All Alone In The Tropics

All Alone In The Tropics 

When the Maribel went down, it did so with dignity.

The storm had been large and scary with violet lightning splitting the sky, rain lashing the deck like thrown pearls, Captain Alejandro Vargas shouting commands no one could hear over the wind. The ship groaned, tilted, and surrendered to the sea as though fainting. By dawn, five survivors washed ashore on a strip of blinding white sand somewhere in the indifferent blue of the tropics. They lay scattered. 

The island was extremely beautiful. Palm trees arched in welcoming curves. The water glittered in shallow aquamarine sheets. Parrots shrieked from the canopy as if gossiping about the newcomers. A waterfall shimmered in the near distance, decorative as a stage prop. It was not the sort of place one was stranded in. It was the sort of place one escaped in. Captain Alejandro was the first to stand. His once pristine uniform clung to him in damp ruin, epaulets torn, and dignity barely intact. 

“We are alive,” he declared hoarsely, as though announcing a toast at a wedding.

Beside him, Elena Marquez coughed delicately into her hand. She had been the ship’s lounge singer, hired for her voice and rumored to be kept for her beauty. Even drenched and shivering, she appeared framed by natural lighting.

“Alive,” she echoed. “But for what?”

Marcus Reed, the ship’s engineer, was already examining driftwood with concentration. “For survival,” he said. “Water first. Then shelter.”

He spoke as though reading from a manual, though his eyes flickered, just once, toward Elena. The others were less composed.

Thomas Hale, a wealthy passenger with a talent for ruinous investments, paced the shoreline in disbelief. “There must be shipping lanes,” he insisted. “Someone will notice. They always do.”

And finally, Isla Navarro,deckhand, twenty-two, with salt perpetually in her hair and defiance permanently in her posture, stood knee deep in the surf, staring at the horizon as if daring it to apologize.

“No one’s coming today,” she said calmly.

They built shelter from palm fronds and broken planks. Marcus fashioned a crude spear. Isla climbed trees with enviable agility to retrieve coconuts. The Captain organized them into watches no one strictly obeyed. They survived but more than surviving, they talked. At dusk, when the sky turned into shades of peach and wine, they gathered near the waterfall and recounted their former lives with increasing embellishment. Thomas spoke of penthouses and champagne, of betrayal by a brother whose name he spat like a curse. 

“He said I lacked vision,” Thomas hissed one evening, staring into the fire Marcus had built. “But I had vision. It was loyalty I lacked.”

“Loyalty is overrated,” Isla said coolly. “It keeps you tied to sinking ships.”

The Captain flinched. Elena sang, softly at first, then louder. Her voice floated across the lagoon.

“I was going to leave the Maribel in San Juan,” she confessed one night, eyes glistening. “There was someone waiting.”

“Someone?” Marcus asked too quickly.

She looked at him with deliberate gentleness. “Yes.”

Jealousy bloomed like a tropical flower, large, vivid, impossible to ignore. Days turned into weeks. They found fresh water, discovered fruiting trees, learned which fish to spear and which to avoid. Marcus constructed a signal fire high on the rocks, though he rarely checked the horizon. Thomas suggested building a raft, then abandoned the idea when the sun proved exhausting. The Captain sketched maps in the sand that the tide erased nightly. Rescue became theoretical but conversation became essential. One afternoon, after a particularly heated argument about rationing, Isla confronted the Captain beneath the palms.

“You like this,” she accused.

“Like what?” Alejandro demanded.

“This. Being necessary. Being the authority. On the ship, you had investors and regulations. Here, you have us.”

The Captain’s jaw tightened. “I would give anything to see civilization again.”

“Would you?” she asked softly.

He did not answer.

Romance, inevitable as humidity, settled over them. Marcus and Elena began walking along the shore at twilight. He described engines and machinery; she described stages and applause as though recalling lost lovers. They held hands once, briefly, as if testing the temperature of fate. 

Thomas, observing from a distance, felt something unravel within him.

“I had her first,” he muttered to the empty air. “On the ship.”

The island listened without judgment. Storms passed occasionally, though survivable. They reinforced the shelters, secured the food stores, and afterward gathered close, breathless and exhilarated. Danger sharpened their confessions.

“I wasn’t supposed to be on that voyage,” Isla admitted during one such night, rain drumming against their woven roof. “I switched shifts. I wanted to outrun something.”

“What?” Elena asked.

“Myself,” Isla said simply.

Silence fell, thick and understanding.

Months slipped by and their clothes faded and skin bronzed. Their former titles, Captain, engineer, passenger, singer, lost their use. They became simply Alejandro, Marcus, Thomas, Elena, Isla.

One morning, Marcus spotted smoke on the horizon. A ship, real, undeniable, cutting across the blue like a promise.

He froze. “Elena,” he called, voice unsteady.

They all gathered on the rocks, staring. The signal fire had burned low overnight. It would take time to build it up, to make it visible. The ship was not yet near but it would be. Thomas began waving frantically, though the distance made him absurd.

“This is it!” he cried. “We’re saved!”

Elena’s hand slipped into Marcus’s. “Are we?” she whispered.

The Captain stared at the vessel with an expression so complicated it bordered on grief.

Isla folded her arms. “If we leave,” she said quietly, “we go back to being who we were.”

No one argued. The ship continued its steady course. Marcus looked at the wood stacked for the signal fire. He imagined offices and machinery and the suffocating geometry of cities. Elena imagined stages, applause, and the someone waiting in San Juan. Thomas imagined creditors. Alejandro imagined investigations. Isla imagined mirrors. The smoke on the horizon thinned. No one moved to feed the fire. The ship passed, distant and oblivious. Thomas lowered his arms slowly.

“It didn’t see us,” he said faintly.

“No,” Isla agreed.

The Captain straightened his shoulders, reclaiming his tone of command. “Very well,” he said. “We must reinforce the western shelter. The winds are shifting.”

Marcus took Elena’s hand openly now. Thomas wandered back toward the waterfall, already composing a new speech about betrayal.

And as the sun dipped once more into theatrical brilliance, the five of them resumed their places on the island, marooned not by misfortune, but by preference. All alone in the tropics. And, in ways they would never confess aloud, exactly where they wished to be.