Twelve-year-old Phillip Enright, a white boy, and Timothy, an aged black seaman, survive a torpedo attack while travelling on a freighter in the Caribbean during World War II and are stranded on a coral island. Things go from bad to worse when Phillip loses his sight, but Timothy teaches the boy how to fend for himself. Once Phillip is self-sufficient, a hurricane descends on the island killing Timothy. Told in retrospect from the adult Phillip's point of view, this historical novel, written by European-American Taylor, arguably shows that if only people would see and value each other as individual human beings, there would be no racism.