Having slept most of the day, Gus did not feel ready for bed. Besides, he had a great deal to think about. He was on a ship loaded with guns and ammunition, under conditions of great secrecy, and carrying officers from the southern states of America, who hid their identity under civilian clothes. He recalled what Captain Thomas had said about ships being secretly built in the Liverpool docks. It seemed beyond doubt that this was one of them, a blockade runner. The notion filled him with a mixture of excitement and fear – and it left him with a dilemma. Surely, right was on the side of the northerners, who wanted to free the slaves. Then he remembered something else. The reason for running the blockade was to bring back the cotton that kept men and women in his own country employed. He eased his conscience with the thought that if the great men of his city allowed the building of ships for this purpose then it must be all right.

Sleep was beginning to catch up with him and with it came a thought that put the argument to rest. Captain Ramsay had said, ‘You’re here now, and here you will have to stay.’ There was nothing he could do about that, and at least he was safe from Frobisher – and the people he had fallen in with were being kind to him – so far, at least.

To Gus’s surprise and relief, that state of affairs persisted. The ordinary seamen, whose living quarters he shared, were sympathetic to the story of his upbringing and adopted him as a kind of mascot. They taught him the basics of life on board, showed him how to climb into a hammock without falling out, warned him if he was about to infringe any rules and included him in their games. He was even given a proper job.

Captain Ramsay sent for him.

‘It’s come to my attention that we do not have a cabin boy on board. You can take on those duties.’

Those duties included helping the cook, but also meant serving the captain in his stateroom and the senior officers in the wardroom at meal times, and looking after their cabins. He soon had confirmation of his guess that the men who seemed to be passengers were in fact officers, but not regular members of the crew. There were a dozen of them, and they were all Americans. There was a tall, broad-shouldered, moustachioed man who was referred to as Captain Waddell, though why the ship was carrying two captains was a mystery. There were Lieutenants Grimball and Bulloch, and a surgeon, Dr Lining. And, like Midshipman Mason, none of them were in uniform.