A jittery and sometimes outrageous series of misunderstandings led, none too soon, to the following arrangement aboard the fishing boat: Mohammed (for that was the name of the pilot who had been left at the vessel’s controls) remained at his station, steering the vessel on a course that would, he claimed, get them out of Chinese territorial waters as quickly as possible without arousing any suspicion that they might be heading for Kinmen. Csongor, armed with the pistol, remained on the bridge with him, to keep an eye on the little GPS screen and make sure he didn’t do anything tricky. Meanwhile Yuxia and Marlon, accompanied by the cook, who gave his name as Batu, went up and down the length of the vessel, just trying to get a basic sense of where stuff was and how things worked. Batu’s name, appearance, and accent made it obvious to Marlon and Yuxia that he was a member of the Mongolian ethnic minority, and it could be guessed that he had been drawn to Heartless Island as an economic migrant. He had accepted the sudden takeover of his vessel by armed strangers with remarkable serenity and seemed to prefer the new management to the old.