Ernando heard something scuttling in the ankle-deep water. A rat, maybe. Ships were famous for rats. It was pitch black down in the hold, the air close and fetid.

Boarding this ship had not been planned. He’d seen the freighter and decided right there, rowed the stolen skiff out to the mooring and shimmed hand-over-hand up the the anchor chain to squeeze through the hawse hole high above the waterline. In utter darkness he’d slid down the chain to the unventilated cable tier deep inside the hull.

It was probably day by now. He wondered if he’d made a mistake.

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