THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

A young girl is cruising on her father’s yacht in the South Seas.  She is engaged to marry a Russian count, who is tall, thin and old, but with beautiful manners.  He is on the yacht, too, and keeps begging her to name the day.  But she is spoiled and won’t do it.  Maybe she became engaged to him in order to spite another man.  She becomes interested in a young sailor who is far below her in station, but very handsome.  She flirts with him because she is bored.  The sailor refuses to be toyed no matter how much money she’s got and tells her that he only takes orders from his captain and to go back to her foreigner.  She gets sore as hell and threatens to have him fired, but he only laughs at her.  How can he be fired in the middle of the ocean?  She falls in love with him, although maybe she doesn’t realize it herself, because he is the first man who has ever said no to one of her whims and because he is so handsome.  Then there is a big storm and the yacht is wrecked near an island.  Everybody is drowned, but she manages to swim to shore.  She makes herself a hut of boughs and lives on fish and fruit.  It’s the tropics.  One morning, while she is bathing naked in a brook, a big snake grabs her.  She struggles but the snake is too strong for her and it looks like curtains.  But the sailor, who has been watching her from behind some bushes, leaps to her rescue.  He fights the snake for her and wins.

West, “Day of the Locusts” in Complete, 1988