For $400, a dinghy and danger

A few miles directly south of the MOAS ship, hordes of people collect themselves on Libyan beaches for the crossing. After long journeys by land, their moment of reckoning has finally arrived.

They are herded from walled-in compounds to the surf by Libyan smugglers wielding AK-47s.

One of the migrants is Mogahid Sabeel of Sudan.

Sabeel tried to sleep on the dirt floor of a warehouse where he had been taken but he was too anxious, cold and hungry -- it's Ramadan and he's been fasting since sunrise.

The smugglers promised Sabeel that his $400 would buy him passage on a cargo container ship or a fishing trawler. There are no such vessels in sight; only a 20-foot-long inflatable dinghy powered by an outboard motor.

Sabeel can tell the dinghy poses danger But by now, his fear of the Libyan militias and smugglers outweighs the risks on the open sea.

He asks for a life jacket.

Yes, yes, you will get one, the smugglers say. They also promise a satellite phone for emergencies.

No more questions, they yell, pointing their guns. They toss five or six plastic jerry cans of fuel into the boat.

It is 2:30 in the morning when Sabeel marches to the water's edge with 75 men, 53 women and four children. They are ordered to take off their shoes and carry the dinghy out into the surf. The smugglers arrange them in three rows. Those on the outside edges of the boat place one leg in the water and one leg inside. Some of the women lie down in the center with people on top of them so that 133 people can squeeze into a dinghy built for 25.

The human arrangements almost resemble the drawings of people packed into the slave ships that once sailed to the Americas, only on a smaller scale.

One of the smugglers hops into the dinghy, starts the motor and steers the migrants out to sea. After an hour he gets off and boards a fast boat that has arrived to take him back to land.

"See those stars," he says, pointing upward. "They mean north. Follow them."

Suddenly ocean and sky are the same color: black.

There are no life jackets, no working phone. No water. No food.

Reality descends with such a heavy crush that most people cannot even panic out loud. They sit silently, too afraid to utter a word. They drink salt water to quench their thirst.

Sabeel sits in the stern, his right leg in the water -- and begins to tremble. He is 33, too young to die.

Already, he has endured so much. From his native Sudan he has traveled many months and through three countries in search of a better life.

A bloody civil war ended his plan to run the family farm in Darfur; his family abandoned their land to escape the bloodshed and moved south to start anew. That venture ended, too, after South Sudan gained independence in 2011 and internal conflict ensued.

Sabeel, who studied agricultural science at the University of Gezira, tried his hand at small business enterprises in Ethiopia and Dubai but struggled. He finally fled to Cairo in 2014 after being targeted in Sudan for his participation in Arab Spring protests. He thought of himself as a liberal Muslim and was sure he would face arrest back home.

He heard the employment situation was better in Libya and paid money to enter the country illegally, but things didn't go as planned and he fell into the hands of militias and smugglers. He says they demanded more money, held him hostage and locked him up for days at a time. After weeks of harrowing experiences, he managed to make it to his cousin's house in Tripoli.

But he knew he couldn't stay in Libya. The political vacuum after Gadhafi opened the way for militias and even ISIS to establish power. The few jobs that were to be had were hardly stable. He lived in fear of being abducted or killed.

He learned that ships left Libya for Italy, so he put two shirts, a pair of shorts and underwear in an etched leather shoulder bag made by an artist friend in Sudan and arranged for passage. Smugglers sent a driver in an old white Nissan Maxima who took him and two other Sudanese men west along the coast. They maneuvered through checkpoints until Zawiyah, where they changed cars and routes to avoid heavily armed militiamen. They finally made it to the warehouse in Sabratha at about the same time that John Hamilton was going to bed on the Responder.

Now, under the stars, Sabeel tries to calm himself. If only they can get to Europe by some miracle, maybe someone will recognize his college degree and he can finally make a decent living. But two hours have passed and behind him, he can still see the lights of Libya. In the bow, one of two plywood reinforcement boards is beginning to crack from the weight of the passengers. The boat is listing.

2nd Officer Danny Sebastian points to the Responder’s location. Rescue vessels stay away from Libyan waters.

The stench of human misery

The first blip on the radar comes at 3:45 a.m. Everyone on the Responder jumps into high gear.

A drone is dispatched from the nearby MOAS sister ship, the Phoenix. It is a military-grade Schiebel drone with an infrared camera capable of spotting vessels at night. Almost 70% of the migrant boats MOAS rescues are located by drones that scour the sea.

Hamilton and his rescue team cover themselves with white protective jumpsuits, helmets and life jackets and report to the main deck. The medical staff does the same -- it's important to maintain sanitary conditions onboard, especially when picking up people with unknown or undiagnosed illnesses.

The Responder races toward the coordinates pinpointed by the drone. Hamilton orders the Ghalib, one of the fast orange rescue crafts, lowered into the sea. He hops in with a certified rescue diver, Nick Romaniuk.

Romaniuk gave up a profitable commercial job after his experience at a refugee camp in Greece. There, he met a Yazidi boy in a Sesame Street shirt who'd been thrown into a fire by ISIS fighters and bore scars up and down his arms. A week later, Romaniuk signed up with MOAS.

The Responder's searchlight finally has the migrant boat in sight. It is nothing but a small dinghy with people packed together in the heat. The smell is pungent; they had nowhere to relieve themselves, and some are sick from the motion. Others are bleeding from injuries suffered in their journeys to this moment.

Hamilton and Romaniuk begin throwing life jackets overboard. That's always the first step, in case the dinghy capsizes during the rescue. The migrants clamor after every jacket tossed into the air, thinking each may be the last.

Romaniuk boards the dinghy, sits in the bow and tries to keep everyone calm. If his English compatriots who spew hate toward migrants could be here now, he thinks, they too would jump in the water to save someone.

Hamilton decides the sea is calm enough to maneuver the dinghy to the Responder and unload the people directly, instead of moving them onboard the Ghalib.

"Listen to me," he shouts. "What we're going to do is bring this boat next to the big boat so I need for you to put your legs inside."

The migrants move around and some try to stand up. The dinghy rocks from side to side.

"Stay calm," Hamilton yells again, knowing most of the migrants probably can't understand English. "Don't stand up. Sit down. Don't fight. Everybody, shut up."

He hates having to be aggressive with people who are so vulnerable, but there is no other way to control the situation. The dinghy could capsize, or someone could fall into the water and get crushed between the boats.

As the dinghy comes alongside the Responder, everyone tries to get out all at once.

"Wait, wait," Hamilton tells them. "There is no hurry. You are all safe now."

One by one, 108 people are pulled out of the dinghy, starting with the children and women. Hamilton waits anxiously.

At times he has watched a migrant boat empty only to expose the bodies of those who have died of suffocation, dehydration or sheer exhaustion. On this morning, he feels relieved.

Everyone has survived.

Many migrant families make the risky journey by sea with their young children.

They are from Africa: Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali.

One man wears nothing but underwear. Another has on a gray North Face puffer jacket intended for winter slopes. Most are barefoot, their ebony legs powdered with a white mixture of dust and encrusted sea salt. They carry few possessions -- a toothbrush tucked in a chest pocket, a plastic pouch containing photos of loved ones left behind.

Three Muslim men face east toward Mecca and fall to their knees in prayer. A Catholic man makes the sign of the cross.

The MOAS crew pats down the men to make sure no one is carrying a weapon or cigarette lighter. The Emergency nurses ask if they have any injuries. One man from Guinea says smugglers beat his legs with an iron bar.

Nurse Yohanes Ghebray leads patients into an exam room set up inside the ship's cabin. He knows the plight of the migrants. He was one himself years ago when he fled his native Eritrea on a rickety boat and was rescued in similar fashion.

He is assisted by Jean de Dieu Bihizi, who studied philosophy at home in Burundi but felt it wasn't enough to theorize about the world's problems -- he needed to do something more practical. He remembers a rescue in which two women from Mali looked him in the eyes and said: If we die, please take our children and make sure they are educated. Bihizi was taken aback by their trust.

Inside, Dr. Mimmo Risica scribbles a number on red masking tape and sticks it on the chests of the most serious medical cases. When the Responder transfers the migrants to another vessel or docks somewhere in Italy, doctors will tend to the tagged patients first.

Risica is a retired cardiologist from Venice, a quiet man who volunteered time to do something good and brought with him a hunk of his favorite Parmigiano-Reggiano that he shaves onto his pasta every night at dinner. He stays remarkably calm as he sees patient after patient.

Soon, one third of the Responder's main deck is filled with people. But the day is young. Hamilton senses more will come.

'Where are you taking us?'

At 7:10 a.m., the helicopter drones confirm two more boats near the Responder's location. One -- carrying Mogahid Sabeel -- is 17 miles north of the Libyan coast.

It's daylight now but Sabeel cannot figure out what to make of the Responder. His fellow passengers think it's a Libyan pirate boat and are frightened they will be taken back to Libya or killed and left to rot at sea. They scream at their driver to steer west, away from the Responder.

But then, they see "MOAS" written in English lettering on the ship's side.

As the Responder gets closer, the migrants spot the fast rescue craft Ghalib descending into the water. They see white people standing on deck. They realize the ship is European.

Sabeel glances at his rapidly draining mobile phone: It's 7:35 a.m. As the rescue craft rushes toward them, he feels a kind of solace he has not known in many months.

He sees Hamilton standing near the bow of the Ghalib and sees life jackets flying through the air. Then the Ghalib nudges the dinghy toward the Responder. One by one, the migrants board the MOAS ship. First aboard are the Nigerian women. Their knees have locked up from hours of sitting and they limp across the deck, begging for water. Sabeel is one of the last to be pulled out.

The Responder brims with humanity; 366 people rescued on this morning.

Their faces show shock, disbelief, anxiety and relief.

"Where are you taking us?" they ask.

Sometimes rescued migrants are transferred onto bigger vessels in the area. Other times, the Responder transports them to a port in Italy, where they are processed at immigration centers. Hamilton is waiting for instructions from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, the agency in Italy that oversees traffic in the Mediterranean.

The Responder’s main deck fills quickly with people rescued at sea.

Almost everyone rescued today says their families paid large sums of money -- as much as $5,000 -- to smugglers. For many, the money was their life savings.

Bada Mbye, 19, left home in the Gambian capital, Banjul, after his father was arrested for political reasons. He traveled through Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to reach southwest Libya. He's wearing a bright red England shirt and says he wants to become a famous footballer in Europe, maybe in Berlin where he has an older sister.

He echoes others when he talks about the abuse inflicted on black Africans in Libya, documented recently by the human rights group Amnesty International. Traffickers and smugglers are known to rape, abduct and torture migrants. The migrants also face religious persecution and exploitation by employers.

Esther Iroghama and her brother traveled by road from Nigeria's Edo state to Libya. Smugglers put them in the back of a pickup truck but somewhere in the desert, gunmen fired shots at the tires and then at the body of the truck. She survived; her brother did not.

There are about 30 Bangladeshis who paid labor agents up to $2,500 to take them from their impoverished villages to work in Libya's ceramics industry. They fled after being forced to work without pay.

"I am one of the lucky ones," Sabeel says, looking around the Responder's main deck.

He tiptoes over people to refill a plastic water bottle from a container on deck. He gazes across the Mediterranean.

Somewhere out there is Europe.

"At least now," he says, "I will go to a civilized place and be treated like a human being."

'Maybe we would have made it to heaven'

From the Libyan coast, it can take the Responder up to 36 hours to reach a port in Sicily. That's a long time to sit on a hard surface in close quarters. By the second day onboard the Responder, many of the rescued migrants have grown visibly restless.

The Emergency crew hands out soda crackers and raisins but there are no facilities on board to serve meals to this many people.

Hamilton steps out on deck when it's his turn to keep watch. He says hello to Mbye, the young Gambian man wearing the England football shirt.

"Don't play for England," Hamilton jokes. Everyone around laughs. They know about England's humiliating defeat by Iceland in the Euro Cup. Hamilton enjoys the joviality amid an otherwise grim atmosphere.

"I like to support underdogs like Iceland," Hamilton tells them. "But most of the time I support Malta and Scotland. My father is Scottish."

Sabeel has been listening to the conversation and is eager to meet Hamilton.

"My favorite movie is 'Braveheart,'" Sabeel says of the Mel Gibson blockbuster.

Suddenly, a commotion breaks out on the ship. Hamilton fears that a fight has erupted and is happy to see he is wrong: People are climbing over each other to glimpse a school of dolphins swimming alongside the Responder.

"I see dolphins as good luck," Hamilton tells Sabeel. "When I see them, we always come across a migrant boat."