An exception to this general rule was Captain Drinkwater who proved impervious to Chirkov's charm. The Russian regretted he had not killed the British captain when he had had the chance in Lituya Bay. The momentary advantage he had enjoyed over Captain Drinkwater had enlarged itself in Chirkov's fertile imagination and he would have boasted about it, but for the fact that losing it so swiftly argued against himself. Drinkwater, Chirkov reluctantly had to admit, was no fool. But then neither was he a gentleman, for Chirkov had felt Drinkwater's contempt as long ago as their first encounter in San Francisco and was happy to shrug him off as a curiosity of the British navy. His own captain, Prince Vladimir, had more or less confirmed this, calling Drinkwater 'a tarpaulin', to be tolerated, when he could not be avoided, whilst Chirkov's present inconvenient circumstances persisted.

Chirkov, fluent in the French of his class, had had only a rudimentary knowledge of English when he had been taken prisoner. Recent association with Patrician's 'young gentlemen', particularly since his transfer from a cabin to the gunroom, had brought them into a greater intimacy. Chirkov had assumed a casual ascendancy over the youthful Belchambers, and formed a loose friendship with Frey who, although rated acting lieutenant, remained accommodated in his former quarters due to the overcrowding of the ship.

Although Chirkov had some duties, they were nominal. He was supposed to supervise a division of the Russian sailors who had their hammocks slung in the cable tiers, but this irksome responsibility was easily delegated to a petty officer. This allowed him to indulge his apparently limitless capacity for doing nothing. At the present moment he was leaning on Patrician's fo'c's'le rail, half-propped on the breech of the foremost larboard chase gun while Mr Comley, Patrician's bosun and another amusing tarpaulin, hove a cable up outside the ship from the hawse pipe and bent it on to one of the sheet anchors.