Bolitho snapped, “If you do not watch your helm, Allday, we’ll be inboard by way of a gunport, I’m thinking!”

Allday swung the tiller and grinned at Bolitho’s back.

That was more like it.

The dusk which quickly enclosed the harbour was like a seductive velvet curtain. It helped men to forget the heat of the day and the strain of re-provisioning the ship with anything which Benjamin Bynoe, the hard-eyed purser, could obtain at the lowest barter.

Bolitho leaned back on the bench beneath the open stern windows and watched the lights winking from every level of the town. It was to be their second night at anchor in Sydney, but his first on board. Commodore Sayer had kept him busily engaged, mostly ashore, meeting the assistant governor, his superior being elsewhere in the colony attending to some petition from those damned farmers, as he described them. The first settlers, even with the available if reluctant aid of the convict labour, were not finding their lives easy.

Bad crops, some floods and theft by natives and escaped prisoners had left them in no mood for tolerance.

Bolitho had also met the officers of the local military. He had got the distinct impression they were not eager to discuss their affairs with anyone from outside the colony. He had said as much to Sayer, who had smiled at his doubts.

“You are quite right, Bolitho,” the commodore had said. “At first the governor was content to use marines to keep order and contain the transported convicts. But they were required in England, and most have been shipped home. These ‘soldiers’ you spoke with are some of the New South Wales Corps. They are specially recruited at high expense, and in many cases are more dishonest than those they are supposed to be guarding! I would not wear the governor’s coat for a sack of gold.”