Thank goodness the weather was warm. His clothes were threadbare and simply wouldn’t pass as modest in a more crowded environment.
He had lived on tropical fruits and fish. In fact he joked to himself that he’d eaten so much fruit that really he was on a dessert island. He slept in a shelter he had made of banana leaves. Of course he was now into his second or third shelter and he liked to make any new one in a new location on the island with a new view.
The island was quite large; he could circumvent it in a long day’s hike. The island was surrounded by a coral reef. Roman had no idea why such an island wasn’t inhabited. It was lush and safe.
He had been dumped there by an irate cargo ship’s captain. Roman had used some choice sailor’s words to describe the captain and the captain had decided that Roman should fend for himself. The captain would inevitably have presumed that Roman had drowned. As luck would have it an undertow carried him towards the reef. In fact the most hazardous part of his reaching safety was swimming across the lagoon which was riddled with stingrays basking in the sun. He’d since got used to the stingrays and realized if he passed over them gently without a commotion they didn’t seem to mind too much.
Perhaps he became too confident because one day he got severely stung and died.
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