want people around. Most of the time I was content with a wild turkey sizzling on the spit and a slice of mango for dessert. The only real crab in my codpiece were the dreams that started to plague my sleep about six months into my sojourn. At first I had them infrequently and was able to shrug them off easily enough in the morning. But soon I was having them every week, then every other day. Finally I was being awakened every night, sometimes more than once. There were three of them. Details varied, and many things about them were indistinct, but each always ended in a horribly vivid scene, more real than reality-assuming that word had any meaning for me anymore, dreaming my dreams within a dream. In the first, blood was pouring from deep gashes in both my wrists. I tried to stop the flow. It was no use. In the second, I was consumed in flames. The fire didn't hurt, but in some ways this was the most frightening of the three. In the last, I was falling. I fell for a long time, looking up into the face of Andrew MacDonald. He was trying to tell me something, and I strained to understand him, but before I could make any sense of it I was always pulled up short-to wake up, bathed in sweat, lying in my hammock. In the manner of dreams, I always had the sense there had been much more to it that I could no longer remember, but there was that last image right there in the front of my mind, obscuring everything else, occupying my mind for most of my early morning hours. Then one day I noticed by my rude calendar that I had been on the island for one year. I suddenly knew the CC would appear to me that day. I had a lot of things to talk to it about. I was seized by excitement and spent most of the day tidying up, preparing for my first visitor. I looked on my works with satisfaction; I'd done a pretty decent job of creating something out of the wilderness. The CC would be proud of me. I climbed to the top of my treehouse, where I had built a look-out tower (having an odd thought on the way up: how and when had I built it, and why?), and sure enough, a boat was approaching the island. I ran down the path to the beach. The day was as close to dead calm as those waters ever got. Waves eased toward the shore to slump onto the sand as if exhausted by their long trip from the orient. A flock of gulls was sitting on the water, briefly disturbed by the passage of the boat I had seen. It was made of wood. It looked like the kind of boat whalers used to use, or the launch from a larger ship. Sitting in the boat, back toward me, rowing at a strong steady pace, was an apparition. It took me a moment to realize the strange shape of his head was actually a rather unusual hat. It made a bell curve above his head. I watched him row ashore. When he hit the beach he almost toppled from his seat, then stowed the oars and stood, turning around to face me. It was an old gentleman in the full uniform of an Admiral of the British Navy. He had a bull chest, long, spindly legs, a craggy face and a shaggy head of white hair. He drew himself up to his full height, looked at me, and said: