Chap­ter II: How Lazaro Embarked at Carta­ge­na begins with a qui­et sense of des­per­a­tion masked by hope as Lazaro leaves behind yet anoth­er chap­ter of suf­fer­ing. Mocked for his ragged clothes and treat­ed as lit­tle more than a vagrant, he faces ridicule with an inward resolve. He believes that endurance, no mat­ter how bit­ter, might yet bring him clos­er to dig­ni­ty. With nowhere else to turn, he boards a ship docked at Carta­ge­na, lured by the thought of escape and renew­al. The har­bor, loud and bustling, gives him a brief sense of free­dom. But once the ship departs and the sea sur­rounds them, his opti­mism quick­ly meets the raw force of nature. A vio­lent storm strikes, and pan­ic spreads faster than the waves.

As thun­der shakes the ves­sel and water slaps against the hull, pas­sen­gers scream, pray, and con­fess sins aloud. Lazaro, ever obser­vant, notes the chaos not with ter­ror but with curios­i­ty. He slips away from the main deck and hides in the hold, where bar­rels of food and wine wait untouched. While oth­ers cry out for sal­va­tion, he eats and drinks, rea­son­ing that if death must come, he may as well face it well-fed. His log­ic, though irrev­er­ent, car­ries a strange wisdom—starving won’t stop the sea. He watch­es as men make false promis­es to God and women cry for for­give­ness from ghosts of their past. Mean­while, he secures him­self in the shad­ows, treat­ing the storm not as pun­ish­ment but as anoth­er test of his will.

Among the pas­sen­gers is a cor­po­ral, weak­ened and pale, who begs to con­fess a final sin before the storm ends him. Lazaro, see­ing no priest near­by, offers to lis­ten, and does so with a calm that bor­ders on com­ic relief. The man mut­ters some­thing inaudi­ble, and Lazaro, guess­ing its weight, absolves him with a few kind words and a pat on the chest. This impro­vised sacra­ment, though unortho­dox, brings peace to the dying man. Lazaro smiles not out of cru­el­ty, but from the knowl­edge that some­times kind­ness doesn’t fol­low rules. In the dark­est of places, his human­i­ty shines through, rough-edged and impro­vised as it is. He gives the man what he can—a small com­fort before silence.

When the ship begins to break apart, Lazaril­lo feels the water ris­ing, but his stom­ach is full, his body warmed by stolen wine, and his fear odd­ly sub­dued. He jokes to him­self that per­haps the food will weigh him down so he sinks faster and suf­fers less. Even as oth­ers scream and scram­ble, he floats between laugh­ter and fatal­ism, too used to mis­for­tune to pan­ic now. The wreck is chaot­ic, yet in its vio­lence, there’s a strange order—each per­son clings to what they know, and Lazaril­lo clings to his abil­i­ty to adapt. His jour­ney from the deck to the depths becomes a para­ble in itself, not of divine pun­ish­ment, but of sur­vival shaped by wit rather than piety. He doesn’t see saints in the waves, only poor fools who expect­ed fair­ness from the sea.

As dawn creeps in, the sea calms, and what remains of the ship drifts in silence. Sur­vivors are few, and Lazaril­lo is among them—not because he was brave, but because he was clever. He didn’t waste breath on scream­ing or prayer. He pre­served his ener­gy and watched for his moment. That choice, made in the hold while chew­ing salt­ed meat and sip­ping cheap wine, becomes the rea­son he sees the sun rise again. His sur­vival is not dra­mat­ic but prac­ti­cal, ground­ed in a life­time of learn­ing how to endure. The sea offered no sal­va­tion, only a stage. And once again, Lazaro lived not by strength, but by his unmatched instinct to out­last the storm.

His rec­ol­lec­tion of these events is told with the same dry humor that defines him, sharp­en­ing the edge of his satire. He cri­tiques not the storm, but the peo­ple who thought moral­i­ty would save them from it. In his world, nature does not care for virtue, and fate favors the alert. His escape from the wreck becomes more than a sto­ry of luck—it is a reflec­tion of how life rewards those who think side­ways when oth­ers move straight. Lazaril­lo, ever the out­sider, thrives not because he believes in grace, but because he knows how to live in a world where grace rarely arrives.