‘Are there no doctors in Plymouth who can help you?’ asked Ross.

‘Ships’ doctors. All charlatans. They know how to prevent scurvy, but they are no use to me.’

‘But you have consulted them?’

‘All they try to give me is a vicious salve. It burns the skin but does not cure. Now tell me what you want of me and be succinct. The morning flurries on.’

Ross explained his desire to get aboard a ship bound for Singapore. When the name of the port was mentioned, the Harbourmaster said, ‘I was there once. Beautiful women, by God. You can trade a tin tea kettle for a satisfying debauch in Singapore. Is that why you wish to go there?’

Ross quietly explained that he was going in search of his brother, for whose life he feared. This less colourful reason for his journey seemed to bore the Harbourmaster, who returned for a moment to his ledger before announcing that a brig, the Rainsford, carrying cargo, but accepting ‘passengers of good standing’, would leave for Australia in two weeks’ time and make port in Singapore ‘before the end of summer’. He added that the Rainsford was even now being refitted for her voyage and that Dr Ross was welcome to ‘inspect the conditions prevailing aboard’ if he so wished. He pointed to the furthest end of the harbour wall, where Ross was able to see the two masts of the brig and notice tiny figures aloft in her tangle of rigging.

‘That’s the Rainsford,’ he said. ‘Not a bad ship. Built for war – a fighting vessel. Now she’s tamed down. Carries a cargo of rum and fancy goods for the antipodean taste. And the owners never overload her, they don’t want Sheffield plate and Stoke pottery at the bottom of the ocean, so she sits right on her Plimsoll. You’ll be safe on her.’

‘I believe you, Sir.’

‘Right. I will book a cabin for you, Doctor Ross, subject to your ability to make the requisite down-payment. She sails in fifteen days, tides and weather permitting. But forgive me, before we come to money, I must without delay get the breeks down and show you my Great Suffering.’

With the sight of the Apoplex’s anus still raw in his mind, Ross was now being helped to clamber up a rickety gangway to the lower deck of the Rainsford by one of the ship’s carpenters, a pleasant-faced man with pads on his knees and a smell of linseed oil on his clothes. Ross was advised to tread carefully about the ship ‘on account of holes and traps all over the place where our repairs are unfinished’.

He was shown to the berthing deck, where the passengers would be housed in sleeping quarters designed mainly for the ship’s officers. He opened the door of a tiny cabin and noted the narrowness of the bunk in which he would spend an endless number of nights. He took in, too, the darkness of the space and tried to anticipate his future acceptance of these conditions, telling himself that his life, in its disappointments, had made him small, and that a lightless hutch on an old ship of the line was probably an appropriate place for him.