Chapter 68: The Birds Are the Real MVP
Just as he’d expected, the people on the other boats heard the commotion and tried to come out to check.
But the moment they stepped outside, before they could even take in their surroundings, a swarm of birds came flapping down on them. And it wasn’t just claws scratching and beaks pecking—more than a few of them felt a reeking stench raining from above.
They reached up to wipe it off. Huh—bird droppings. All of it.
And they didn’t even dare curse out loud, because two minutes earlier they’d seen someone shouting profanities get a grey-black half-grown bird aiming straight for his mouth with a… yue. Just thinking about it made their stomachs turn.
It wasn’t only the criminals who felt sick. Even Lin Jiangye and the other coast guards, shock aside, found it pretty disgusting too.
Especially because, aside from Lin Jiangye, the other birds were attacking indiscriminately—so the coast guards who’d boarded the ships got hit by friendly fire too.
But considering these birds were only trying to help them… fine, fine. If crap had to hit the fan, then so be it (and honestly, they didn’t have much choice).
Lin Jiangye silently shrank deeper into the crowd, terrified he’d get tagged next.
Someone finally snapped and raised his gun at the sky to shoot. The birds were sharp—instantly scattering.
But before he could celebrate, the frigatebird and the white-tailed eagle immediately launched a vicious counterattack.
Both were large birds of prey. Eagles didn’t need explaining, and frigatebirds were infamous pirates—their combat power was no less terrifying than the eagle’s.
“AHHHHH!” Chang Geng always struck fast and hard. With a savage rake of its talons, it tore a chunk of flesh right off the man’s arm.
Then the frigatebird joined in—its long, hooked beak stabbed straight into the man’s eye. His screams echoed across every nearby boat.
Watching the eyeball roll onto the deck—plop, plop—Lin Jiangye felt nothing but satisfaction and catharsis in his eyes.
A vicious bird like a frigatebird really was perfect for frontline assault.
While everyone else was still dumbstruck, Lin Jiangye seized the opening and slipped onto the control ship.
At this point, nearly all attention had been stolen by the frigatebird’s brutality. Even the few who stayed alert couldn’t catch him—under constant surveillance from the surrounding seabirds, he easily avoided their sightlines.
The control ship looked about the same size as an ordinary fishing boat. In a real emergency, it could scatter right along with the others, and the coast guard wouldn’t be able to distinguish it.
No wonder Lin Xia’s team had come up empty-handed time after time.
Lin Jiangye smoothly bypassed the patrolling guards and reached the control center.
From the outside, it looked like an ordinary operating room—there weren’t even guards posted at the door.
But Lin Jiangye knew that behind the door stood two burly men. The moment anything happened outside, anyone who entered would be riddled with bullets.
How did he know?
Because earlier, when the door had been opened, the little birds had spotted it.
At this point there was no shortcut left. He’d have to force his way in.
And honestly, Lin Jiangye wasn’t the kind of person who could come up with some brilliant diversion on the fly.
But just as he was about to move, a violent explosion suddenly thundered.
Lin Jiangye’s heart lurched. He didn’t have time to figure out where it had gone off—his instinct took over, and he jumped into the water, slipping under the ship to hide.
Luckily the orca leader had been watching him the whole time. The moment he went over, it surged beneath him, ready to lift him back up at any second.
His reaction was the right one.
As soon as the explosion sounded, several tough-looking men burst out of the control room, weapons cocked and ready to fire.
Outside the control room was a narrow corridor—nowhere to hide. If Lin Jiangye hadn’t ducked away, he would’ve been turned into a sieve.
They rushed toward the site of the explosion. Lin Jiangye waited patiently, then had the leader raise him to the surface. After confirming there were no sounds nearby, he climbed back aboard.
The control-room door hadn’t been shut. Perfect—he peered through the crack and quickly assessed the inside.
The space wasn’t as cramped as he’d imagined… but it was empty. That surprised him.
Where was the control room? Had that doctor lied?
But after replaying the man’s expression in his head, Lin Jiangye dismissed that. It wasn’t the face of someone lying.
So there were only two possibilities: either the doctor’s “information” was wrong—meaning he believed what he said, but reality didn’t match; or the doctor hadn’t lied at all, and this really was the control center—only it had been concealed.
Lin Jiangye leaned toward the second explanation.
If this wasn’t the control center, there’d be no reason to station men here—unless something else equally critical was hidden.
This ship had no second deck. So if the control room was hidden, it could only be below.
He narrowed his eyes, thinking. When he’d jumped into the water earlier, he had felt the hull here seemed thicker and heavier.
At the time he hadn’t thought much of it—maybe it was reinforced to withstand attacks from the coast guard…
Before the men returned, Lin Jiangye slipped in quietly and pressed himself to the floor, listening.
Sure enough, faint voices drifted up from below.
The conversation sounded like two people talking, but when Lin Jiangye closed his eyes and listened carefully, he caught a third, lighter breathing pattern.
Three people—no mistake.
He pried up one plank of flooring and set it aside. Then he lifted the adjacent plank as well.
Once two planks were gone, the three below immediately sensed something was off—sound echoes differently in a sealed space versus an open one.
In the next instant, a figure dropped from above.
Before anyone could even identify him, a flash of silver—Lin Jiangye’s surgical knife plunged into a man’s upper thigh, near the groin.
The man howled, clutching the wound. The other two lunged for Lin Jiangye.
Just as he’d predicted: even with guns, they didn’t dare fire recklessly in a cramped control room. If a stray bullet hit the equipment, everything would be ruined.
But Lin Jiangye had no such concern.
Don’t forget—he’d just seized several guns from the guards.
Now it was his turn to spray them down.
Gunfire erupted. In moments, both the men and the machines were destroyed.
The only one still reacting was the first man—the one stabbed in the upper thigh. Bent over in agony, he’d accidentally ducked beneath the bullets.
“You… who are you?” he wheezed.
Lin Jiangye tilted his head, irritated, and kicked him out cold. “Tsk. What are you babbling about? I can’t understand you.”
This one couldn’t die. If he’d been inside the control ship, he probably held sensitive intel—Lin Xia needed him alive.
Before leaving, Lin Jiangye checked the remaining equipment. After confirming he’d smashed most of it beyond use, he left, satisfied.
No radar meant that by the time they spotted a coast-guard vessel with their own eyes, it would already be too late to run.
And without navigation charts, if the orcas pushed them toward Chinese waters, chances were no one would even realize—at least, not quickly.
Yes, there were Chinese citizens on board, and in principle the country could intervene.
But principles were principles; reality was reality.
The best move was still to drive every one of these boats into Chinese waters—then even if the boats’ “home country” screamed for China to hand the criminals over, the leverage would stay on China’s side.
Lin Jiangye bound the captive and tossed him aside. Just as he poked his head back up, heavy footsteps pounded outside the door.
Not knowing who it was, Lin Jiangye ducked back down again.
He hid in the shadow behind the stairwell.
When the people above came down, he immediately recognized them—the same burly men who’d left earlier.
Perfect. Time to catch fish in a barrel.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Bixi was painstakingly guiding the two men behind him forward.
[Here—this way! It’s safe here!]
He was leading two people: one was the undercover agent Lin Jiangye had saved, and the other was also undercover—rescued by the first.
Undercover #1 couldn’t understand the crow, but he knew one thing: this bird had saved him more than once. It was trustworthy.
Following the crow’s guidance, the two found a relatively safe corner.
“Stop the bleeding! If you don’t, you’re going to die!”
They tore their clothing into strips and bound them tightly above the wound, trying to slow the flow of blood.
Bixi perched high on the ship’s structure, acting as lookout.
Soon another crow arrived—bringing a larger bird with it. Clutched in that bird’s talons was a box.
[The medicine’s here!!!]
Opal’s caw was still ear-splitting, but mixed into the chaos, it didn’t stand out much.
Chang Geng dropped the medical kit in front of the two undercover men. Undercover #1’s brain briefly short-circuited at the sight of an entire box of supplies—until Bixi smacked him with a wing and he snapped back to reality.
“My god… my GOD… how are you guys this insane?!”
Crows helping him fight off criminals was one thing, but this bird—actually finding and delivering a medical kit?!
Wait—did a bird read human words?
As they treated their wounds, Bixi curiously poked the box with a claw, then asked Chang Geng:
[Eagle, how did you find this?]
Not only humans were stunned—even Bixi was.
When had the new teammate learned to recognize human writing? Had it secretly studied behind their backs?
But Chang Geng’s reason was unexpectedly simple—and completely convincing:
[The eagle saw someone using it to treat wounds. So the eagle took it.]
Why learn to read when you can just steal the whole thing?
Opal and Bixi stared at Chang Geng with a mix of shock and admiration, and Chang Geng couldn’t help lifting its head high.
Can’t help it—an eagle really is that smart.
Then the very next moment, it got slapped flying by Qiming:
[You left me behind!!!]
Yes, Chang Geng had snatched the kit and run—but humans have legs. They can chase.
So to ensure it got away cleanly, Chang Geng deliberately lured the two humans toward Qiming, forcing Qiming to stall them.
Since it was at fault, Chang Geng didn’t dare fight back at all.
[Hehe~]
Qiming was furious—he wanted to peck Chang Geng bald.
What kind of eagle bullies a falcon like that? He was still a kid! If not for pelicans and frigatebirds helping him, he wouldn’t have been able to hold those two men back at all.
With enough supplies, the two undercover men quickly managed to stand again.
Two battered, exhausted men supported each other, looking at the four birds with eyes full of gratitude.
“I don’t know who raised you, but… thank you. Seriously. Thank you.”
They bowed toward Bixi and the others.
These couldn’t be wild birds. For one thing, they hadn’t seen crows out at sea before.
So someone had clearly brought their own birds onboard—then used seabirds to ignite chaos.
Without that chaos, they never would’ve shaken the guards’ watch and gotten out.
And… they’d seen other comrades too. They had no idea how anyone had gotten aboard so quietly.
The four birds, receiving human thanks, instinctively puffed out their chests—round, fluffy, ridiculously tempting.
The men’s hands actually itched.
They looked so pettable.
But now wasn’t the time to bury their faces in bird fluff. If it were, they’d absolutely do it.
Just as they were about to head back into the fray, the birds all lifted their heads toward something, then spread their wings and flew off together.
The two men froze. They were about to move too—when the deck suddenly lurched under their feet, nearly sending them down.
“Qiming, I need you to notify Lin Xia’s team—tell them to rush here immediately.” Lin Jiangye tied a rolled-up note to the gyrfalcon’s leg.
He’d originally wanted to send a frigatebird—faster, yes—but frigatebirds had never met Lin Xia. Even if they could fly like lightning, Lin Jiangye wouldn’t risk it.
The only one who could quickly deliver the message to the right people was the gyrfalcon.
He’d destroyed the ship’s communications. That cut off the criminals’ contact with their superiors—but it also meant Lin Jiangye couldn’t contact Lin Xia’s unit from here.
For Lin Jiangye, that wasn’t a big deal.
They weren’t deep in the Pacific yet. They were roughly a hundred nautical miles from Chinese waters—less than two hundred kilometers.
The gyrfalcon would need, at most, an hour and a half to fly back.
But that estimate only holds if Lin Xia’s team were still in their original position.
In reality, the moment the seabirds confirmed the fishing boats’ location, Lin Jiangye had already reported the coordinates to Lin Xia. By now, they should be about a hundred kilometers away.
Once they received the message, Lin Xia’s unit would immediately rush over. At the coast guard ship’s speed, they could arrive within two hours at most.
And with the orcas helping by pushing and guiding through the water, that time could be cut down even further.
Right now, the most urgent question was how to keep as many victims alive as possible during those two hours.
For Lin Jiangye, there was only one way: eliminate every guard on board.
The boats were being pushed along the planned route by the orcas. At Lin Jiangye’s second whistle, all the seabirds intensified their attacks.
With the combined coordination of the coast guards who had been carried onto the ships by the orcas and the seabirds, they steadily broke through the defenses.
Some guards tried to use hostages to threaten the Chinese officers who had boarded—but every time they attempted to act, the ship would suddenly rock violently.
In moments like that, the victims locked inside fixed cages were actually the safest ones.
Everyone else—even the coast guards—could be knocked off their feet.
Fortunately, whenever that happened, the frigatebirds would dive in and keep those humans from being killed at the worst possible moment.
And once the officers regained their footing, a line of frigatebirds would stand atop the ship’s structure, staring down at the battle like arrogant bosses.
When Lin Jiangye arrived and saw that scene, he nearly laughed. What kind of “big shot pose” was this?
Then again, frigatebirds really were bosses—if humans didn’t have weapons, they wouldn’t stand a chance against them.
Forget 1v1. In a 1v2, the human probably wouldn’t even touch a feather.
Lin Jiangye whistled again. The people tangled in a fight not far away turned toward him. When the guards saw he was wearing a black doctor’s coat, their faces lit up—they thought reinforcements had arrived.
Then they heard the Chinese officer shout with open relief, “Consultant Lin! You’re finally here!”
Guard: ????
Wait—whose side is this guy on?
Lin Jiangye tossed his gun to the coast guards. With weapons in hand, they quickly finished off the guards.
“Consultant Lin! Where did you go just now? You scared us half to death!” The explosion had come out of nowhere—some of them had even thought Lin Jiangye caused it.
When they rushed to the ship that blew up, they saw a man completely on fire jump into the water.
From a distance, his build looked similar to Lin Jiangye’s. For a moment, they truly believed he was dead.
Lin Jiangye fell silent for a beat, then asked, “So who set it off?”
He was genuinely curious. If he hadn’t been rushing to the control ship, he would’ve wanted to go see what happened himself.
The men sighed. “One of the undercover agents detonated the bomb. He took a bunch of guards down with him.”
That blast also drew everyone’s attention—making their operations onboard easier.
Lin Jiangye sighed silently. But there wasn’t time to mourn a comrade right now.
“I’ve already sent the gyrfalcon to contact Lin Xia. The orcas will keep pushing these ships toward Chinese waters. I destroyed their radar and navigation charts. So the only thing left is to secure everyone on board.”
One of them frowned slightly, worried that relying on the gyrfalcon might take too long.
“Two hours at most,” Lin Jiangye said. “At minimum… that’s hard to say.”
Why?
Because Qiming could pass the message to other birds. Birds could pass it onward to nearby orcas—and orca calls can carry up to ten kilometers.
Once the orcas near Lin Xia’s ship got the message, they could respond immediately and escort the coast guard vessel straight here.
Then Lin Xia could also dispatch the closest units to reinforce first.
Lin Xia’s “deployment,” as he’d described earlier, was to disguise their own ships as ordinary fishing boats scattered across international waters.
“If we’re lucky enough,” Lin Jiangye raised his brows, “reinforcements might arrive much sooner.”
Two hours was the upper bound. The lower bound? No one could guarantee.
Hearing that, everyone finally felt a bit more secure.
Seeing Lin Jiangye distribute all the guns to them, they grew uneasy. “You don’t want one?”
Lin Jiangye shook his head and flipped open his doctor’s coat.
Inside, he’d strapped more than a dozen surgical knives—so many that silver glints shimmered in the sunlight, razor-sharp.
“I can’t use guns. Knives suit me perfectly. Relax—don’t worry about me.”
Then he dove straight into the water again.
The others were stunned. No gun—was he really not afraid?
Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. He’d stripped a bulletproof vest off the man in the control room.
As long as no one fired directly into his forehead from the start, his life wasn’t in immediate danger.
And with birds feeding him positions, a surgical knife was ideal for silent ambushes.
And it turned out exactly as he said.
In his hands, a surgical knife became something ghostlike.
In broad daylight, guards were dropping without ever seeing a figure. Some panicked and tried to abandon ship and flee.
Earlier, Opal had reported: eighty guards outside the cargo areas. Ninety-six total once you included those stationed inside. Add over ten doctors.
They were facing more than a hundred enemies.
Lin Jiangye boarded with six coast guards. One undercover agent had already died. That meant ten people were fighting over a hundred.
Even with seabird assistance, it was never going to be easy.
So Lin Jiangye went down into the hold where the “pigs”—the victims—were kept.
He looked into pairs of terrified eyes that still held a spark of hope. He raised several guns he’d seized and asked, “Who wants revenge?”
Not enough people? What do you mean not enough? These were all people.
Not every captive was emaciated—but every one of them carried marks of beatings and abuse. Some wounds were already rotting.
When they saw Lin Jiangye enter, they instinctively shrank back, afraid he’d come to kill someone.
But when they heard his question, many snapped their heads up. Strange light flared in their eyes.
After a minute, someone raised a hand. “I… I trained in shooting before.”
Then another raised his hand. “I used to play live-action CF. I was champion every match!”
Hands kept going up.
They might not have fired real guns, but they all had the same thing: a hunger to strike back.
At this point, not fighting meant death. Fighting also meant death. So why not go out feeling alive for once?
Lin Jiangye met their rage-lit eyes and chuckled. With a thin steel wire, he picked the cage lock and released the first two volunteers.
As for the others…
“I’m not dealing with these locks. But I suggest you don’t come out—getting caught in friendly fire won’t be fun. The orcas are pushing us back toward Chinese waters. Our coast guard is rushing here. Hold on a little longer. You’ll be free soon.”
His words steadied their shaking hearts.
Especially the Chinese victims—when they heard police were coming, the tears spilled immediately.
“So we’re really saved…?”
Ever since they’d been tricked into the compound, they’d lived in a hell worse than death. Even if they wanted to die, they weren’t allowed to.
Lin Jiangye laid out the rifles and ammunition. But before handing them over, he asked again, “Once you fire, you might die.”
Those guards were trained. Ordinary people couldn’t fight them head-on.
The moment they exposed themselves, they might be killed.
But the two men’s resolve was even stronger outside the cage than inside.
“If we don’t fight, we might die anyway. We’ve come this far—if we don’t struggle for ourselves, who knows what the ending will be?”
Only then did Lin Jiangye hand over the weapons, along with one final warning:
“If a bird lands on you during the fighting and tries to lead you somewhere—don’t hesitate. Follow it.”
“Huh?”
Lin Jiangye glanced at them and explained, “They’re my scouts. They’ll try to guide you away from danger.”
One of them blurted out, “So… you’re Snow White?”
Talking to birds—wasn’t that Snow White?
The hard-won seriousness instantly collapsed.
Lin Jiangye’s eyes went flat and dead, and he stared at the man in silence.
After a moment, he snorted. “Take it easy. This is real CF now.”
The kind where people die.
He stepped out first, leaving the two men inside to brace each other.
Five minutes later, teeth clenched, they pushed open the door.
Some coast guards disagreed with Lin Jiangye letting civilians join the fight. “They’re ordinary people—they’ll die!”
With them already on board, why drag civilians into it?
But Lin Jiangye kicked a guard attempting a sneak attack straight into the sea. The orca leader surged up and pinned the man underwater.
“They’ll die. We’ll die too. Doing nothing means dying even faster.” Lin Jiangye knew that once the guards dwindled, they would try to go down in a blaze.
And if that happened, anyone trapped in cages would die for sure.
So he was opening cages and arming a small number of people so that when the final moment came, they’d at least have some power to resist.
“I gave them a choice. If they’re scared, they can stay inside and hide.” So if they came out, that was their decision.
That shut down all rebuttals.
As an undercover agent, the speaker knew better than anyone how insane these criminals were. If the situation completely collapsed, mutual destruction wasn’t just possible—it was inevitable.
If everything on these ships fell into Chinese hands, these people would be dead even in prison.
“See? You think so too. Instead of waiting quietly to die—fight!”
Chang Geng circled overhead, continuously reporting the remaining guards’ locations.
Other seabirds stayed close to the armed civilians, guiding them away from the worst zones, exactly as Lin Jiangye had ordered.
Bixi and Opal remained beside the undercover agents, ensuring the remaining three could make it back home alive.
When there were only a dozen guards left, they finally realized something was wrong and tried to flee using inflatable boats.
But as soon as they unhooked them, they saw the deep clawed gouges across the rubber.
Their last shred of hope died.
“It’s birds! It’s the birds!!!” one man suddenly screamed, clutching his head in terror.
He was the guard who had first brought up Lin Jiangye’s name.
“Birds! Orcas! It’s him—he’s here! He brought them all!” The Chinese man who could understand animal speech and command animals had reached them.
The others didn’t understand what he was babbling about, but with things now like this, they could only die here.
“Destroy everything.”
Struggle flashed in their eyes—then went dead.
“Everything” included themselves.
Each ship had a bomb hidden on board. If someone returned to the control ship and pressed the button, every vessel would trigger its self-destruct.
But then came the problem:
Where were the control ship operators? Were they already dead?
As they argued about blowing everything up, a palm-sized storm petrel chick was crouched inside a crack below, listening.
When they left, the chick wriggled out through the door and found the human standing at the highest point.
[Human! Bird has a trade to do business with you!]
Lin Jiangye froze. His brain fizzed with static for a full minute before he understood what it meant.
“You mean you’ve got a deal to make with me, right?” he said, rubbing his forehead, tired.
[Not important!] The chick—God knows where it learned this tone—hopped onto his shoulder and rubbed its not-yet-grown feathers against his cheek.
[Human! Bird tell you!] It chattered rapidly, spilling their entire plan.
Hearing that every ship carried explosives, cold killing intent flashed through Lin Jiangye’s eyes.
He knew they were brutal. He didn’t expect this.
This was international waters—over a hundred nautical miles from the nearest coast. If an explosion happened here, even if you survived the blast, you wouldn’t live long after.
He’d expected arson. He’d expected indiscriminate gunfire. He had not expected bombs.
“The control room…” He recalled seeing a small red button inside, sealed beneath a glass cover.
The cover was bulletproof.
Don’t ask how he knew—when he fired earlier, bullets bounced off it and nearly hit him.
“Good. That’s a merit on your record. When we get back to shore, come find me and cash in your promised reward.” And—he also wanted to know which bird was insane enough to bring a chick onto the ship in the first place.
He sprinted for the control ship and had the seabirds alert the coast guards to converge.
Those last dozen men… the final fight was going to be ugly.
The other coast guards had grown used to following seabird signals. When they rushed in, they caught those guards creeping toward the control ship.
At the same time, the criminals were trading gunfire with the armed victims.
When the guards spotted the coast guards, their pupils tightened—realizing their plan had been exposed.
“Damn it! Who leaked the information?!” They cursed in their minds, while despair grew heavier.
The final straw was the distant wail of a siren—and the broadcast in Chinese:
“This is China Coast Guard South Sea Branch vessel A823…”
As the voice drew closer, their eyes reddened, swelling with rage and panic.
They couldn’t be taken alive by China’s coast guard.
But now it wasn’t up to them. Even if they died, the data in the control ship still existed—meaning their families and friends would be savagely retaliated against by the syndicate.
Lin Jiangye jerked his chin at one coast guard, signaling him to speak.
The officer instantly realized it was a chance to flip them into cooperating witnesses—he opened his mouth—
And then the criminals raised their guns to their own heads and pulled the trigger.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
More than a dozen shots.
When the coast guard ship finally arrived, it found over a dozen corpses—dead by suicide.
“They’re all dead?!” The newly arrived officers were stunned. Weren’t there supposed to be a hundred people on board? Don’t tell him the last dozen all wiped themselves out too.
The others exchanged looks.
To be honest, they hadn’t planned on taking prisoners in the middle of that chaos—at the time, there was no way to. If the enemy didn’t die, they would.
Just then, a blood-smeared hand slowly lifted.
“In the control room, there’s one alive. On the biggest surgery ship, there are two doctors still alive—if they’re lucky, maybe three.”
Lin Jiangye calmly listed where the surviving criminals had been secured, and then added—
“And there are victims whose organs were already removed. Some I stitched up. But infection… I don’t know if they can be saved.”
He’d done basic emergency measures, but whether they’d endure was uncertain.
His words brought a burst of hope.
In fact, when the coast guard ship had come, the crew had already braced for a worst-case scenario: ships damaged, only a handful surviving on orca backs.
They hadn’t expected the ships to still be in decent shape. They hadn’t expected most victims to still be alive. They hadn’t expected three undercover agents to survive.
“Go, go, go—let’s go home!” Coast guards leapt onto the boats, taking the controls and steering them toward home.
When the victims saw the red-and-blue emblem, they broke down completely.
Police. Chinese police. Their police.
The crying spread—ship by ship—until it blanketed the entire flotilla.
The seabirds that had helped perched along the hulls, quietly watching the humans weep.
They didn’t really understand what had happened. Why were humans fighting humans? Why were so many humans trapped in tiny, stinking cages? Why were they covered in wounds?
The birds didn’t understand. They didn’t even understand why the humans cried so bitterly.
But they knew one thing:
A deadly battle had just taken place on this sea. Without them, these humans would have died here.
“Yes,” Lin Jiangye said loudly, affirming their achievement, “without you, they—and I—would have died here.”
Through blurred tears, the survivors lifted their heads and looked at the many kinds of seabirds standing on the ships.
“Was it… them… who saved us?”
A coast guard supporting an injured person smiled and nodded. “Yes. The little birds saved all of us.”
“When we get back,” he added, “we’ll have to thank them properly.”
