It was over before he had an opportunity to get really scared. The crew 
dealt with the matter with a practiced efficiency that suggested to Hackworth 
that the Nipponese man was really an actor, the entire incident part of the 
production. The Afro-Caribbean man cursed and shouted for them to hang on, his 
voice pure and powerful as a Stradivarius cello, a stage voice. He inverted the 
cooler, dumping out all the beer and wine, then snapped it shut and flung it 
over the stern as a life preserver. Meanwhile the pilot was swinging the boat 
round. Several passengers, including Hackworth, had turned on microtorches and 
focused their beams on Fiona, whose skirts had inflated as she'd jumped in 
feet-first and now surrounded her like a raft of flowers. With one hand she was 
clutching the Nipponese man's collar, and with the other, the handle of the ice 
chest. She did not have the strength or buoyancy to hold the drunken man out of 
the water, and so both of them were swamped by the estuary's rolling waves.