Galapagos

Adolf drunkenly steers the Bahia de Darwin out to sea. The ship is believed to have been destroyed in place of the Columbian freighter, so the vessel is now a “ghost ship” (123). The narrator explains that he’s the ghost aboard the ghost ship—Leon Trout, a deserter from the US Marines who found asylum in Sweden and worked as a welder in a shipyard. He was killed when a falling piece of metal cut off his head while he worked on the Bahia de Darwin. He’s invisible but has the power to materialize; he did this once, during the crossing from Sweden to Ecuador, leading to the rumor that the ship is haunted. Leon watches Adolf pilot the ship. Mary comforts the dying Wait, while the other passengers sleep. Adolf, still convinced that the supposed shooting stars are meteorites, steers the ship in increasingly chaotic directions until they’re thoroughly lost. Mary remembers the day she met Roy, when they were hiking through a national park.

Wait interrupts Mary’s memory by proposing marriage again; he has spent much of their journey “proposing marriage intermittently” (126) and Mary tries to comfort him as best she can. She still believes that he’s named Mr.