The seabirds saved him. Not immediately — they were not easily caught — but with patience and improvisation. He observed that the birds that circled the raft, attracted by the smell of fish scraps and drying bait, would sometimes land on the raft itself. He built a nest of seaweed beside a rotting fish, creating a decoy that encouraged the birds to settle closer. When one landed within reach, he killed it quickly. He drank the blood.
The blood of seabirds, consumed in moderate quantities, provides a limited but real source of liquid. This is a documented physiological fact, though it comes with important caveats about the limits of its usefulness and the specific circumstances under which it applies. For Poon Lim, in those five days without fresh water, it provided enough liquid to keep him functional until the next rainfall arrived. He understood, from the experience, that the birds could serve as both a food source and, in extremity, a source of liquid. He dried the flesh of the birds he caught into jerky — curing it in the sun using the drying line he had rigged from hemp rope across the raft.
The fish hook evolved. A larger hook, made from a nail he pried from the raft’s wooden structure, gave him the capacity to target larger fish than the smaller hook could manage. He used the knife he had fashioned from the edge of a pemmican tin to clean and prepare his catch. The improvised tool kit — wire hook, nail hook, rope line, tin knife, canvas water-catcher — was built not from any prior preparation but from the materials the raft itself provided and from the application of accumulated practical knowledge to the problem of survival.