The Drowned World

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Six weeks later, Kerans wakes to the roar of a distant creature. Looking through the window, he sees a hydroplane pass over the lagoon. Since Riggs’s departure, Kerans has remained isolated in the penthouse of the Ritz, feeling himself regress into some vestigial memory of the past, just as Bodkin had predicted. He has visited Beatrice and Bodkin, but both seem “increasingly preoccupied” with their own interests (100). Bodkin is exploring the submerged London of his youth. Kerans suspects that the hydroplane was a scout for others, so he boards his catamaran to take a look. He watches the plane and hears a sound, something resembling the jungle being torn up. He follows the sound and finds many boats, which are being directed by the man in the hydroplane. At least 2,000 giant alligators surround the hydroplane “like hounds around their master” (103). As Kerans rushes toward his catamaran, the vessel is knocked loose by the waves caused by the hydroplane. The catamaran floats into the circle of alligators, which attack the vessel and tear it apart. Kerans, knocked into the water, barely escapes an alligator.

Kerans reaches Beatrice’s hotel. When she asks what is happening, he suggests that the lagoon is being visited by pirates who have trained the alligators as their watchdogs.