“From the most favoured, the most honoured Ikbal, Your Excellency! She bids your Lordship a safe journey, but asks that you will have the present with you in your cabin and not send it to the hold. It is of great value, Your Excellency, and its contents are also perishable.”

“Will you convey my gratitude to the giver of such a present?” Lord Castleford asked, “and tell the Honourable Lady that her wishes shall be complied with.”

“Your Excellency is very gracious! Here is the key.”

Yamina could imagine Sahin bowing low as the boat moved away from the white marble steps and the oarsmen dressed in white with scarlet fezzes began to ply their golden-tipped oars.

She could now hear the faint splash of the waves against the bow and the orders of the Commander of the Caïque and they were moving faster and faster over the sea.

Yamina knew that Lord Castleford would have seated himself under the dome of crimson velvet on the silk divan on which the Sultan reclined.

It was, she was sure, unusual for him to lend his Caïque to anyone except another King or Ruler and she knew that it was because he wished to honour the Great Elchi himself that his guest should be treated in such a Royal manner.

Now she could feel the sea wind coming through the air holes in the trunk and she drew in deep breaths of it, knowing that all the time she had been waiting at the water’s edge she had been tense and constrained and held her breath.

It would have been so easy for someone to give the alarm, for someone to suspect that the painted trunk was carrying contraband of some sort to the English ship that was waiting for them.

Yamina knew exactly what the ship they were approaching would look like.

She had seen them so often moving up the Bosporus, carrying more soldiers to fight against her countrymen.

The new ships combined sail and steam and were three-masters with a short funnel amidships.

They certainly did not look as beautiful as the old sailing ships with their high masts and intricate rigging.

But Yamina had been with her father when he had been invited aboard some of the Russian Steamships in the Black Sea.

She had learnt then that the days of sail were over and that human ingenuity had brought new inventions to the nineteenth century, which had made the world a smaller place than it had ever seemed before.

The Caïque was still moving as swiftly as twelve men were able to pull it through the water. Then she heard a sudden sharp command and, although it was impossible for Yamina to see anything, she was sure that they were approaching the Steamship.

There were more commands and now she could hear the throbbing of great engines somewhere in the vicinity.