They looped all the rope they had among them through the portside railing of the British boat. Then they all lined up alongside it.

“On my signal, row and pull!” Lee shouted. His boat was the only one in the whole harbour with a motor.

The men got into position.

“That is never going to work,” said Selby Hancock sullenly. But he didn’t try to stop them.

“One, two, three, pull!” Lee shouted. The fishing people dug into the ocean and pulled against it. Cheung gunned the Oolong’s motor.

The British boat shuddered, then dropped back into the water.

“One more time!” Lee yelled.

It took all the power of all the boats and the loudest shouting of all the fishing people, but miraculously, they pulled the British craft upright. Some of the Tanka men attempted to climb aboard to check its seaworthiness, but Selby Hancock cursed them. “Get away, you filthy Chinamen!” He abandoned his teacup and climbed aboard himself. “Go on! Get away from there!” He shooed them off as though they were stinking vermin. He restarted the motor, and when all seemed more or less well, he beckoned his compatriots to climb aboard. Mrs Hancock turned to Cheung one last time. “I’m truly sorry, Cookie,” she said. “I’ll tell his uncle. We’ll do something for your granny, I promise.”

“Elizabeth, come on!” shouted Selby Hancock.

“She’s not my actual granny,” Cheung said. “We just call her that out of respect.” But Mrs Hancock didn’t hear.

“Come on! What’s wrong with you!” Selby Hancock again.

“Thank you, Cookie Cheung,” said Mrs Hancock, with overwrought sympathy.

Annoyed at the surface, and at a deeper level steaming with shame, rage, and other feelings he couldn’t identify, Cheung nodded. Why didn’t she say thank you to Captain Lee or the fishers, who had done all the work?

The launch boat motored off with all the fishers’ precious rope still tangled in its railing.

“Dead devils,” said Granny Tang in the general direction of the departing British boat. “Stupid eggs.”

The rescuers hung around Lee’s boat a bit longer, talking and laughing about what had happened. Finally, grandmother and granddaughter got back on their boat, and one of the larger Tanka boats towed them back to Aberdeen, where they lived.

“You were kind to them,” Cheung said to Lee as he pulled up anchor a second time. “Even though they were not kind. We deserve better masters.”

“This is what the Good Book teaches,” Lee said. “To treat all men as brothers. If we were all brothers under God, perhaps we would be our own masters.”

“Tin Hau teaches people to help one another also. She is the goddess who helps especially ocean-going people when they’re in danger of drowning. If any supernatural intervened today, it was her.”

“Perhaps. But only the Christian God wants to unite all of the people. Unity among brothers is what we need in order to be free.”