The man steps outside on the Guineaman ship’s deck. Used to the dark, he can hardly see in the sunlight. He looks at the ships nearby, all transporting captives to Ile Marie-Josephine. He stares at the island ahead, rocky and forested. Now, in the future, as an iguana-man, with scales and claws, free from captivity and transformed, he reminisces on his escape. He thinks about how he changed thanks to the manchineel plant and the soursop leaves which he consumed along the way.

One day, a long time ago, the man drinks soursop leaf tea, which makes him sleep and makes the others think he’s dead. Recalls how he’d just been taken onto the island, by hunters, along with the other captives, and he’d drank the soursop leaf tea in order to forget the pain of cutting cane as an enslaved person; his family as a whole was taken earlier, and he and his father were separated from his mother and sibling. Feeling a sense of failure, the father jumped ship. From then on, he stays alive, grows older and stronger, observes African rituals regarding nearby water and forest spirits, and sometimes prays.

After eight hurricane seasons, he plans an escape from the estate. They know the costs of being caught: being sold off or even killed. However, he and his friend run away and meet up with a lookout. Together, the three of them, and two others, live in a small cave, while the catchers try to bring them back. After a while, however, he remains the last person alive. He suffers both hunger and grief after a few days. He hides in a tree and falls asleep, though he wakes up to an old man who transforms into a deer. He recognizes that it’s a forest spirit. He recalls how he first met his friend back on the ship.

In the forest, the man eats a fruit even though he remembers the elders’ warning to not eat recklessly from the forest. It doesn’t kill him, though he lies down and stares out, half-dead. He then is drawn to a manchineel fruit, eats it, and feels a sense of euphoria from it. He thinks back to the memories of him and his friend, laying together, in the caves. Eventually, the fruit causes him to choke and vomit. He squirms and fights the manchineel inside of him, though, later on, he realizes that he has utterly and totally transformed into an iguana-man.

Now an iguana-man, the man climbs a tree quickly and falls asleep up there. He heads to a waterfall and dives in, which pushes him out to sea, where he finds fish-people and converses with them. Among them, he sees his friend, who has become a fish-man. He thinks he sees the forest spirit, the deer, running away, nearby.

Still in the forest, the man feels lonely sometimes, though he enjoys his freedom. He climbs trees and eats fruits. Now, he has become something like a legend among those captive. They talk of him and sing about him, how he is sometimes man, sometimes iguana, at least from what some say, after having seen him.