The tide had receded, and so both men had to get out of the boat and shove it down the rock chute for a few meters to refloat it. The space was too narrow to deploy the oars, and so they had to push it out against wave action by pawing at the rock walls. But eventually they got out to a place where they could row again, and then Csongor saw the boat in question immediately. The smaller vessel—the one with the taxi crater in its cargo deck—was not in evidence. The fishing boat was motoring along directly in front of them, only a few hundred meters off their bow, headed for the dark, uninhabited side of the island.