There was no reply, no sign of life. The cargo vessel slid slowly past in the fog, her navigation lights dimly shining, as if she were crewless and deserted. But Collis kept pulling at the oars, because he knew from the shipping intelligence pages in the San Francisco newspaper that the Aria would drop anchor in the Bay only a short way off, and that he would reach her well before anyone on shore, even the lookouts on Telegraph Hill, had realised she was here.

He grunted and pulled, grunted and pulled, and his hands were already shredded with blisters. He began to curse every sleepless night and every cheroot, but he knew that he wasn’t going to give in. At last he was pitching up and down on the rough water under the Aria’s port bow, and he heard the rattle and splash of her anchor going down.

‘Ahoy, Aria!’ he called, resting his oars. His dinghy rose and fell in the fog. ‘Ahoy, there, Aria!’

‘Ahoy yourself,’ answered an irritable voice. Collis dipped his right oar in the sea and paddled himself around so that he could see who it was. He looked up, and there was a fat bearded sailor with his head shaved like a monk, leaning on the Aria’s ropes. Another sailor, thin and Latin, came up to join him.

‘Is your master there?’ asked Collis.

The fat sailor shrugged. ‘If he ain’t, we’ve lost him some way between here and Panama City.’

‘Can I talk with him?’

‘It depends who you be. It depends what you want.’

‘Tell him I’m a merchant out of San Francisco, and that I’m carrying gold.’

‘Well, that’s of interest. Do you want to come aboard?’

Collis wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. ‘If I may. It’s not much fun down here in a dinghy.’

The sailors disappeared for a while; then a rope ladder was dropped from the rail, and Collis was able to scull his dinghy close in to the Aria’s dark, crusted hull and tie up. Swaying from side to side to keep his balance, he slung his satchel over his shoulder and began to climb the awkward, crazily swinging ladder up to the deck. He was coughing as he swung his legs over the rail and jumped down on to the Aria’s cluttered foredeck, among tarry ropes and winching gear and frayed nets.

A small man with a fuzzy blond beard, a nautical cap, and a huge grey Norwegian sweater came walking along the deck to meet him. The man made no attempt to shake hands, but stood a few feet off, his hands in his pockets, his eyes as bright as an elf’s. The fat sailor was bringing up the rope ladder with a great deal of clatter and whistling between his teeth.

‘Are you the master?’ Collis asked the small man, loudly.