His hands went instinctively to his kasti – the seventy-two-thread girdle, sacred to his faith, that he always wore around his waist. Since his boyhood his kasti had been the talisman that protected him from the terrors of the unknown – but touching it now, he realized that it too was soaked in the sludge.

And then, above the roar of the storm, he heard a breaking, tearing, splintering sound, as if the ship were being torn apart. The ship rolled steeply to starboard, sending both Vico and Bahram sliding down the deck planks. As they lay sprawled in the angle between deck and bulwark, loose balls of opium came cannoning down to crash into the timbers. Each ball was worth a sizeable sum of silver – but neither Bahram nor Vico now had any regard for their value. The Anahita was listing at so steep an angle that it seemed all but certain that she would roll over on her beam.

But then, very slowly, the ship began to ease off, with the weight of her keel pulling her back from the brink of tipping over. In righting herself she rolled again, to the other side, and then again, before settling into a precarious balance.

Miraculously, Vico’s lantern was still alight. When the vessel’s pitching had slowed a little, Vico turned to Bahram: Patrão? What happened? Why did you look at me like that? What did you see?

Glancing at his purser, Bahram had a shock: Vico was covered in mud-brown sludge, from the crown of his jet-black hair to the toe of his boots. The sight was especially startling because Vico was usually extremely careful of appearances, dressing always in European clothes: now his shirt, waistcoat and breeches were so thickly encrusted with opium that they seemed to have faded into his skin. By contrast his large, prominent eyes seemed almost maniacally bright against the matt darkness of his dripping face.

What are you talking about, Vico?

When patrão reached out right now, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Bahram shook his head brusquely: kai nai – it was nothing.

But patrão – you were calling a name also.

Freddy’s name?

Yes, but you were calling him by his other name – the Chinese one …

Ah Fatt?

This was a name that Bahram almost never used, as Vico well knew: Impossible – you must have heard wrong.

No, patrão, I’m telling you. I heard you.

There was a cloudiness in Bahram’s head now and his tongue seemed to have grown heavier. He began to mumble: It must have been the fumes … the opium … I was seeing things.

Frowning worriedly, Vico took hold of Bahram’s elbow and nudged him towards the ladder. Patrão must go to the Owners’ Suite and take some rest. I’ll look after everything here.

Bahram cast a glance around the hold: never before had his fortunes been so closely tied to a single consignment of cargo – and yet never had he felt so utterly indifferent to the fate of his merchandise.