She couldn’t hear the ship’s engines and supposed it was because the bang of the grenade had deafened her. But neither, she realized, could she feel their vibration. Some kind of hasty and anxious conversation took place between Marlon and Csongor. Yuxia stepped outside to get some fresh air. She saw the cook—the man who had given her tea earlier—cringing against the rail. He had been watching Csongor throw men overboard and assumed he was next. "This guy was nice to me," Yuxia announced in English, and then she said to the man in Mandarin that it was going to be okay. But she wasn’t sure he understood Mandarin.