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face.
    Cohn ascended the escarpment, practically a walk-up. From a terraced enclosure like a small balcony two-thirds of the way up, he paused for a view of the woodsy neighborhood—the rain forest, a wall of steaming vegetation in the west moving north; and toward east a sparser woodland of flowering trees and thick-grassed fields extending to the southern shore of the island, lined with varieties of wild palm.
    From the left side of the escarpment, which looked like a fortress from the shore, a waterfall resembling a horse’s bushy tail fell, forming a foaming pool where it hit the rocky ground. The pool overflowed into a downward sloping savanna, beyond which the rain forest grew over a section of hills to the northern sea, where Cohn and Buz had landed on a coral reef.
    After this initially unsettling yet engrossing view of his domain, Cohn’s disposition improved.
    He set to work diligently clearing the anterior, and smaller, of the two caves, carrying out shovel loads of black mud; he tore out armfuls of entangled dead vines; and hauled buckets of rocks and wet sand. Cohn unearthed two stone ledges, one along the rear of the cave where it opened into the larger cavern; the other an almost rounded table of sandstone extending from the left wall as one entered the cave, an all-purpose work platform on which he figured he would prepare food, assemble and repair objects he might need; and on which he could build cooking fires.

    The cave, surely eighteen feet high, ten broad, and twenty feet deep, showed no high-water line of the Flood. That appeared on the face of the escarpment about thirty feet up. Despite the humid heat Cohn lit a fire to bake out the cave. He had dragged in a quantity of lumber, transported with great difficulty from the reef—a pile of boards of mixed woods and lengths that he managed to fit under the long rock ledge; and in a week he set to work constructing a wall of shelves ten feet by twelve high and wide, and two deep, where he stored his possessions, such as they were, and would keep whatever else he might collect. It occurred to Cohn he seemed to be assuming a future, for better or worse.
    Using the fine tools he had carted along from the oceanographic vessel, which included a surveyor’s telescope, he built himself a rough small table, sturdy cot, and a primitive rocker with water-barrel staves; then Cohn constructed an outside hut not far from a small stand of white acacia trees about thirty feet from the cave. The hut was walled with split saplings on three sides, and the fourth was left open because he liked to look at a grassy, wooded area that sloped to the sea.
    His hut was covered with a bamboo roof insulated from the heat by a thatch of palm fronds interwoven with strips of bark. When Cohn tired of the cave—his bedroom, kitchen, and living area—he sat in the hut, more like an open porch and revery room. There he had strung up a canvas hammock he had made from a sail, where he often lay, reflecting on his lonely fate.
    Can I call this a life?

    Better than death.
    Why bother?
    “Because I breathe.”
    When the humidity grew intolerable he rested in the cool cave, lit at night by a kerosene lamp. He considered constructing a gate across the oval opening, but why get involved if there were no inconvenient animals around? And gate or no gate the Lord knew where he lived, if He felt like dropping in to talk with His little mistake.
     
    A week or two after his arrival on the island Cohn was struck by a nauseating illness, felt ghastly, headachy to the pits of his eyes, shivered feverishly. He vomited continuously though he ate nothing to vomit. Cohn sweated; he stank. He lost hair in dreadful quantities; it fell from his head as he lay on the floor on an old overcoat. He lost his short brown beard, chest and pubic hair, every bit on his body.
    Cohn guessed he was afflicted by radiation poisoning, or had been affected—perhaps in addition—by excessive bursts of X-rays trespassing