Gilligan sat in the sand with his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them and his head resting on them. He had been here for a while now and the sun was setting over the ocean. The others had all gone off to bed but he wasn't in the mood to go to his and the Skipper's hut to sleep. He had just spoiled another plan to be rescued and received another berating from the Skipper for it.
Skipper's right, he thought gloomily. I am a doofus and it's all my fault. Every time we've tried to get home we've failed and it's always been because of me. Either because of my clumsiness or my ignorance.
He began thinking if he wasn't here with them they all could have been rescued by now. The Skipper would be back in the navy like he wanted to be, Ginger would be back in Hollywood making movies, the Professor would be teaching at his high school again, the Howells would be back in their mansion making investments and paying off debts as they wanted to be doing, and Mary Ann would be with her family on their farm in Kansas again. Come to think of it, they had something and, or, someone waiting for them back home, except him.
He had no one missing him back home and there was also no one to miss him here. It seemed to him they had all just made it clear they didn't want him here with them just to ruin their chance of getting rescued again and again. He then decided it was for the best if he left them all right now.
He set to work building a raft. He cut down a number of trees and then began cutting off the branches which filled with palm leaves. Then he began tying the trees together with cord and carving wooden pegs to hold them in place. He had never worked so much by himself before. His eyes were stinging and not just from lack of sleep for his heart was aching him more than his back was.
At last the raft was finished and he pushed it into the ocean and scrambled onto it. Then he took a long wooden pole he had constructed and began pushing the raft out into the ocean's current.
"Goodbye island!" he called out.
The island began to look smaller and smaller behind him. He looked ahead to the horizon as the sun was coming up. It lit up the whole sky in yellow light underlaid with pink clouds and cast a shiny silvery glow upon the deep blue ocean. Gilligan would have found it beautiful if he hadn't been feeling so down in his heart.
He suddenly heard a soft flapping noise and looked way up at the sky, tilting his head back. For a moment he thought he was looking at a very large and strange bird, but then as the object in the sky began falling closer towards him he saw that the things making the flapping sound were palm leaves. The body of the thing looked like two old fashioned beds or sofas tied together and a broom was sticking out of its back end like a tail, and in front of it he saw a head which looked like the head of small moose.
Suddenly something fell out of the sky and landed on the raft at his feet. He picked it up and saw that it was one of the giant palm fronds from the strange looking thing that was flying in the sky. Then as he looked up again he saw that now the thing was actually falling from the sky.
He watched it's decent as it seemed to be breaking apart. The broom fell off next as more of the palm fronds came loose. And by the time the two sofas split apart it had just landed in the ocean. Gilligan watched it splash from ten feet away, and he could have sworn he saw a figure laying in between the two sofas.
He wondered if perhaps he had imagined it, but he got his answer when sudden he saw a head pop up out of the water's surface. From his distance it looked like a man with dark skin and a long nose. He flailed his arms out and began crying out desperately.
"Help! Help! I can't swim!"
Gilligan saw him and hurriedly rowed up to him and as soon as he was close enough he reached out his pole and called out, "Here, grab hold!"
The strange looking man quickly grabbed onto the pole and Gilligan pulled him up and eased him up onto the raft beside him. He sat dripping wet and shivering with his arms wrapped around himself.
"Oh, my! Thank you ever so much, young sir! You have surely saved my life!" exclaimed the stranger as he shook water out of his hat and placed it back on his head. "Now you must take me ashore where I can dry off!"
"Hey, it's the least I could do, Mr...?"
"Wogglebug," replied the stranger cordially. "Mr. H.M. Wogglebug T.E."
"What's a wogglebug?" inquired Gilligan.
"Why I'm one!" exclaimed Mr. Wogglebug. "Do you not recognize a highly magnified insect when you see one?"
"Oh! Now I see! You're a bug! You've got feelers!" exclaimed Gilligan as if realizing this for the first time.
"Yes, I am a very rare and valuable insect from the wonderful land of Oz," Mr. Wogglebug went on proudly. "I had the good fortune of being brought up in a schoolhouse and so I had become thoroughly educated by the time I became highly magnified."
"The land of Oz?" repeated Gilligan. "You mean as in The Wizard of Oz? I loved that movie when I was a kid!"
"Well, in a way, sort of," Mr. Wogglebug replied a bit uneasily. "The movie got some things wrong and some other things mixed up, and besides it was only based on the first book."
"I didn't know it was also a book!" exclaimed Gilligan in surprise.
"Why of course it was in a book to begin with!" exclaimed Mr. Wogglebug, also sounding surprised at Gilligan's ignorance. "There are also at least forty more books written by royal historians of Oz. I come in the very next after the first one. You simply must about me and my friends adventures in it. I'm sure we'll find it in the library where you live."
"We might, but where I live is hundreds of miles away from here," replied Gilligan melancholiclly.
"It is? Then what were you doing all the way out here?" inquired Mr. Wogglebug puzzled.
"I was marooned on an island that is coming up ahead of us about four years ago," explained Gilligan.
"Four years is a long to be stranded on an island so far away from civilization," remarked Mr. Wogglebug.
"It feels like a long time," replied Gilligan. "There's no phones, no lights, and no motorcars. It's as primitive as can be."
"Like Robinson Crusoe, I suppose," said Mr. Wogglebug with a chuckle. "Are you all alone on the island?"
"Well, no," replied Gilligan unevenly. "There's also the Skipper, and the millionaire, Mr. Howell, and his wife, and the movie star, Ginger, and the professor, and Mary Ann."
"Hmm... I'd like to meet these other castaways. They sound so interesting," mused Mr. Wogglebug.
"Well, I'll tell you what, I'll just drop you off at the island in a few minutes and then I'll go on my way," replied Gilligan.
"What do you mean then you'll go on your way? Why do you not wish to come back to your island?" inquired Mr. Wogglebug, again in surprise.
"Well, no one there likes me anymore," replied Gilligan sadly.
"But how could they not like you?" asked Mr. Wogglebug. "You seem like such a fine young person."
"Well, that's easy for you to say when you haven't had to live with me for four years," said Gilligan dejectedly. "I'm always messing things up for everyone... including myself. We've had hundreds of chances to be rescued over the years and I always goofed them up in some way."
"But I'm sure they were all just accidents," asserted Mr. Wogglebug.
"Yes, they were," replied Gilligan. "But I'm sure everyone is tired of me and my screw-ups by now, especially the Skipper. "
"Well, what makes you say that?" inquired Mr. Wogglebug sympathetically.
Gilligan then told him all about how the Skipper had yelled at him, called him names, and hit him over the head with his hat after his latest mishap.
"Well, that does sound very harsh," said Mr. Wogglebug. "But then, everyone says things they don't mean, and I'm sure he didn't mean it. Has he ever said things like that to you before?"
"Yes," said Gilligan. "Many times."
"And tell me has he ever apologized for them before?" Mr. Wogglebug continued.
"Well, yes, he has almost every time," replied Gilligan.
"So maybe if you give him the chance he will apologize again this time," Mr. Wogglebug suggested brightly.
"I still say I'm doing him and everyone else a big favor by leaving them," Gilligan said hoplessly.
"But surely you're mistaken, my boy!" exclaimed Mr. Wogglebug. "I mean isn't there someone on the island you really like and who you'd miss terribly?"
"Well, I guess I would probably miss Mary Ann a lot," admitted Gilligan. "She's a few years younger than me, and she's the nicest person we have on the island, and she's also the sweetest girl I have ever met... and she makes the best coconut pies, too!."
Mr. Wogglebug smiled with a sparkle of understanding in his eyes. "Well, then it seems to me you being on the island did bring you, and perhaps Mary Ann, some good fortune. Maybe she feels the same way about you that you feel about her."
"Me? I... gee... I... I don't know about that..." Gilligan stuttered absently.
"You never will know if you sail away from the island before you're rescued," Mr. Wogglebug pointed out. "Why don't you just tell her how you feel about her?"
"I... I can't," Gilligan said, stuttering again. "I couldn't! She might laugh at me, and besides she deserves someone much better than me, and for all I know she already has someone back at her home in Kansas waiting for her."
They had now just landed at the edge of the island's main shore. Mr. Wogglebug stood up off of the raft and then turning back to Gilligan he announced,
"I'll tell you what, Gilligan. You stay right here and I'll go ashore and meet with your fellow castaways and have a little chat with them and find out what their true feelings toward you are. Deal?"
Gilligan thought about it, and he figured it was best to not disagree with someone who was thoroughly educated and so he nodded. "Deal," he said.
