This boat was of appreciable size, the hull perhaps twelve meters long and a meter in breadth at its widest place, deeply vee-shaped in cross section, so that the planks that made up its hull rose up to either side of them like walls. It seemed an absolute rule in these parts that all watercraft, no matter what their size or purpose, must have double outriggers, and this was no exception; its outriggers were nothing more than skinny logs that, like most of the rest of the boat, were painted blue. Three more blue logs of comparable dimensions had been thrown crosswise athwart the hull, reaching far out to either side to support the outriggers. The boatman’s crew, consisting of a boy of perhaps twenty and another half that age, scampered around on the outriggers and the thwarts with the aplomb of tightrope walkers, smiling all the time; it was difficult to know whether this was their normal level of cheerfulness or a reaction to having been hired on favorable terms. They tended to various chores while the patriarch sat in the back and operated the motor. Marlon, Yuxia, and Csongor made themselves at home beneath a blue tarp awning stretched over the middle part. Now that the hard bargaining was in the past, their hosts became almost embarrassingly hospitable, the younger plying them with bottled water and brightly colored sugary drinks in flimsy plastic bottles, the older stoking up a small concrete brazier and using it to cook up a pot of rice.