‘Ahoy, you had better drink this, now,’ said Blinks, ‘before we get out onto the ocean. There’s a good splash of rum in it and it’ll find your sea legs for you.’

‘I hope there’s not too much rum in here,’ said Conor, raising one eyebrow and sniffing at the mug.

‘If there is, you won’t know anything about it when we sink. You’ve pulled a fecking fast one this time and we’re all going to drown.’

Captain Conor put the mug to his lips and swigged back the contents. ‘Have I ever let you down?’ he demanded.

Blinks examined the map pinned on the wall. ‘Have you set the course yet?’

Conor shook his head. ‘Not yet, be my guest.’

The first mate screwed up his eyes as he examined the map. ‘I’ve never in all my years sailed with a list like this on any ship – and to go all the way to Liverpool with one now, against all advice, is fecking reckless. We will have to set the course in a straight line, near as damn it. You were told to dump the cargo, not move it to port side – and it’s made no fecking difference to the list that I can see. I can’t bleedin’ walk straight. No one can.’

Conor grinned at the sight of the horizon behind him. The ship was listing badly, but he had been sailing long enough to know that the skies looked good, the charts were promising and they should, on a wing and a prayer, make it to Liverpool full of a cargo the manifest said had been dumped overboard before they had reached Rotterdam.

‘There’s something in this for everyone,’ Conor reminded his first mate. ‘A hold full of rum, ciggies and a whole lot more which is no longer supposed to be there, it will mean a nice windfall for everyone. If any of them bellyache, send them to me. We’re lucky that the ship’s owner is insured and has taken the news in good heart. He’s booked the dry dock in Liverpool and the accommodation for the crew. I told him we were taking on water and the load was uneven because he bought too much. He thinks half of it ended up at the bottom of the ocean in order to save his ship, which matters to him more than the rum.’

The first mate stepped out of the bridge and threw the dregs of his tea over the rails. ‘Neither the money nor the time are much use to any of us if we are dead and lying in a watery grave on the bottom of the sea, Conor.’