Calling up from within himself the sort of stories he'd read once, of people on desert islands, he laughed. So much of it was wrong. Or this island was different. There was no jungle, only grassy, rolling hills. The trees bent nearly double with fruit, the same sorts of lucious fruits you find in the South of France, plus some others he recognized from the bazaar in Alexandria.
Alexandria was the biggest regret of his life, and he didn't believe in regrets. It wasn't about the books, surely. Knowledge of all sorts grows by two steps forward and one back. But on lazy, warm afternoons like this one there had been nothing he liked better than finding the most empty room in the vast bibliteria, laying on the cool tile floor, and sleeping. But time had caught up with that, too.
There need not be concern about rescue. If the worst came he could lay in the surf for eons until the Earth shifted, the Moon drew further away, the Sun dimmer, and he would find himself at the top of a vast mountainscape, a mountainscape he alone would call, "the island." Grabbing an armful of oddly-shaped fruit, rather figgish really, he made a comfortable seat in the sand, well away from the cooling surf, and began his wait.