It’s Dalia pulling herself up from the gunwale with her nail-less hands and leaping over the boat edge onto the deck. Tirad surprisingly stares at her soaked body. He doesn’t realise the boatman is standing behind him. He turns back when he hears the falling sound. The boatman is on the deck floor and his head is bleeding. There’s an iron rod lying beside him that seems to have fallen out of his hand before he had fallen. A man is standing over the boatman’s body; he has long braids and stubble and his wet clothes cover his shoulders. Water is dripping from his fingernails, the skirt of his clothes and the bloodstained stone he holds in his hand. He throws the stone on the deck by the passed-out boatman. Tirad turns to Dalia again who is bending over the boatman and checking his pulse. She gets up, finds a rope and asks the man to help him tie the boatman up. They tie his hands and his legs and lean him sitting against the gunwale. Tirad is frustrated. He faces Dalia with his back to the boatman and shouts.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Dalia finds a bucket and fills it with seawater. She splashes water into the boatman’s face. She doesn’t answer Tirad even though he is staring at her and the man with him demanding an explanation.

“We’ve come to your rescue! Can’t you see?” Narivan says with a smile, picking up the iron rod and showing it to Tirad.

“You were lucky that we were here just on time! He was going to hit you with this and throw you into the water!” he continues, as he waves the rod before Tirad’s face. Tirad doesn’t know this man, although he looks familiar. Who is he and what is his relation to Dalia? he wonders. The man is older than him and he doesn’t look and act like the sea people, speaking with a strange accent. His strangeness reminds him of Dalia’s mother when she was being beaten by the Saviour Island women. But he seems more confident, something that Asin lacked or couldn’t show. He seems to know what he’s doing but Tirad doesn’t like his mocking tone and thinking that he has saved his life! Tirad’s life was not in danger. The boatman might have seen Dalia climbing the boat and wanted to stop the intruder. He says these to Narivan, but he only grins in his reply leaving Dalia to explain the situation to Tirad. Narivan goes to the rudder.

“There are things you need to know, Master Tirad! I told you before that your life was in danger, and I am sure of it now. This boatman wanted to kill you and take all the one thousand coins you have,” Dalia explains and starts telling Tirad about the dialogue she had heard between Mart and Yuma. She speaks in fragmented sentences talking about an incident that was going to take place in Oxan and the bad news that was going to arrive tomorrow morning from the Saviour Ship. She also talks about her mother and Asin’s island and how she had left her mother alone to come and save Tirad… But he stops her and asks her to take a deep breath and answer his questions one by one so he can put together her scattered words.