IN ROBINSON CRUSOE, Daniel Defoe's title character describes himself as a "prisoner lock'd up ... in an uninhabited wilderness." But with time Crusoe's outlook changes and he perceives himself not as inmate of his desert island, but as king. "I was lord of the whole manor ..." he later proclaims. "I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me."

I too would be king, and day 12 would be my coronation. So at 9 A.M., with the tide dropping in my favor, I struck out to survey the kingdom and claim it as my own.

Though Pargo is smaller than one square mile, it's difficult to explore; dense jungle cloaks the interior, and moving around the jagged volcanic-rock coastline often requires steep climbs or challenging swims. After an hour or so, I came to a large bay, several football fields wide. At the far end stood two rock spires, each roughly 100 feet tall, with a prominent saddle between. It was a steep climb to the saddle, 60 feet up crumbling rock and loose dirt, above a rock platform that would soon be covered by water. Plants with long ribbons of leaves sprouting from the ground like a Muppet wig offered my only handholds. I put my foot on one and it gave way and plummeted to the rocky shore. To catch my fall I grabbed another plant, only to find it was the sea urchin's flora relative.

For the first time in nearly two weeks, I said to myself, "You know, Thayer, you probably shouldn't be doing this." While descending the other side, every move was difficult and dangerous. But 30 minutes later, my reward appeared.

It was a beautiful empty beach. I rolled around in the hot, powder-white sand and, even though I was exhausted from all the hiking, strolled along the waterline—how often does a person have his own beach?

On my way back to camp, I came to a small clearing containing ten tall stalks of sugarcane. Out came my knife, and down went a stalk. I peeled back the husk and chomped into sweet, juicy, 100 percent unadulterated sugar. My taste buds, hiding for almost two weeks, exploded in celebration. I sat in the clearing—the Sugar Factory, I called it—for an hour, a little pink gorilla chomping on stalks of sugarcane, high on sucrose and the most concentrated shot of happiness I've ever had.

After chopping down a large piece of cane, I made for camp. At a viewpoint overlooking turquoise waters, I held the three-foot stalk of sugar like a scepter and proclaimed, "My name is THAYER, and ye shall know me as KING!"