Papillon by Henri Charrière

Eight days later, after a few formalities necessitated by the war, we were free. We went to live with three escaped French convicts who had established themselves in the Hindu quarter of Georgetown and sold fresh vegetables to American sailors in port. I did some professional tattooing on the side. After various stints as restaurant keeper, dealer in butterflies and operator of a striptease joint up in a bauxite mining town-all of which got me and my Chinese partners into trouble with the police-I decided I'd had enough of British Guiana. Cuic-Cuic and Van Hue stayed behind.

Without proper authorization-the war made this a serious offense-and naturally with no passports, five of us, all liberated or escaped cons, set out to sea in a sturdy boat and headed north. We ran into a terrible typhoon and lost everything, the top half of our mast, sail, tiller and all our supplies. All that remained were a small paddle and the clothes on our backs. We used the paddle as a rudder; then we stripped to our undershirts and, with the help of a small roll of wire that had survived the storm, we made a sail out of our pants, jackets and shirts, and attached it to what was left of the mast.