25W/m

76%

Most of us have formed an unrealistic picture of life on a desert island. We sometimes imagine a desert island to be a sort of paradise where the sun always shines. Life there is simple and good. Ripe fruit falls from the trees and you never have to work. The other side of the picture is quite the opposite. Life on a desert island is wretched. You either starve to death or live like Robinson Crusoe, waiting for a boat which never comes. Perhaps there is an element of truth in both these pictures, but few of us have had the opportunity to find out. Two men who recently spent five days on a coral island wished they had stayed there longer. They were taking a badly damaged boat from the Virgin Islands to Miami to have it repaired. During the journey, their boat began to sink. They quickly loaded a small rubber dinghy with food, matches, and tins of beer and rowed for a few miles across the Caribbean until they arrived at a tiny coral island. There were hardly any trees on the island and there was no water, but this did not prove to be a problem. The men collected rain-water in the rubber dinghy. As they had brought a spear gun with them, they had plenty to eat. They caught lobster and fish every day, and, as one of them put it ‘ate like kings‘. When a passing tanker rescued them five days later, both men were genuinely sorry that they had to leave.

notes：
荒島生活，不合實際的幻想，陽光普照的天堂，水果掉落，無需工作，事實相反，生活各種艱難，向魯濱遜一樣，等待救援。兩個人想嘗試在珊瑚島呆的更久，船壞了去修理，路上船沈了，兩人帶著食物，用小橡皮艇劃了很久到達珊瑚島，沒水沒食物，他們在橡皮艇收集雨水，用槍捕魚和龍蝦，五天後，被路過的遊輪救下。他們遺憾不得不離開。

New Concept English three（12）