'That's good news, Mullender, good news . . .'

'Aye, sir.'

Mullender's impassivity, the expressionless look to his eyes and face struck Drinkwater, and it occurred to him that he had taken Mullender so for granted that he was guilty in some way he could not quite comprehend. He held out his cup and watched the brown liquid gurgle into it.

'We have all been sorely tried, Mullender,' he said as he swallowed the second cupful.

'Aye, sir.'

Drinkwater handed the emptied cup back to the steward. 'That was most welcome, thank you.'

He watched Mullender retreat to the pantry. Was there something odd about the man's demeanour, or was he himself mildly hallucinating from the effects of exhaustion? He did not know. What was important was to secure for them all a period of rest. Wearily he rose from the table and left the cabin.

There was more to hearten him on deck, for it was one of the minor miracles of the sea-service that the sum of a ship's company's efforts could produce spectacular results from meagre resources. And Patrician and her people had indeed been sorely tried in the preceding months.

She had taken a buffeting entering the Pacific by way of Cape Horn the previous year; she had been deliberately sabotaged by someone in her own company and refitted on the coast of California; and she had fought two actions, the second against heavy odds. The brutal combat with the Russian line-of-battle ship Suvorov had left her a battered victor with the added responsibility of prisoners amongst her own disaffected crew. Now, bruised by the long passage across the North Pacific and the terrible onslaught of a typhoon, it was still possible to set her to rights, to turn out of her hold sufficient material to make good the worst ravages of the elements, to rouse out of her sail-room enough spare sails to replace her rent canvas, or hoist from her booms a permutation of spars which allowed her to carry topgallants on all three masts.