Traveling the timber route, Lee learned the different moods of the waters. The clean smell of the Andaman Sea was different than the tart, oily smell along the coast of the South China Sea. The currents of the East China Sea caused a sharper rocking than the heavier, lofting swells in the Pacific Ocean. The storms were different, too. Some were sudden and ferocious. Others came from afar with enough warning that the pilot could steer around them. Lee also learned about men on these odysseys. What pleased them, what bothered them, what bothered them enough to kill. He learned that money, undemanding women, cigarettes, drink and the camaraderie of drink, and the loyalty of friends were the only things that really mattered to him. By the time the elder Tong died of liver failure, Lee had only managed to get a lot of smoking and drinking done. He would never get much more as long as he worked on the Lord of the Ocean or a vessel like her, which was why Lee Tong took up the next profession he did.

When Lee was sixteen, several years into his own career on the timber ship, he met two other young sailors who did not want to end up like their own fathers. Who were unhappy working for three dollars a day, seven days a week. Eventually, in port, they sat down with other dissatisfied young men from other professions. That led Lee to the second thing he knew very well.

Piracy.

Lee was standing in the steep raised prow of the sampan. The vessel was not of Singaporean design. It was a squat Shanghai Harbor model, also known as a mu-chi or hen boat. The name was a result of the sampan’s resemblance to the bird. Built mostly of softwood, which aged well and was extremely light, the mu-chi was eighteen feet long with four compartments, including a galley. There was an engine for rapid travel and four yulohs—thirteen-foot-long oars—for silent travel. That was how the five sampan pirates were traveling now, with Lee’s crewmates rowing two men to a side. They had bought the sampan in China, legally, just over two years before. They had paid for it with cash, most of it borrowed from Lee’s grandparents. The loan was repaid within a year. Buying the sampan was the last lawful act the men had done.