‘And what is that?’

  ‘That I am obeying the charge he gave me. That I will prove myself worthy of his trust.’

  ‘A letter could say the same.’

  ‘But who would deliver it?’ Adam stared into Angus’s eyes, willing him to understand. ‘You are the only man I can trust, and the only man my father will believe. Please do this – for him, and for the sacred memory of my family, if not for me.’

  Angus bowed his head. A tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek, the first time Adam had ever seen him cry.

  ‘If you do it, you’ll never come back to the navy,’ Angus warned.

  ‘I know.’

  Adam embraced him, clinging on to the big man like a young boy again.

  ‘You had best go,’ he said at last. ‘Leave your key so you are not suspected of anything.’

  They parted hurriedly, each afraid of embarrassing himself with more tears. As soon as Angus left the cabin, Adam locked the door from the inside and crossed to the stern. This time, he did not hesitate. He climbed through the open window, balanced on the balls of his feet, and sprang out. He dropped into the calm water, barely making any splash.

  He surfaced almost immediately, touching his shoulder to be sure the bundle was safe. The ship’s stern rose out of the water above him, the paint on the transom still wet where her new name had been inscribed that afternoon. The white letters glowed in the starlight: Nemesis.

  Cables stretched overhead to the boats being pulled behind. Adam swam to a small gig, and hauled himself in. He sawed through the tow rope with his knife. Each cut felt like severing another link to his former life.

  In a few minutes the boat floated free. The rechristened Nemesis drew away, became a receding shadow in the darkness, then dimmed to nothing but a figment in his mind.

  He waited until there was a good distance between them, in case any lookout was watching. Then he stepped the little boat’s mast, unfurled her sail and sheeted it home. The wind filled the canvas, an old sail of dark brown cloth that blended with the night.

  Adam was alone.

  Bobbing on the starlit sea, a tiny speck among the great Indiamen, a memory came back to him of when he was at Nativity Bay, visiting with his father. His cousin Mary had come to his room one night. Without a word, she had led him outside and through the trees to an open stretch of grassland. It was a moonless night, but the stars were so clear they lit up the savannah almost as bright as day.

  A herd of elephants had come down to drink from the river. They grazed across the plain, gliding like a fleet of galleons through the long, rippling grass. Adam had counted more than a hundred of them before he gave up. He had stood there, holding hands with Mary, the dewy soil damp between his toes, while the stars turned in the heavens and the great beasts made their stately progress. He had felt small, dwarfed by the immense grandeur of the world.

  He had never forgotten the wonder of that night. He felt an echo of it now. The boat hurried forward eagerly, urged on by the steady breeze, unaware this short journey would be her last. Adam cradled the tiller in one hand, keeping the main sheet tight in the other.

  All afternoon, while he was terrorising his crew with chores, he had studied the other ships in the convoy. He had marked which were smartly kept, and which had tears in the sails or scars in the woodwork that had not been repaired. Unobserved, he watched how the crews carried themselves: those who moved briskly with good discipline, and those who slouched about their tasks. One ship, the Mornington, had stood out above all the others. Her sails were threadbare, and set so badly the ship was constantly spilling wind and falling behind. Her sailors did little, and her officers were nowhere in sight. Of all the ships, Adam decided, she would be the least likely to keep a vigilant watch at night. As a bonus, it would be easy to pick her out at the back of the convoy.

  He could see her now, a dark silhouette against the starlit sky. He adjusted course, computing in his head how the wind and current would bring the two vessels together. He could not risk getting this endeavour wrong.

  The gig closed with the hulking Indiaman. This was the most dangerous part of Adam’s plan, requiring precise movements. To grapple the Mornington, he would have to stand in the bows ready to let fly the grappling hook. But that would leave the boat without steerage way. If he had misjudged the course and speed even a little, or if a wave knocked him forward, he would be crushed under her bows.

  He loosened the halyard and let the sail drop. Now he was entirely at the mercy of the sea. He slung the bundle with the Neptune sword over his shoulder, grabbed the coiled rope and sprang forward to the front of the boat. He crouched, whirling the grapnel in a circle as he watched the Indiaman bear down on him.

  He had judged it almost perfectly. In the dead of night, he had brought his boat to intersect with a moving target on the exact same spot of open ocean. It was an extraordinary feat of seamanship, with only the tiniest margin of error.

  But in the open waters of the oceans, even a small margin of error could cost your life. Whether the gig had slowed faster than he had expected, or if the Mornington’s helmsman could not steer a straight course, there was still nearly twenty feet of clear water between the two vessels.

  There would be no second chance. In a moment, the Mornington would be past him. Even a slow sailor like the Indiaman would easily outpace the gig. Adam would be left behind the convoy, adrift and abandoned to his fate. Without food or fresh water, he would certainly die before he could ever reach land.

  The Mornington ploughed on. What had seemed like stately progress from a distance was a storm of violent motion close up. Her towering bow rose and crashed over the waves, throwing up sheets of spray that drenched Adam. Her deck rolled and heaved.

  Adam whirled the grapnel until it was a blur of motion, then let fly. He felt time freeze as he watched it sail through the air, the rope paying out behind it. It was impossible to gauge the distance in the dark. The grapnel rose, then started to fall back towards the sea. Had he misjudged it?

  The rope stretched taut. The grapnel’s prongs caught the bowsprit and bit into the wood. Adam’s aim had been true. But he had no time for relief. As the Mornington surged on, the rope was almost snatched out of Adam’s hands. He tightened his grip, turning it around his wrist just as the rope jerked him over the edge of the boat and into the sea.

  The shock of this unexpected manoeuvre and the cold water almost made him let go of the rope, but he clung on to it, hauling himself up the wet, slippery rope, one hand over the other. The ship dragged him forward and forced water into his face. He could hardly breathe.

  The Mornington’s hull hit his shoulder hard, numbing it instantly. The barnacles that crusted it cut open his shirt and tore his skin. It was like being pulled over a bed of razors. He would be ripped apart and, if he survived, blood in the water would bring a shiver of sharks in an instant.

  Adam kicked off the timbers in a frenzy, using his feet to propel himself. As he got closer to the end of the rope, he started to rise out of the water. He breasted the tumblehome where the hull swelled outwards. If any sailor on deck had peered over the gunwale, he would have seen the most extraordinary sight: Adam attached to the rope, walking himself almost horizontally across the ship’s side, like a spider on a thread.

  He was almost high enough to touch the gunwale. He reached up, fingers scrabbling on the planking for a handhold. Another two inches and . . .

  A heavy wave hit the ship on her opposite side. She heeled over. Adam’s feet slipped off the slick surface as it rolled away. With nothing to steady him, the rope swung him under the bows. He dangled under the bowsprit, kicking and jerking like a hanged man.

  The grapnel had held, but for how much longer? Every swing of the rope threatened to dislodge it. Adam’s hands were already chafed bloody raw from hauling himself along the wet rope; blood was pouring from his arm where the barnacles had scraped it. His sodden clothes weighed on him, dragging him into the sea.

  Something moved in the water below him. It might have been a ripple, but to Adam’s heightened senses it looked more like a shark’s fin knifing the surface. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to climb. Hand over hand, ignoring the agony in his shoulder and his burning palms, bleeding arms, he inched higher up the swaying rope.

  Then he raised his hand and felt solid wood. He grabbed on. Like a fish being brought over the side, he slithered over the prow and collapsed in a heap on the platform behind the figurehead.

  He was aboard the ship.

  He gave himself a few minutes to catch his breath. He tore a strip off his ragged shirt and bound his bleeding arm the best he could. It would do no good to leave a trail of fresh blood around the ship. He pulled out the grapnel and let it drop into the sea. Then he raised his head to peer on to the deck.

  There were few men on watch, and those mostly clustered around the wheel towards the stern. They had not noticed Adam’s arrival. Nor did they notice as he crept past the wooden crates on the foredeck and towards the for’ard hatch, which had been left open to let in the night air.

  Suddenly an indignant squawk shrieked into the night; Adam dropped to the deck noiselessly, hoping he had not alerted the watch. What he had thought were crates was actually the hen coop.

  The hens huffed and preened their feathers. The sailors paid them no attention. Adam waited until the birds went quiet, then crept on and slipped down the hatch.

  Below decks, the ship was pitch dark. Men slept in hammocks slung from every beam; Adam had to feel his way between them. In the cramped space, it was surely impossible to remain unnoticed. He moved as carefully as possible, relying on darkness and the men’s exhaustion. He hoped no one would notice the trail of water his sodden clothes dripped along the deck.

  A bulkhead divided the cabins from the crew’s quarters. Adam had expected to find a ladder leading down to the hold, but the Indiaman’s owners were no fools. They had put the entrance further aft, away from the temptations of the crew’s idle hands and light fingers. Adam would have to run the gauntlet of the officers’ and passengers’ quarters to reach it.

  On a man-of-war, a marine sentry would have guarded the aft section. On the merchantman, there was no one. Trusting his luck would hold, Adam pushed into the narrow corridor between the flimsy partition walls. He hurried on, imagining Verrier’s triumph if Adam was caught and hauled before him.

  At the end of the corridor, the binnacle lantern shone through a grating into the mess room. Beneath it, Adam saw a ladder descending to the lower decks. He quickened his pace.

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ said a voice.

  Adam realised the mess room wasn’t empty. The light was not the binnacle lantern, but a lamp on the table, where a man in a uniform coat sat poring over an account book. It was probably the purser. Sitting in a corner, he had been hidden until Adam was almost in the room.

  Adam turned to run away. But the only place to go was back through the forecastle, a blind obstacle course of hammocks and sleeping men. He would surely wake half the crew.

  The purser was approaching, and he was bringing a light. But for half a second more, the corridor was in darkness and Adam was invisible.

  Most of the doors had names pinned on them, but one was blank. Adam pushed inside and closed the door. A moment later, he heard the purser’s footsteps hurrying down the corridor. He blundered past the cabin and into the forecastle.

  The cabin was dark, but an unused gunport was tied open for air. Moonlit shone in. As Adam’s eyes adjusted, he made out the basic fittings: a washstand, a mirror hung on a nail, a chest of clothes and a tiny cot suspended from ropes in the ceiling.

  If the purser came, there would be nowhere to hide. Even the space under the cot was barely big enough for a cat. Adam kneeled to see if he could squeeze under it.

  A snore sounded from the cot. Adam jerked up, knocking the cot with his shoulder and setting it rocking. Looking down, he saw a woman asleep, almost hidden in its high-sided shadows. She lay on her side, her legs crooked to fit into the narrow cot. She seemed to be naked.

  Adam froze. These were temporary cabins, tiny hutches partitioned with curtains. If she made a sound, it would raise the alarm on the whole ship. Further forward, he could hear a commotion as the purser rousted the crew from their hammocks.

  She stirred and stretched her arm up to her cheek. She might wake at any moment. Adam could not stay. But where could he go?

  The gunport. It was the only way out. He would have to clamber through, and hope he could cling on to the outside of the hull and find some other open porthole to climb back into the ship. He put his head out. It would be tight: his shoulders would barely fit. Perhaps if he took his shirt off . . .

  ‘Who are you?’

  The woman was sitting up, clutching a sheet to cover herself as she stared at Adam. Waking in the night with a strange man in her cabin: there was only one conclusion.

  She was about to scream. He moved to stop her, but he was too late.

  But she did not scream. Instead, she said in an astonished voice, ‘Captain Courtney?’

  Adam stopped dead. He studied her more closely. And for the second time that day, he found himself looking at a familiar face in the most unexpected place and circumstances.

  He had every excuse not to remember her. He had met her once, and briefly. So much had happened in the meantime that the memory should have been driven from his mind. Yet her face felt as familiar as his own reflection, and her name rose effortlessly to his lips as if he had known it all his life. She was the girl with the peacock fan at the governor’s dinner in Cape Town.

  ‘Lizzie March.’

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing on this ship? And in my cabin?’

  Adam glimpsed himself in the small mirror Lizzie had hung on the wall. His face was bruised and streaked with tar from the planking. His shirt was missing both sleeves, one torn away by the barnacles and the other turned into a makeshift bandage, which was now soaked with blood. His trousers had been cut to ribbons by the ordeal of coming aboard. One broad tear started at the button of his breeches and ran diagonally down across his pelvis to his thigh, leaving little to the imagination. Lizzie was staring at it.

  Adam covered himself with his hand.

  ‘My apologies, Miss March. I know this is . . . irregular—’

  ‘It is quite scandalous.’ Though the words were sharp, her tone sounded more bemused than angry. ‘But you still have not answered my question. How did you come to be here?’

  Before Adam could reply, footsteps sounded from the passage and stopped outside the door.

  Adam’s eyes met Lizzie’s. ‘Please,’ he mouthed.

  There was a knock at the door, but the handle was already turning. There was no lock. Adam dived behind the door before it was flung open.

  In the mirror on the wall, Adam saw the purser framed in the doorway. Another step would take him into the middle of the cabin, where he could hardly avoid seeing Adam cowering in the corner. Or maybe the purser had seen him already. If Adam could see him in the glass, then surely Adam’s reflection would be visible.

  But the purser was not looking in the mirror. He was staring at Lizzie. The sheet she had wrapped around herself had fallen away, and she stood stark naked in the centre of the cabin.

  Lizzie screamed. The sound shocked the purser into remembering his decency. He stepped back into the passage and shut the cabin door so hard it shivered the ship’s timbers.

  Adam, crammed in the corner, could only stare at Lizzie in admiration.

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon, miss,’ said the purser from the other side of the door. ‘I thought I saw an intruder aboard.’

  ‘An intruder?’ said Lizzie, incredulously. ‘We are in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Where could such a person possibly have come from?’

  ‘Ah . . .’ the man stumbled. ‘See, there’s a trail of wet footprints leading to your door.’

  Lizzie put her foot on the discarded sheet and wiped it across the floor, mopping up the water Adam had dripped.

  ‘Do you think a merman has crept aboard?’

  ‘Well, no, miss. But there are . . . ah . . . French privateers in these waters.’

  ‘Have you seen one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then do you think, sir, that this is justification for bursting in on a solitary young lady, in the most intimate state of undress, in the privacy of her cabin?’

  A grunt from outside conceded he did not.

  ‘You may be sure I will inform the captain of this,’ Lizzie continued. ‘And my fiancé will hear of it when we reach Calcutta. Can a lady not travel in a ship of the Honourable East India Company without fear of molestation?’

  ‘Just trying to keep you safe,’ muttered the purser nervously.

  Lizzie had done nothing to cover herself but stood there unashamed, splendid in her nakedness.

  ‘If you are so certain there is an intruder aboard ship, then allow me a little time to make myself presentable. I should be delighted for you to search my cabin presently.’

  Adam’s jaw dropped. Surely she had gone too far. He tried to catch her eye, gesturing her to stop. If the purser came in again . . .

  ‘That won’t be necessary, miss,’ he muttered. ‘Apologies for disturbing your good self.’

  His footsteps shuffled off down the passage.

  ‘How did you do that?’ said Adam.

  Lizzie brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. Belatedly, it seemed to occur to her she was naked, in a tiny cabin, with a man she hardly knew.

  ‘Avert your eyes,’ she said briskly. ‘Do not think you are safe yet. If you try anything improper, I will call the purser and tell him you held a knife at my throat.’

  ‘Nothing improper, I give you my word,’ Adam promised.

  He turned and faced the corner while she pulled on a nightdress.

  ‘Do you always sleep that way?’ Adam asked.

  ‘It was the heat,’ she said. ‘This cabin is stifling. And I did not expect I would be receiving so many uninvited callers in the middle of the night,’ she added tartly. ‘You may turn around now, Captain.’