Letters from the Samantha Mark Helprin

　　Several long reports written by the captain of the Samantha to the owner of the shipping company constitute the story. The ship comes across a tornado. After it escapes the typhoon, it finds a monkey on board. The animal climbs the mast and stays on top of it. The sailors’ opinions are divided as to whether to shoot the animal or to let it go back to land. The captain climbs the mast. When he looks into the eyes of the monkey, he realizes that some form of communication has been established between him and the animal. The monkey also seems to like him. As a captain he has to obey the rule that no animal should be on board, but as a man he sympathizes with the monkey. In the end, the captain strangulates it and throws it into the sea. Then he says to the sailors, “…I was neither right nor wrong in bringing him [monkey] aboard (though it was indeed incorrect) or in what I later did. We must get on with the ship’s business. He does not stand for a man or men. He stands for nothing. … He came on board, and now he is gone.
　　 The story was amusing, but did not move me. I didn’t identify myself with neither the captain nor the monkey. The monkey was a tornado. The ship narrowly escapes from the disaster caused by something incomprehensible, something “half sensible.”