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A Shipwrecked Sailor

'The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor' tells the saga of Luis Alejandro Velasco, a twenty year old sailor,
who was washed overboard during a storm in the middle of the Caribbean Sea on February 28, 1955.
Clinging to a life raft without food and water, he survived ten days on the open sea. What happened to
Velasco and his ship mates? Read the following extract from the novella and find out what happened to them.

1 My first impression was that I was utterly Caraballo, the tall, well-built officer who
alone in the middle of the ocean. The ship was yelling at someone, 'Fatso, hold there.'

plunged into an abyss and disappeared. I
2 It was as if in that instant I had
had no idea what was happening. I took
awakened from a moment's deep sleep.
hold of one of the bobbing crates and
It dawned on me that I wasn't alone in
stupidly began to contemplate the sea. It
the sea. There, only a few meters away,
was a perfectly clear day. Except for the
my mates were shouting to one another
choppy waves produced by the wind and
and trying to stay afloat. Quickly, I began
the cargo scattered across the surface
to think. I couldn't swim in just any
there was no evidence of a shipwreck.
direction. I knew we were about fifty miles
Soon I began to hear shouts nearby. from Cartagena, but I was not yet
Through the sharp whistling of the wind, frightened. For a moment I thought I
I recognised the voice of Julio Amador could hold on to the crate indefinitely,

Gabriel García Márquez (1928 1. What happened to the narrator?
- 2014) was a Colombian
________________________________________
novelist, short story writer,
screenwriter and journalist. He ________________________________________
was called affectionately called abyss:________________________________
‘Gabo’. He was awarded the
Neustadt International Prize for ________________________________________
Literature in 1972 and the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1982. Márquez’s first major work bobbing: _________________________________
is The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, which he ________________________________________
wrote as a newspaper series in 1955. His best
contemplate: _____________________________
known novels include One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch ________________________________________
(1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
________________________________________

English VIII 45