I followed him along the deck and saw that the foresail had now been raised, which explained the busy sounds I had heard outside the stable as I was drifting in and out of sleep.

‘Has the wind dropped?’ I asked the sailor. ‘I see you have put up the foresail.’ It did not feel to me as though the wind was any less.

He shook his head. ‘Nay, there’s no slackening of the wind, but t’captain wants our best speed till we’re near land. We’ll furl it soon as land comes in sight.’

I peered around. The ship seemed to move inside a dark bubble, with nothing to be seen beyond a hundred yards or so all around. ‘How can we see the land? It’s almost as dark as night.’

‘Captain knows this coast. He can feel it, like a cat with its whiskers.’ He grinned and lowered his voice. ‘Thom Cat, we call him. He’ll feel the land before we see it. Cunning as a cat too. Best sort of captain to serve under.’

I was prepared to take him at his word, and stepped into the captain’s cabin when he opened the door for me. Berden was up, sitting in one of the bolted chairs. He had lost some of his earlier pallor. The captain was studying a chart he had laid open on the table.

‘We thought you must have gone overboard,’ Berden said, but not as if he meant it.

‘I was with the horses. They seem to be taking it better than we might have expected. How are you feeling?’

‘Much better. I’ve apologised to Captain Thoms for lying on his bed.’

The captain looked up. ‘No need for apology. I used to get sick myself when I first joined the navy, but I soon found my sea legs.’

I sat down on one of the other chairs.

‘How old were you when you joined?’

‘Ten. I was a boy on one of Drake’s ships, the year he and Hawkins made their first voyage to the Americas. Rose up from that to this.’ He waved his hand, indicating the comfort that surrounded us. I had heard of the small boys who fetched and carried below decks, bringing gunpowder and cannon balls and wadding to the gunners. They led a grim life.

‘Where did you go with Drake? Berden asked.

‘The Isles of the Spanish Main, mostly. Chasing treasure ships and sometimes overpowering them. I was with him in San Juan when the Spanish broke the agreed truce and attacked our fleet of ships, trapping us in the harbour, where we had gone in for water and repairs. Only two ships escaped and dozens of our men were taken prisoner, then tortured and murdered most cruelly by the Spanish. Luckily I was on Drake’s ship which managed to break out and sail home. He has hated and mistrusted the Spanish ever since.’

‘He’s right to do so,’ I muttered. I knew of this episode in Drake’s past. Probably everyone in England did, for there had been broadsheets and ballads a-plenty about it, which had helped to fire up the general English hatred of Spain.

Before we could question the captain further about his adventures in the New World, a sailor came in carrying a tray. He wore a dirty apron wrapped around him and tied in front, bringing with him a kind of radiated warmth from the ship’s kitchen and the rich smell of mutton pottage. I realised that I had become very cold sitting with the horses. When he handed me an elegantly fluted pewter bowl filled to the brim, I cupped my hands around it at first for the benefit of the heat. The bread was fresh, perhaps brought from Dover. But perhaps not. There is no end to the ingenuity of sailors. Perhaps they had baked it on board. I refused more of the captain’s excellent – but very strong – French wine and confined myself to small ale. I noticed that Berden did the same, though he managed to eat both some bread and some pottage, with no visible ill effects. Maybe he too was finding his sea legs.

Berden and the captain talked of the many countries they had visited while we ate. I kept silent. Partly because I was familiar with only Portugal and England, countries they both knew well, but partly because I was growing sleepy. I had slept somewhat fitfully the previous night, anxious about our mission, and now that I had no responsibilities but to sit still and be conveyed in this ship on to the next stage in our journey, fatigue was beginning to creep over me.

By the time we had finished our pottage and sampled the bowls of fruit and nuts the sailor brought us, there were sounds of running footsteps out on deck and the captain was sent for. I could feel the change in the ship’s motion when the foresail was lowered, so I decided to go out on to the deck to see whether I could gain any sight of land and to try to chase away sleep, for despite the early November dark it could not be later than perhaps five of the clock. We had finished our meal by candlelight, so when I went outside I could see nothing at first but a surrounding snow-filled darkness, which seemed to have thickened while I was in the cabin. Gradually my eyes adjusted themselves to the lesser light.

The foresail had indeed been lowered and the two remaining sails were trimmed to a different angle. I sensed that the wind was now striking my right cheek instead of coming from the stern of the ship, so either the wind had changed direction or the ship had. The sailor I had spoken to before came past and I put out a hand to stop him.

‘I can see nothing, but you said the captain would take in the foresail when he spied land?’

‘Aye, it’s over there.’ He gestured ahead and to starboard.

‘I still cannot see anything.’

‘Look. Follow my arm. There, where the darkness thickens. That’s land. The Low Countries. And that’s what they are. Low. They don’t rise up like our white cliffs at Dover. Hardly more than a hillock of mud a few feet above the sea.’

I squinted along his arm. Now that he had pointed out where to look, I could just make out a slightly thicker, darker smudge amidst the surrounding grey of the day. And perhaps, just faintly, a light.

‘Is that a light I can see? To the left of where you are pointing?’

‘You’ve found it now? Aye, there’s a church there where the minister puts a lantern in the tower every night to guide the fishermen in to shore. We’ll anchor near there and carry on up to Amsterdam in the morning.’

He hurried on toward the main mast, where several of the sailors were adjusting ropes. A young boy had been sent up the mast as a lookout. He scrambled up as if he were climbing a small tree in his father’s garden, but I had to look away, dizzy at the very thought of it.

I fixed my eyes on that tiny glint of light which marked the shore. I no longer felt sleepy. The closer we drew to land, the closer I came to my uneasy mission. It was the ship that had changed direction, I realised, not the wind, and the result was that waves were striking it crossways, causing it to pitch and twist, so that I had to seize hold of the railing that ran along the ship’s side to avoid being thrown across the deck.

Gradually the light in the church tower grew larger and clearer, the loom of the land more substantial, though, as the sailor had said, the land was so low it barely rose above the level of the sea. As the ship dipped and rose, fighting against the sideways slap of the waves, it seemed as though we would be driven away from land, out into the trackless sea again. But Captain Thoms knew his ship and knew the ways of wind and sea. After what seemed like hours, as my fingers stiffened with cold on the railing, our ship slipped at last into the lea of a curved harbour wall and stopped bucking, like a horse suddenly tamed. Even the voice of the wind, which I realised had been booming in the sails all day, was suddenly quiet. There was a flurry of activity as the sailors lowered the sails and bundled them together. The anchor rattled out on its chain. The boy slid down from the mast. We had arrived.