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and tries to sleep. When he finds that this is impossible, he sits on his bunk with a pen and a piece of paper. He starts the same sentence four times—“Maripaz, my love, something happened on board today”—though each time he scratches out his words, crumples the paper, and tries again. He closes his eyes. The problem is that he can still see it all so clearly: the younger one clinging to the Jacob’s ladder, refusing to let go, the stain on his blue jeans growing, the older one grimly clinging to the raft, his expression a grimace. The image throbs with colour, pushing at the boundaries of Rodolfo’s mind, until it escapes and is in his cabin, a spectre projected on walls and on the ceiling.
    He winces, and holds his head. He can feel his heart thudding in his chest, and he can feel his lungs cramping with each shallow breath. When he runs a hand over the blanket on which he is sitting, the fibres in the wool make his fingertips burn. He leans over and grabs the logbook from the drawer of his bedside table, a book kept for the captain or the shipping company should details of the voyage be needed. Out of habit he writes in English, refusing to let himself stop and think about the words he is putting down in the little lined notebook. When he finishes describing what he’s seen that day, he returns the logbook to his bedside table.
    Air
, he thinks,
fresh air.
    He opens his cabin door, and finds the corridor empty. He takes the stairs to the mess level and hears voices in the recreation room. He follows them, but finds only a television set with a Jet Li video blaring—otherwise the room is empty. After turning off the video, he emerges on deck and takes a series of deep breaths. He walks along the starboard side. A third of the way along deck, he comes across Manuel, who is smoking a cigarette next to a firehose station.
    Rodolfo stops, and the two men fidget, ashamed to meet each other’s gaze. One is broad-shouldered and thickly built, the other small and pudgy with clear, orange-toned skin. Both were born in the northern province of Ilocos, and when they say hello with the same, choppy accent they are reminded that a world exists beyond the
Maersk Dubai.
    “Bose, would you like a cigarette?”
    “No, Manuel, no …”
    “I have plenty—it’s not a problem …”
    Rodolfo shakes his head while mustering a weak smile. “You know I don’t smoke, brother.”
    Manuel nods. “Yes, I know, I just thought …” For a few seconds both men are quiet again. “Bose,” Manuel finally says, “he kissed my feet.”
    “I know.”
    “My feet,” Manuel says again, “he kissed my feet. He was begging for his life.”
    “I know.”
    “He was begging …”
    Rodolfo nods yet again—
yes, my friend, I know.
    “Can you imagine, Bose, if that’d happened to us? Can you imagine our families? How they would feel?”
    For a moment, Rodolfo thinks he might faint. Manuel snuffles and lights a second cigarette, Rodolfo catching a whiff of sulphur from the matchhead. Seconds pass. Then, because Rodolfo is the bosun and this bestows on him a measure of responsibility that, at that moment, he in no way wants, he decides he has to voice what every Filipino on board has been thinking since that morning.
    “Manuel,” he says. “We saw what they did.”
    The AB looks at his feet. His expression seems to fold in on itself: his eyes squeeze shut, his mouth quivers, his nose runs. He takes four or five jittery puffs on his cigarette.
    When Rodolfo speaks again, his voice is little more than a whisper.
    “Manuel,” he says. “They could do that to us.”

    That night, Manuel sleeps in the spare bunk in Rodolfo’s cabin. As an added measure of security, they prop a metal chair beneath the lever-style door handle. They sleep fitfully, and dreamlessly. Though they don’t realize it, in other cabins similiar safety measures arebeing taken: knives placed under pillows, lug-nut wrenches waiting on bedside shelves, bad dreams