The Stranger in the Lifeboat

Land

LeFleur accuses Dobby of killing everyone aboard the yacht, but Dobby is completely taken aback. LeFleur brings up the existence of the diary as his proof, and sitting Dobby down begins to read from the notebook. As he reads, Dobby’s reactions are largely bewildering: “Some of his reactions seemed odd to LeFleur, but then the whole scene was odd, reading the notebook of a dead cousin in a destroyed church, talking about God appearing in a lifeboat” (215). LeFleur finishes reading the diary, and Dobby questions if LeFleur is really going to believe the words of a man who is clearly delirious. To back up his claim of innocence, Dobby states that not only did he not blow up the Galaxy, as Benji had intimated, but that he had never even set foot on the boat.

LeFleur isn’t sure what to think about Dobby’s claim, and so he demands to know more information. Dobby explains that he had been the one to drop Benji off at the shipyard to embark on the cruise and had even met most of the figures in the diary in the time he was there before leaving. Giving more background to the characters, Dobby explains that Benjamin had become convinced that