“Hey!” a voice called out.

We turned around to see a man jogging toward us.

“You do not know me,” he said in a thick accent.

I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was.

“My name is Hans. It was my wife and baby who were in the tree.” His English was excellent but there was an unmistakable German accent.

“Oh, of course!” my father said. “I’ve seen you around the compound. In all the confusion I didn’t recognize you. I just couldn’t put it together.”

“I was not here,” Hans said. “I was up on the street.”

That would explain why his clothes were dry. He hadn’t gone through the flood.

“When I heard, I raced back—I was not far—and then to find my wife and son…” He started to cry.

“How are they doing?” my father asked.

“Fine. Good. Scared, but alive…because of you two. My wife told me everything.”

I wondered how he felt about us yanking her out of the tree against her will.

“You saved them.”

“They might have been fine without us,” my father said.

“She told me the tree was washed away, that she would have drowned.”

“We just did what had to be done. If it hadn’t been us it would have been somebody else.”

“But it was not somebody else. It was you and your son.”

He threw his arms around my father and hugged him and then did the same with me.

“If ever I can help…I do not know how such a thing could be repaid.”

“I’m just glad we could be there. Your thank-you is more than enough,” my father said.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “Here, you must take this.” He held out a card. “This is my name and my company. You must call, you must come to Germany as my guest.”

“That’s very generous, but you don’t have to—”

“No, I insist.” He pressed the card into my father’s hand. “Please, now I must go back. My wife, I need to take her and my son to see a doctor…just to be safe.” He paused. “I owe you everything.”

He hugged my father and me again and then he hurried off.

“Sort of makes me feel pretty small to be worried about our lost luggage,” my father said.

“Or an iPod,” I added.

“Those things can all be replaced. I’m just hoping that our passports are still there. It’ll all be harder with-out them.”

The entire beach was now above water. We trudged along the deep sand toward our bungalow.

“What do you think caused it?” I asked.

“Something probably happened under water, like a landslide or an earthquake.”

“I didn’t feel any earthquake.”

“It could have happened a long way from here. We probably won’t know much until we turn on CNN or—” He stopped and spun around. “Your sister is going to hear about this. We have to get to a phone and call her as soon as possible. What time is it?”