As a sixteen year old, Jan and his skunk ape brother Stinky Stan are out of the cave, and out of the experiment altogether.
From there, they make it into the swamps, and Jan has his first taste of authentic freedom, learning survival skills from his brother, who in term learned from his good old mentor, who has recently died, and seeing lots of dangerous animals on the get go, from alligators to Hide Behinds.
But Jan's not entirely happy with too much risk, he gets sunburned too much, scratched by branches and messed up. He's so immature that when he goes into the water, the salt stings his scratches and he decides that the seas must be angry with him for some reason. Anyway, Jan and Stinky are captured by a tramp steamer, who plan to exhibit them on tour as jungle man and ape. The ship owner himself is Erick Neels' brother Adriaan, a big blond jerkass who will be quickly cannibalised to death by Jan as a result of how jerkass he is.
After the cannibalisation, he'll have to read books that he forcibly acquires a week later, in order just to gain vocab and to swear in English, and then has to wear a loincloth which once belonged to his own feral maternal aunt, Ugg, who was the mother of his much older maternal cousins Koreme and Zago Nascimento (who were born in August 1867). When the oceans are growling around, he'll have to sail ashore!