Cheung recognized him. He was the nephew of the Hong Kong Cricket Club’s president, Richard Hancock. This nephew, Selby Hancock, worked as a teller at the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Like many of the expats who worked here, he’d been in Hong Kong for only a couple of years. He didn’t seem to recognize Cheung. Or if he did, he didn’t let on. Cheung wondered whether he should or shouldn’t identify himself.

Selby Hancock drained his teacup. A woman from one of the boats that came to help poured him more tea.

“Mr Hancock,” Cheung said, “you know me, I think?”

Selby Hancock wouldn’t look at him.

But the British woman said, “Cookie Cheung! It’s me, Elizabeth!”

Cheung recognized her too, then. She was Hancock’s young wife, who sometimes came with him to the club. “Mrs Hancock,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would know these kinds of people, Cheung,” said Mrs Hancock. She’d never seen him outside the context of the cricket club.

“These kinds of people?” Cheung gave her a quizzical look. “These people are my people. This is Captain Lee. My sworn brother. Brings you the crab you eat at the club on Tuesdays.”

“I’m sorry, Cookie,” Mrs Hancock said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

But she did, and Cheung knew it, and he felt absurdly ashamed, whether for himself or Mrs Hancock, he wasn’t sure.

Unlike her husband, who couldn’t care less, Mrs Hancock was astute enough, and cared enough, to know that she had hurt his feelings, though she couldn’t fully figure out why. “We’re sorry, Cookie, truly,” she said. “What can we do to make it up to you?”

“You didn’t hurt me,” said Cheung, automatically saving face for both of them. “But Granny Tang lost everything.”

“Ask her what she lost,” Mrs Hancock said. “We’ll replace it.”

Lee’s English was pretty good because he’d studied at the floating church when he was younger. But to be thorough, Cheung explained in Hakka what Elizabeth Hancock had said. Then Lee, whose native tongue was Shuilowaa, the language of the Tanka people, explained to Granny Tang what Cheung had said.

In Shuilowaa, Granny Tang said, “All my pots and pans, including the good cast iron wok.”

“We’ll replace it,” said Mrs Hancock, after the translation relay.

“You going to replace my dead husband’s photograph?”

Translation relay.

“I’m afraid I can’t help with that,” Mrs Hancock said, gazing sympathetically at Granny Tang, but also too intensely.

Granny Tang didn’t look at her at all, and Cheung found the exaggerated sympathy in Mrs Hancock’s eyes irritating, all the more so next to her guilty husband’s determined indifference.

“We better right the white man’s boat too,” said Lee.

Granny Tang responded in her dialect. Cheung didn’t understand until she said, in rudimentary Hakka, “Let those dead devils fend for themselves.”

Cheung agreed. “It’s their fault. Let the British boats come and help them.”

“The Bible teaches that all men are brothers,” said Lee. He called to the other boats.