Fraser's predicament led Drinkwater's thoughts to a review of his hard-pressed command. In addition to her present plight there were other concerns that drove his mind into a remorseless circle of worry. The presence of over a hundred Russian prisoners placed strains upon the domestic arrangements of a ship and company already stretched by a long and dangerous voyage. Patrician's own people were worn out with the war, transferred from one ship to another at the whim of the almighty Admiralty and now fighting for their very existence in this dismal corner of the north-west Pacific.

Captain Drinkwater stared bleakly ahead, noting the relative shift in the shrinking patch of blue sky and weighing up the chances of a glimpse of the sun before the cloud lowered over them again.

The squawks of the birds drew his thoughts inboard once more as a handful of seamen, clinging on to any handhold, strove to clear the decks of some of the hundreds of dying creatures. He watched them, trying to judge their temper for though they had fought well against a Russian battle-ship in the Pacific, their mood had been uncertain off the Horn and they had been near-mutinous off California, several of them deserting at San Francisco.

In his heart, Drinkwater knew he could expect no less. Some of them had been at sea since the turn of the century, had served as volunteers in the Peace of Amiens and had then been swept up in the turbulence of the renewed war with France.

Drinkwater cursed the chain of events that had led them to this day, for he too suffered, suffered as personally as his men, for the secret he and they had brought back from the Baltic in the late summer of 1807.