Anyway, she says, I guess you heard enough of my palaver. Listen to me, Im doin enough jawing for the both of us. Enough jawing for the both of us get it?

She laughs at her joke, and her laughter trails off as she stands and brushes the sand off her palms and looks out over the water to the mainland. Then she walks up to a stand of palm trees above the beach and looks in the grassy undergrowth, stomping around with her feet until she finds what shes looking for. Its a big rock, bigger than a football. It takes her half an hour to dig around it with a stick and extract it from the earth. Nature doesnt like to be tinkered with.

Then she carries the rock back down to the beach where the man is lying mostly still.

When he sees her, he comes to life again and begins squirming and shuddering and guggling his throat.

Anyway, she says to him, youre the first one that got here. That counts, I guess. It makes you like Christopher Columbus or something. But this tide and all you wanna bet theres more of you coming? You wanna bet theres all your slug friends on their way? Thats a pretty safe bet, Id say.

She nods and looks out over the shoal again.

Okay then, she says, lifting the rock up over her head and bringing it down on his face with a thick wet crunch.

The arms are still moving, but she knows that happens for a while afterwards sometimes. She lifts the rock again and brings it down on the head twice more just to make sure.

Then she leaves the rock where it is, like a headstone, and goes down to her fishing net and finds a medium-sized fish in it and takes the fish back up to the lighthouse where she cooks it over a fire and eats it with salt and pepper.

Then she climbs the steps to the top of the tower and goes out on the catwalk and looks far off towards the mainland.

She kneels down and puts her chin against the cold metal railing and says:

I reckon its time to move along again.

Two

THAT NIGHT, by firelight, she removes from the hatch in the floor the things she stowed there when she first arrived. The cooler, the canteen, the pistol with two good rounds left in it. Later, she takes the gurkha knife and the pocket stone down to the beach and sits on the sand whetting the edge of it in long smooth strokes. She takes her time with this, sitting there under the moon for the better part of an hour, until she can taste the sharpness of the blade with her tongue. Its a good blade, a foot long with an inward curve to it. It whistles when she swings it through the air.