Pi survives the night as the lifeboat stays afloat, the sharks circle without striking, and the waves do not knock him from his precarious perch on the oar and tarpaulin. He watches the Tsimtsum sink completely and scans the black sea for his family, other survivors, or another lifeboat, but finds only rain, waves, and debris. As darkness lifts and the rain stops, Pi realizes he cannot remain exposed and uncomfortable forever, and he needs a higher, steadier position to search the horizon.

Believing Richard Parker is under the tarpaulin, Pi inches along the oar with extreme caution, reasoning that the tiger’s sharp sight makes any movement dangerous. Fear tells Pi the tiger could burst through the canvas, but reason argues the tarpaulin is too sturdy for a sudden breakthrough. Fighting trembling fits that make his legs drum against the canvas, Pi slowly shifts onto the boat’s rim and pulls himself up, bracing for an attack.

Looking beyond the tarpaulin, Pi is shocked to see the Grant’s zebra still alive, collapsed near the stern with a badly broken rear leg and exposed bone. Pi briefly registers the zebra’s beauty, then fixates on the unsettling question of why a predator has not already killed it, especially under stressful conditions that should heighten aggression.

The answer appears when a spotted hyena’s head pops up beyond the tarpaulin and ducks back down repeatedly. Pi recognizes it as a male from the zoo with a torn right ear and concludes Richard Parker is no longer aboard; in such a small space, a hyena and a tiger could not coexist, so Pi assumes the tiger fell from the tarpaulin and drowned. Pi then reconstructs how the hyena got there, concluding it must have been hidden under the tarpaulin all along, unnoticed when Pi first landed.

This realization reframes the sailors’ earlier actions: Pi understands they threw him into the lifeboat not to save him but to use him as bait to draw the hyena’s attack and make the boat safer for themselves. Despite the danger, Pi feels a small, bitter relief that the hyena’s presence is why he was put in the lifeboat at all and that, as a threat, the hyena’s directness seems more manageable than a tiger’s stealth. As dawn breaks into a calm, beautiful Pacific day and his clothes begin to dry, Pi sees no other lifeboats, and he alternates between focusing on immediate survival and collapsing into silent grief.