The captain and officers were allowed to give their parole, promising to do nothing to hinder the Shenandoah’s purpose, or to reveal her existence once they were set ashore, and given the freedom of the ship. But the men were given a choice. Sign on, or spend the rest of the voyage in irons. Unsurprisingly, most of them chose to sign on. With the first one to refuse, Lieutenant Whittle adopted a different method.

‘Trice him up,’ he ordered.

The man in question was seized by two of the crew and dragged to a position close to the mast. His wrists were handcuffed and the chain between them passed over a spar above his head, so that his feet only just touched the ground. In this position he was left to contemplate his decision. Gus, moving around the ship on various errands, found his eyes inescapably drawn to the straining muscles in the man’s arms and shoulders and the expression of agony on his face. After an hour Whittle returned and asked if he had changed his mind. The man shook his head obdurately.

‘Trice him higher,’ Whittle ordered, and the chain was shortened so that only the tips of the man’s toes touched the deck. Half an hour of that convinced him that shipping with the Shenandoah was better than the alternative.

This happened not once but repeatedly, every time they took a prize, and in the end Gus could not keep silent any longer.

‘It can’t be right, treating prisoners like that!’ he said to Boney as they worked together in the galley.

‘Right or wrong,’ Boney replied, ‘it has to be done. We’re undermanned and we can’t go on like this much longer. Men are having to take double watches. Even the officers are having to turn to and do jobs that would rightfully be left to the men.’

‘But it’s … it’s torture!’ Gus blurted.

‘They bring it on themselves,’ Boney said. ‘If they had the sense to sign on in the first place it wouldn’t be necessary. And if I were you, I’d button my lip. You don’t want the same treatment.’

‘Me?’ Gus looked at him in horror. ‘Do you mean they don’t just do it to prisoners?’

Boney put down the knife with which he was chopping salt pork and looked at him. ‘Discipline is discipline, and it has to be enforced somehow. When the navy abolished flogging, ’bout ten years back, they brought this in as an alternative. I’ve seen men flogged, and believe me, I’d rather be triced.’

Gus turned away, with a sick feeling in his stomach. His first impression – that he was under an authority which imposed discipline through means that were basically benevolent – had been rudely dispelled. It seemed to him now that he had escaped one brutal regime only to fall into the hands of another.