The eleventh paragraph of Crane's story demonstrates that the narrator has a role to play in the men's physical and psychological survival. The captain and the cook both say that they have just spotted the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet, and the correspondent wants to see it, too. However, because he is rowing the boat at that moment and his back faces that direction, he does not turn his body to try to see it. He knows it is vital to their safety that he keep the boat safely maneuvering through the ocean's swells.

Only when he reaches a place of momentary calm water does he cast a hurried look toward the direction of the shore. He is no longer just an objective observer on a voyage or an uninvolved correspondent on the way to an assignment anymore; he has become a key player in the collective survival of the men in the open boat.

Though he is fighting to stay alive along with the injured captain, the oiler and the cook, the correspondent will also become the man who sets down the experience on paper once the ordeal ends. He moves from a third-person narrator of a sea voyage to a first-person participant in a dramatic survival story.