The Open Boat

After reading The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, the one image that popped into my head was something from Survivor. One of the lines that Crane wrote really stuck in my head. On pg. 351 the captain asks the correspondent, "Did you see that shark playing around?" The correspondent answers "Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right." Even though I don't think this was meant to be funny, whenever I picture it in my head I just chuckle a little bit. Here are three men, trapped in a boat, and the correspondent just answers so nonchalantly "Yea I saw the shark." To me, and maybe I'm reading the whole story wrong, these guys are so calm for having escaped death from the sinking boat and are now stuck in a tiny boat off the coast of Florida without food or freshwater!