As he is cursing his oversight, the hatch above him lifts, and a bar of sunlight dazzles his eyes. A shaven-headed man with a drooping moustache and Cossack forelock reels back with an oath. ‘Chert voz’mi!’ He drags Kolya out of his hiding place by his ear, marches him to the wheelhouse and presents him to the captain.

Kolya improvises a story quickly. He explains that he went over the account book in the store and realised that MacGahan’s lamp oil had been forgotten. Returning to the ship, he carried it below decks, banged his head on a beam, and woke up to find himself a stowaway.

It is wildly incredible for many reasons, but it is the best he can do at short notice. In fact, throughout his long life, Kolya’s lies will tend towards the audacious rather than the plausible.

Captain Meakins does a great deal of business with Kolya’s father. It’s difficult for him to be as harsh as the boy undoubtedly deserves. Meakins beckons Kolya over with a crooked finger and feels his head for a lump. The boy at least has the presence of mind to wince at his touch.

While Captain Meakins is interrogating the stowaway, MacGahan stands in a corner of the wheelhouse cutting a plug of tobacco and watching with mild amusement.

Meakins explains that the boy must work his passage to Varna; from there he will telegraph the father, put the boy on the next boat home and deduct the cost from his account at the store.

Kolya is assigned a mildewed canvas hammock and given a job in the galley. The ship’s cook is a wiry, dark-skinned man called Dass, who came with Meakins from Alexandria and whose English Kolya finds incomprehensible.

Dass is a lascar, one of the Indian seamen who have provided the sinew of maritime power for centuries. Born beside the Hooghly in Calcutta, Dass had nothing we would recognise as a childhood. He’ll spend his life on ships and die of tuberculosis in 1902 in a home for indigent sailors in Whitechapel.

It is a journey of four days to Varna. Kolya’s mood alternates between exuberance and melancholy. Twice a day, after clearing the dishes from the mess, he spends fifteen minutes by himself on deck. His heart is lifted by the vast sky. The boat chugs westwards, into a future that seems all promise.

But at low points, upbraided in gestures by Dass for being slapdash, for wasting water, or finding himself once again the butt of rough sailors’ jokes, Kolya thinks sadly of home. Brought up among women, he is used to female companionship. There is a softness in his nature that he has not yet learned to hide.

MacGahan sees this. MacGahan sees everything. She is an aloof and puzzling presence on the boat. Her lack of discernible femininity upsets the sailors, particularly the Cossack, who revenge themselves with vile jokes about her, but dare say nothing within her hearing. She is paying for the passage. Besides, her indifference to convention compels a kind of respect. The Cossack’s contempt begins to batten on weaker prey.