s crashing halt. When he finally staggered up to it he saw a metal staircase beside it, a ship’s steep ladder, but because of the list it was now almost horizontal. He worked his way along it, emerging unexpectedly into brilliant sunlight. Because of the extreme list the outer deck was vertical, a wall, and when he let go of the final rung he slithered down, crashing against various pieces of deck equipment, and immediately plunged shockingly into the sea.

The wreck had already attracted a small fleet of rescuers, an ad hoc flotilla of small boats and yachts. After ten minutes trying to stay afloat, every breath feeling as if it was his last, Spoder was hauled from the water by the people in one of the boats. Within half an hour, he and four other young conscripts, also dragged in a wretched state from the sea, were taken ashore.

Spoder spent five days and nights being cared for by a couple who lived on a farm in the hills, away from the sea. The island against whose rocky shallows the troopship had crashed was called Nelquay, in the temperate zone north of the equator. For the time being the island would be safe from the escouades of military police sent to search for conscripts who had survived the wreck, but they would inevitably arrive in force in the near future. There were ways he could avoid being captured. The people caring for him said he would be given all the help and advice he needed.