Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

1 Six-inch sextant. 1 Four-inch sextant. 1 Mercurial horizon. 1 Prismatic compass. 2 Pocket chronometers. 3 Thermometers to 212°. 3 Ditto smaller, in cylindrical brass cases. 2 Casella's apparatus for measuring heights by the boiling point: steam and 1 for water. 1 Book, having its pages divided into half-inch squares for mapping. Memorandum-books. 1 Nautical Almanac. 1 Thomson's Lunar Tables. 1 Galton's Art of Travel. 1 Admiralty Manual. 1 Tables of Logarithms. Hints to Travellers by the Royal Geographical Society.

–FROM BURTON'S INVENTORY NOTES, AFRICAN EXPEDITION, 1863

The Orpheus was over southern France by the time Sir Richard Francis Burton woke up. After two nights in a row with virtually no sleep, he'd been oblivious for the first hours of the voyage.

Now he stood on the observation deck, enjoying the view and feeling an immense sense of release. Departure always lifted his spirits, and as the shackles and restraints of civilisation fell away, he was giving himself up to that which he liked best: the lure and promise of the unknown.

Algernon Swinburne entered and joined him at the window.

“What ho! What ho! And what ho again! But you missed a top nosh-up at lunch, Richard!”

“I've been dead to the world, Algy. What have you been doing, apart from lining your stomach, that is?”

“I've been looking for that little imp Willy Cornish, but it seems our funnel scrubbers are already crawling about in the pipes.”

“Sweltering work, I imagine. He'll emerge eventually. No doubt you'll catch up with him later.”

“I suppose. I say, there's a bit of a flap on with Mr. Gooch and his people.”

“Why so?”

“The four stern engines have gone wonky. I think it's something to do with the doo-dah forcing the thingamajig to bang against the wotsitsname. There's not much poetry in engineering, is there?”

“Not a lot. Are you quite all right?”

“I'm fine. No, I'm not. Oh, blast it, I don't know, Richard.”

“Thinking about Tom?”

Swinburne heaved a sigh. “Yes. They'll be burying him this afternoon.”

The poet reached into his jacket and pulled out Apollo's gold-tipped arrow. He examined its point. “We didn't catch his killer, and we're going to be away for such a long time that we probably never will.”

“Don't be so sure. I found out last night that Otto Steinruck is actually Count von Zeppelin.”

“What? What? The spy?”

“Yes. I'll be very surprised if his and our paths don't cross again in due course.”

Swinburne's face took on a ferocious expression. “Good!” he snarled. “Good!” He held up the arrow and, in a melodramatic tone, declared: “This is the arrow of justice! I shall carry it with me until Tom Bendyshe is avenged!”

Burton patted his friend's shoulder.

They stood and watched the scenery slipping by far below. Ahead, France's south coast was visible.

Swinburne said, “I think I'll go and do some work.”

“Atalanta in Calydon?”

“No. I've started a little something entitled ‘A Lamentation.’”

“In memoriam?”

“I'm not entirely sure. It might concern another matter entirely. It's hard to tell. It's coming out of here—” he tapped the middle of his chest, “rather than here—” he put a finger to his head. “Maybe it'll make more sense to me when it's finished.”

With that, he left the observation deck.

Burton's fathomless eyes fixed on the line of ocean at the horizon.

“Poems the poet cannot quite grasp. Dreams the dreamer cannot decipher. Mystery upon mystery. And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man. Weaving the unpatterned dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan.”

An hour passed, during which time he stood, motionless, lost in thought.

“Sir Richard,” came a voice from behind him. He turned and saw Captain Lawless. “Do you feel a vibration beneath your feet?”

“I do,” Burton answered. “Something to do with the stern engines?”

“Ah, you've heard. They're operating out of alignment with the forward engines and pushing us too hard. If we can't regulate our speed, we'll complete our voyage considerably ahead of schedule but in doing so the ship will have shaken herself half to pieces and won't be fit for the return journey. I don't much fancy being stuck in Zanzibar. I'm on my way down to engineering to see whether Mr. Gooch can cast some light on the matter. Would you care to accompany me?”

Burton nodded, and, minutes later, they found Daniel Gooch in an engineering compartment behind the furnace room. He'd removed a large metal panel from the floor and was on his knees, peering into the exposed machinery beneath. When he heard the two men approaching, he looked up and said, “There's a bearing cradle missing.”

“A what?” Burton asked.

“A bearing cradle. It's a metal ring, twelve inches in diameter, housing a cog mechanism and greased ball bearings. It's an essential component in the system that synchronises the engines. There are four bearing cradles on the ship, each governing four of the flight shafts. The one for the stern engines has gone. Someone has removed it.”

“Are you suggesting we've been sabotaged, Mr. Gooch?” Lawless asked.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“By someone on board?”

“That's very likely the case, sir.”

Nathaniel Lawless's pale-grey eyes narrowed. He clenched his fists and addressed Burton. “I don't like the idea that one of my crew is a rogue, Sir Richard. Nor do I understand it. Why would anyone wish to interfere with your expedition?”

Burton clicked his teeth together. He glanced at Gooch, who got to his feet and stood with his metal arms poised over his shoulders, then turned back to Lawless. “How much do you know about my mission, Captain?”

“Only that you intend to discover the source of the River Nile. I've been instructed by Mr. Brunel to deliver you and your supplies to Zanzibar. I understand that the government has funded the entire undertaking. Is there something more?”

“There is.”

“Then I ask you to tell me. You can count on my discretion. Mr. Gooch, would you leave us, please?”

“It's all right, Captain,” Gooch said. “You have authority over me on this ship but, as a Technologist, I hold a more senior position and happen to know the details. I apologise for having kept them from you, but our superiors felt that certain aspects of this expedition should remain hush-hush.”

Lawless looked from one man to the other. “That's all well and good, but if the Orpheus is in danger, I have the right to know why.”

“Agreed,” Burton said. “The truth, sir, is that while I hope to finally identify the source of the Nile, it is only a secondary consideration. The priority is to locate and retrieve a black diamond, known as the Eye of Nāga. In this endeavour, I am almost certainly opposed by a Prussian spy named Zeppelin.”

Lawless's eyes widened. “Are you telling me that our saboteur is a Prussian agent?”

“In all probability, yes. I should say he was commissioned by Zeppelin to interfere with the ship.”

Lawless raised a hand and ran it over his closely cropped white beard. His eyes flashed. “I'll keelhaul the bastard!”

“I'm not sure that's possible in a rotorship,” Gooch muttered.

“I'll bloody well make it possible!”

“We have to catch him first,” Burton observed.

“It's puzzling, though,” said Gooch. “If the saboteur intends to delay your expedition, don't you think it rather peculiar that he's committed an act which causes the ship to fly faster—albeit destructively so; an act that'll cause you to arrive at Zanzibar considerably earlier than planned?”

Burton frowned. “That, Mr. Gooch, is a very good point. A very good point indeed!”

Burton spoke to Swinburne, Trounce, Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Bhatti, Spencer, Miss Mayson, and Sister Raghavendra, and arranged for them to patrol the ship, keeping a close watch on the crew and their eyes peeled for suspicious behaviour. He then returned to his quarters, intending to update his journal. Pulling a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stopped in his tracks.

There was something on the desk.

He stepped into the room and looked around. The cabin was rectangular and of a medium size, carpeted, wallpapered, and well furnished. One of the thick ventilation pipes ran across the ceiling and four oil lamps were suspended two to each side of it. There were two other doors, one to the small bedchamber and the other to a tiny washroom.

The afternoon sun was sending a shaft of Mediterranean brilliance in through the porthole. Its white glare reflected brightly off the object, which hadn't been on the desk when Burton left the cabin a couple of hours earlier. He'd locked the door behind him. There were no other means of ingress.

He picked the thing up, went back out into the corridor, closed and locked the door, then knelt and squinted at the keyhole. He stood and paced away, heading toward the prow of the rotorship. Doctor Quaint was coming the other way.

“Doctor,” Burton said. “May I have a minute of your time?”

“Certainly. I say! What have you there?”

Burton held up the object. “A mystery, Doctor. It was on the desk in my quarters. Tell me—who else has a key?”

“To your cabin? Just Sister Raghavendra and myself.” Quaint reached into his pocket and pulled out a crowded key ring. “As stewards, we have access to all the passenger rooms.” He picked through the keys one by one. “Here it is. This is yours.”

“And have you used it today?”

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Could you prove that, should it be necessary?”

Quaint bristled slightly. “Sister Raghavendra will attest that I've been working with her all morning, throughout lunch, and up until a few minutes ago, when I left her in order to report to the captain. I've just come from the bridge.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I'm sorry to have troubled you. I'd better see the captain myself, I think.”

“Very well.” Quaint glanced again at the object.

Burton left the steward and proceeded along the corridor and up the metal stairs to the conning tower. He stepped onto the bridge, which was occupied by a number of crewmembers. Captain Lawless turned as he entered, saw what he was holding, and uttered an exclamation.

“Great Scott! Where did you find that?”

“On the desk in my cabin, Captain. Am I correct in assuming it's the missing bearing cradle?”

“You are. Let me see.”

Burton handed the metal ring to Lawless, who examined it closely before pronouncing it undamaged. He addressed Oscar Wilde, who was cleaning a console at the back of the room.

“Master Wilde, would you run this down to the engine room, please? Ask Mr. Gooch to have it fitted as soon as we land at Cairo.”

Wilde took the cradle and departed.

“In your cabin?” Lawless said. “How did it get there?”

“That's the question. I locked the door when I left and it was still locked when I returned. Doctor Quaint assures me that neither he nor Sister Raghavendra entered the room in my absence and I saw nothing to suggest the lock had been picked. That doesn't mean it wasn't, but in my experience there are usually tiny scratches left after that manner of break-in.”

Lawless removed his captain's hat and rubbed his head. “Well, whatever method your intruder used, this is rather an inept way to implicate you.”

“It would only implicate me if the stewards had found the bearing cradle while servicing my cabin. And you'd think it would at least be hidden under my bunk, rather than placed on top of my desk in broad daylight. Besides which, it makes no sense that I would sabotage my own expedition.”

Lawless hissed softly, “Curse it! I won't rest until we find this bloody traitor!”

“Nor I,” Burton whispered back. “I have my people patrolling the ship. Our villain will find it hard to cause any further damage without being caught in the act!”

The explorer remained on the bridge for the next three hours. He kept a close eye on the men at their stations, but saw nothing suspicious.

The Mediterranean slid beneath the big rotorship.

A hollow whistle sounded.

Lawless crossed to a brass panel in the wall and pulled a domed lid from it. As it came away, a segmented tube followed behind. Lawless flipped the lid open, blew into the tube, put it to his ear, and listened awhile. He then moved it to his mouth and said, “Hold him. I'll be right down.”

He clicked the lid back into the panel and said to Burton, “Apparently your assistant is causing merry mayhem in the engine room.”

“How so?”

Captain Lawless ignored the question and turned to his first officer. “Take command, please, Mr. Henson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Playfair, how long to Cairo?”

“Two and a half hours, sir, unless we can slow her down. All four stern engines are already overheating, according to my instruments.”

“Thank you. Mr. Bingham, report, please.”

The fat little meteorologist replied, “Clear sailing all the way, sir. Not a cloud in the sky. Breeze is northwesterly, currently less than five knots but building.”

“Mr. Wenham?”

“Steady going, sir.”

“Good. Follow me, Sir Richard.”

The aeronaut and explorer left the bridge, descended through the conning tower, and entered the corridor that ran the length of the rotorship.

“Mr. Swinburne claims to have caught our saboteur,” Lawless said.

“Ah!” Burton replied.

They entered the lounge and descended the port-side staircase, then moved past the standard-class cabins and on into the first of the engine-room compartments. The rumble of the turbines sounded from the next chamber, muffled by thickly insulated walls.

Peering past pipes and four wide rotating pillars, Burton saw Trounce and Honesty gripping the arms of a very small person. Engineers were gathered around them, and Swinburne was dancing in front of the police officers and their captive, shrieking at the top of his voice.

“Tobias Threadneedle, my eye!” he screeched. “Liar! Brute! Traitor! Impostor!”

“What are you doing down here, Algy?” Burton asked as he and Lawless joined the group. “I thought you were working?”

“I found myself unable to write, Richard, so I came in search of inspiration, and what I found instead—” Swinburne raised his voice to a scream and pointed his finger, “—is the one and only Vincent Sneed—otherwise known as the Conk!”

Burton looked down at the short, wiry individual held in the grip of the two Scotland Yard men. He wasn't much bigger than a child, and owned a very unprepossessing stoat-like face, dominated by a perfectly huge nose. A ragged, nicotine-stained moustache concealed his lipless mouth. His thin black hair was long, greasy, and combed back over his narrow skull. He was pockmarked and sly-looking, and his beady little eyes—positioned almost on the sides of his gargantuan proboscis rather than to either side of it in the normal way—were flicking back and forth in a panicked manner.

“I bloody aren't!” he protested. “Me name's Threadneedle. Arsk 'im!” He nodded to a small boy standing nearby, a ragamuffin with sandy-blond hair.

Captain Lawless said, “And who are you, my lad?”

“Willy Cornish, sir,” the boy answered nervously.

Daniel Gooch stepped forward, his mechanical arms slowly undulating to either side of him. “They are the ship's funnel scrubbers, Captain.”

Willy Cornish nodded and pointed at the prisoner. “That's right, sir. And he's who he says he is—Tobias Threadneedle.”

Swinburne let loose a tremendous howl and hopped up and down like a madman. “Willy! You know perfectly well this is Sneed!”

Cornish shifted uncomfortably and wrung his hands. “No, Carrots,” he said, employing the nickname he'd given the poet during the time they'd spent together sweeping chimneys. “I know he looks like old Sneed, but he's Mr. Threadneedle, and he's all right, he is.”

“All right? He's a rogue! A bully! A snake in the grass!”

“I ain't none o' them things!” the captive cried out, struggling to free himself.

“Here, less of that!” Trounce snapped.

“I'll have the cuffs on you!” Honesty threatened.

“I ain't done nuffink!” the prisoner protested.

“You sabotaged the ship!” Swinburne shouted.

“I bloody didn't!”

“You bloody did!”

“I bloody didn't!”

“SHUT UP!” Lawless roared. “You—” he jabbed a finger at Swinburne, “—calm down and explain.”

“The explanation,” Swinburne answered, “is that while this hound may be calling himself Tobias Threadneedle, he is actually, and without doubt, a scurrilous rogue by the name of Vincent Sneed. I worked side by side with him the year before last and he treated me abominably. I cannot be mistaken. Look at that nose of his! How many men do you think there are walking around with such a perfectly enormous beak?”

“Oy!” the prisoner objected.

“But you say Mr. Swinburne is mistaken?” Lawless demanded of Cornish.

“Y-yes, sir,” the boy stuttered. “I kn-know Mr. Sneed, and this ain't him.”

Swinburne groaned and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Why, Willy? Why are you supporting this blackguard?”

“Stop calling me them bleedin' names, you damned rat!” the accused man cried out.

“Algy,” Burton said. “Even if this is Mr. Sneed—”

“It is!”

“—What makes you think it was he who sabotaged the ship?”

“Because he's a villain!”

“So your allegation is based on supposition rather than evidence?”

Swinburne sighed and muttered, “Yes, Richard. But isn't it enough that he's lying to us?”

Burton turned to Captain Lawless. “Is there a secure room available? I'd like to keep this man under guard while we get to the bottom of this.”

“Use the first of the class-two passenger cabins,” Lawless said, pointing toward the corridor they'd come through. “I have to get back to the bridge. I'll send the steward down with the key. Report to me when this is sorted out, please.”

With that, the captain gave a last glance at the prisoner then marched away.

Burton addressed his assistant: “Algy, where is Herbert?”

“Holed up in his cabin, working on a philosophical treatise.”

“Would you fetch him, please?”

The poet shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glowered at the big-nosed man, frowned at Willy Cornish, then nodded and followed after Lawless.

Burton positioned himself in front of the individual who called himself Tobias Threadneedle and said, “Did you take part in a riot at Speakers' Corner last summer?”

“No!” the man answered. He couldn't meet Burton's eyes, and kept raising his own to the ceiling, anxiously scanning the pipes and machinery above. The way he squirmed in Trounce and Honesty's grip suggested that he wasn't telling the truth.

“The two men holding you are police officers,” Burton revealed.

Trounce added, “And we won't hesitate to arrest you and deliver you to a Cairo gaol if you're what Mr. Swinburne says you are!”

“Egyptian prison,” Honesty murmured. “Very nasty. Foul places.”

“Oh please, Mother! I ain't done nuffink!” their captive wailed. “I'm just a bleedin' funnel scrubber!”

“Sneed was at the riot,” Burton stated. “As were these two fellows and myself. My assistant got into a scrap with him. None of us saw it, but our colleague, Mr. Spencer, did. He's on his way down now, and he'll either endorse Mr. Swinburne's assertion, or he won't. If you're Tobias Threadneedle, you have nothing to worry about. If you're Vincent Sneed, things are about to go very badly for you.”

The prisoner let out a keening whine of despair.

Burton turned to Willy Cornish.

“I've heard good things about you, young man. I hope you're not telling fibs. I would be very disappointed indeed.”

Willy burst into tears and buried his face in the crook of his arm.

Daniel Gooch approached Burton and said, in a low voice, “That bearing cradle, Sir Richard—I understand it appeared in your cabin under mysterious circumstances?”

“Yes.”

“It's this fellow's duty—” one of Gooch's mechanical arms gestured toward Threadneedle, “—to keep the pipes clear on that side of the ship. He could have opened the ventilation panel in the pipe and entered your quarters through it.”

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Gooch.”

A few tense minutes passed while they waited for Herbert Spencer's arrival. When the clockwork philosopher entered the room—clanking along beside Swinburne, and with Pox squatting on his head—Threadneedle's little eyes widened and he stuttered, “Wha-wha-what's that thing?”

“Tosspot!” Pox squawked.

“Herbert,” Burton said. “Have you seen this fellow before?”

The brass man stepped over to Threadneedle and nodded. “Yus, Boss. He were at the riot last summer. He got into a fight with Mr. Swinburne. He's Vincent Sneed.”

The prisoner groaned and slumped.

Doctor Quaint walked in, glanced curiously at the scene, and handed a key to Burton. “Second-class cabin number one,” he said.

“Thank you, Doctor.” Burton addressed the Yard men: “Let us secure Mr. Sneed, gentlemen.”

He led the way to the cabin, followed by the policemen and their prisoner.

Swinburne turned to Willy Cornish and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Why were you protecting him, Willy? Has he threatened you?”

Willy looked up, his eyes swimming in tears. “I can't say, Carrots. I would, but I just can't!”

Swinburne shook his head and chewed his bottom lip. “There's something very wrong about all of this,” he grumbled. “But how the blazes am I to get to the facts of the matter if you won't help?”

With a cry of anguish, Willy suddenly sped away, ducked under the arms of the engineers who tried to stop him, and leaped onto machinery lining one of the walls. He clambered up it like a little monkey until he reached a ventilation panel. Swinging it open, he disappeared into the pipe behind.

“My hat!” the poet muttered. “What on earth has got into him?”

The Orpheus landed at the Cairo Airfield at seven in the evening, and the crew got to work taking on a fresh load of Formby coal and refilling the water tanks.

Vincent Sneed had been left alone to stew in Standard Class Cabin 1. He was slumped on the bunk when a key turned in the lock and the door opened. Sir Richard Francis Burton entered followed by Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty and a tall dark-skinned man wearing a uniform with epaulettes and a sash. His face was eagle-like, adorned with a moustache and imperial, and his eyes were black. There was a fez on his head.

“Mr. Sneed,” Burton said. “This is Al-Mustazi, the commissioner of the city police. He has men waiting outside. They will take you into custody until the British consul gets around to dealing with you. That could take a good few weeks, during which time you'll have to survive as best you can in Cairo's prison. I know you were born and raised in the Cauldron, and I know from personal experience what a hellhole that part of London is, but I can assure you that it will seem like Shangri-La in comparison to the conditions you are to experience shortly.”

Sneed looked up, his little ferrety eyes filled with wretchedness. “I ain't done nuffink,” he keened.

“Do you still maintain that your name is Tobias Threadneedle?”

The funnel scrubber swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing on his scrawny neck.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Even though you've been identified by two people as Vincent Sneed?”

“Yes.”

“Did you break into my quarters and deposit a bearing cradle in them?”

Burton noted that the little man's hands were trembling. He saw the eyes flick to the left and right, then up at the ceiling.

“I—I ain't done nuffink! Nuffink!”

Burton sighed. “Mr. Sneed, many a man has lied to me in the past and I have a practised eye. I can see by the way you hold yourself, by your every movement and expression, that you're not telling me the truth. I shall give you one final chance. Admit who you are, tell me why you placed the bearing cradle on my desk, then I shall see to it that you are shipped back to London with due dispatch. I'll even ask that no charges are brought against you. Obviously, you'll never work as a funnel scrubber again, but you can, at least, go back to being a master sweep.”

A tear trickled down Sneed's cheek. “You don't understand,” he said. “I knows I've been a bad 'un. P'raps a bit too strict, like, wiv the nippers. But I were only tryin' to get good work out o' them. I didn't mean no 'arm to that carrot-top. I were just trainin' 'im. An'—” he sucked in a shuddery breath and swallowed again, “—an' I don't mean no 'arm now, neither. I ain't done nuffink! I ain't done nuffink!”

“So you admit to the actions of Vincent Sneed yet still say you aren't him?”

The little man wrung his hands together then raised them to cover his face.

“Yes,” he groaned.

“Does the name Zeppelin mean anything to you?”

Sneed parted his fingers and looked out from behind them. “Zephram?”

“Zeppelin.”

“I don't know no Zeppelin.”

Burton turned to Trounce and Honesty. “Would you hand the prisoner over to your Egyptian colleagues, please?”

The two detectives nodded, stepped forward, and hoisted Sneed up off the bed.

“No!” he screeched, writhing in their grip. “Get yer 'ands off me!”

“No nonsense, if you please!” Trounce snapped.

They bundled him out of the cabin, to where four Egyptian constables waited. Sneed howled.

Burton, speaking fluent Arabic in the local dialect, quietly addressed Al-Mustazi: “Despite my threats to the man, I'd prefer it if you kept him from the worst of it. I sent my parakeet to the consul as soon as we landed with a request that the prisoner be processed with due dispatch. He'll be handed over to British authorities and sent home in a few days but there's no need to tell him that. Let him think he's going to be in Cairo prison for the long haul, it may teach him a lesson.”

Al-Mustazi murmured an acknowledgement, bowed, and departed.

Burton left the cabin and met Trounce and Honesty in the corridor. They headed up to the passenger lounge.

“Strange!” said Honesty. “Why so stubborn?”

“It's odd, I'll admit,” Burton replied. “And there was something else rather peculiar, too. He kept glancing up at the ceiling.”

“I noticed that,” Trounce grunted. “I wonder why?”

The three men joined Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, Bhatti, and Herbert Spencer in the lounge. The clockwork philosopher was incapable of drinking or smoking but he enjoyed company and needed the mental relaxation, despite that his mind was an electrical field processed by a machine. With Pox on his head, he sat at the bar with the men, who sipped at their brandy and sodas and gazed at the scattered lights of the city's houses and minarets. Burton smoked one of his disreputable Manila cheroots, Trounce opted for a rather more expensive Flor de Dindigul Indian cigar, while Honesty and Krishnamurthy puffed at their pipes. Neither Swinburne nor Bhatti smoked. The poet compensated for it by consuming twice as much brandy.

“Steady on,” Burton advised him.

“I need it,” his assistant answered. “I'm frustrated. Willy Cornish is a splendid young man, and I can't for the life of me think why he would defend a scurrilous miscreant like Sneed. And now he's vanished into the pipes and probably won't emerge until he's starving!”

“Needs interrogating!” Honesty snapped. “Spill the beans. Tell us what Zeppelin is up to.”

“Dribbly snot-rag!” Pox cawed.

“I don't understand it,” Krishnamurthy said. “Why would the Prussian hire a villain Mr. Swinburne could recognise in an instant?”

“Perhaps he didn't know that we'd encountered Sneed before,” Bhatti suggested.

Trounce snorted. “Pah! Too much of a coincidence! There's more to it, mark my words, lad!”

Burton nodded thoughtfully. “I agree,” he murmured. “There's a deeper mystery here.”

Doctor Quaint and Sister Raghavendra entered the chamber and began to light the oil lamps. Burton stood and wandered over to the young woman.

“Hello, Sadhvi. Have you settled into your duties?”

“Hello, Captain Burton. Yes. It's been a busy day. I'll go down to the kitchen in a minute to help Mr. Butler and Miss Mayson with the supper, then once that's cooked and eaten and tidied away, I'll retire to my cabin for a well-earned rest. Incidentally, I brought with me a volume of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads to read but I seem to have misplaced it. Might you ask him if he has a spare copy?”

“You can borrow mine. I'll have Quips deliver it to you. I should warn you, though—it's a mite vivid!”

“So I've heard, but I'm from India, Captain. I don't suffer the modesties, embarrassments, or fainting fits of your English ladies!”

Burton smiled. “Then you are most fortunate!”

On his way back to his friends, halfway across the small dance floor, the king's agent suddenly stopped and gazed up at the ceiling.

“By James!” he whispered. “Could it be? It would certainly explain a lot!”

When he sat down and picked up his drink, the others noticed that he wore a distracted expression.

“What's on your mind, Captain?” Bhatti asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I'm just—just thinking about—about—um—Christopher Rigby.”

“Yikes!” Swinburne exclaimed. “He's going to be nothing but trouble!”

“Who's Rigby?” Herbert Spencer asked.

“Malodorous horse bucket!” Pox whistled.

“The parakeet has it!” Swinburne declared. “Lieutenant Christopher Palmer Rigby is the consul at Zanzibar and a fat-headed ninny of the first order. Richard repeatedly knocked him off the top spot in language examinations back when they were stationed in India, and Rigby, sore loser that he is, has never forgotten it. The rotter's made a career of besmirching our friend's reputation. I'd like to punch the hound right on the nose!”

“Thank you, Algy,” Burton said. He explained further: “Rigby and I were in the East India Company's Eighteenth Bombay Native Infantry at Scinde, and he formed an immediate and irrational hatred of me from the outset. He'll cause problems for us when we land in Africa, of that I'm certain.”

“King's agent!” Honesty barked. “Authority!”

“Possessing authority is one thing,” Burton replied, “but expecting a man like Rigby to respect it is quite another.”

Over the next hour, he barely said another word, and when they attended the captain's table for supper, the explorer appeared so preoccupied that his bearing came perilously close to impoliteness. Afterward, he muttered a few words about writing up his journals and retired to his cabin.

He lit one lamp and turned it down low, then got undressed, washed, put on his pyjamas, and wrapped himself in his jubbah. He lit a cheroot and relaxed in an armchair, his eyes focused inward, his mind working on a Sufi meditation exercise.

He finished the cigar.

A couple of hours passed.

He didn't move.

Then: There!

He'd heard a faint noise, a tiny rasping sound.

He waited.

Again, an almost imperceptible scrape.

He allowed a few minutes to tick by.

“You should have asked before borrowing Sister Raghavendra's copy of Poems and Ballads.”

Silence.

He spoke again. “You made a scapegoat of Vincent Sneed. I have no fondness for the fellow, but why? What was the point?”

Thirty seconds or so passed.

A small, whispery voice said, “Distraction, Captain Burton.”

“There you are! Hello, lad! I take it Sneed and Willy Cornish smuggled you onto the ship in the replacement section of pipe?”

“Yes. I had ordered the previous two funnel scrubbers to purposely damage a section in order to facilitate my presence here.”

“So the Beetle, the chief of the League of Chimney Sweeps, finds himself en route to Africa. A bizarre circumstance indeed, and I imagine you must have a very good reason for leaving your chimney. Distraction, you say? Who are you trying to distract, and from what?”

Burton stood and moved to the middle of the room. He looked up at the grille in the thick ventilation pipe. Vaguely, he could discern something moving behind it.

“Don't turn the lamps up,” came the whisper.

“I don't intend to. I know how you abhor light.”

“One of my boys was killed.”

“Who?”

“Bingo Stokes. He was ten years old, and one of the few not an orphan. But his father mistreated him terribly, and Bingo often sought refuge in a chimney.”

“Ah. Now I understand. He cleaned the chimney of a house in Ilford, then went back there to steal food and spend a night in the flue.”

“That is correct, Captain. And while he was there, he overheard four men plotting. Three were Prussians, but, fortunately, they spoke in English on account of the fourth man. That individual was instructed to bring down this ship, if he couldn't kill you first. Unfortunately, Bingo's presence was detected, and though he got away, he was shot. By the time he reached me, it was too late to save him. He bled to death, but not before repeating to me everything he'd heard.”

“So there is still a saboteur at loose?”

“Yes, but I do not know who it is. I arranged to be smuggled aboard and I instructed Vincent Sneed to steal the bearing cradle.”

“You're conversant with the engineering of the Orpheus?”

“I had already read a great deal of material pertaining to her construction.”

Burton thought for a moment, then said, “So you alerted us to the fact that a saboteur was aboard by arranging a fairly harmless act of sabotage yourself?”

“Exactly, and in doing so, I made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Prussian agent to act, for your people were all on the lookout for suspicious behaviour. The first leg of your voyage was thus protected. I then placed the cradle in your room, knowing that Sneed would be recognised and accused.”

“Why do that?”

“Because now Sneed's been dealt with, your enemy will think that you consider yourselves safe. He'll be of the opinion that he can act with impunity when, in truth, you'll be watching out for him.”

Burton pondered this, then said, “You've done me a service, and I thank you, but I don't understand. Why such an extravagant scheme when you could've got a message to me before the Orpheus left Battersea?”

“If I had, what would you have done?”

“I'd have dismissed the entire crew, hired a new one, and had every inch of the ship thoroughly checked.”

“And how long would that have taken?”

“Perhaps four days. Maybe five or six.”

“Bingo Stokes learned something else. The man who owned the house, Steinruck, was taking care of some business in Yorkshire—”

“His real name is Zeppelin and he went there to arrange my poisoning.”

“I see. I'm glad he failed. Upon completing this business, he was going to fly to Prussia to join an expedition to Central Africa led by Lieutenant John Speke. I realised, therefore, that warning you would result in a delay you can ill afford, for you are in a race.”

“Bismillah!” Burton cursed. “I thought a rival expedition might be a possibility! So Speke and Zeppelin are already on their way?”

“They are, and that is why I chose the removal of the bearing cradle as my means of false sabotage, for I knew that it would result in a dangerous turn of speed. Maybe it will get you ahead in the game.”

Burton smacked a fist into his palm and paced up and down. “Damnation!” he muttered.

“You have no time for this stopover in Cairo,” the Beetle urged. “You must get this ship back into the air at once. The saboteur will make a move but he will undoubtedly lack the appropriate caution. Catch him, then catch up with your opponents.”

Burton hurried across the room and snatched up his clothes. “What of you?” he asked as he started to dress.

“I will watch and listen and try to identify the agent. After you are delivered to Zanzibar, I'll remain with the ship while it returns to London. Willy Cornish—who, incidentally, has been following my orders—will facilitate my return to Limehouse.”

“And Sneed?”

“He has a history of bullying my lads. This was his chance to redeem himself. He performed his part well and will be compensated for the inconvenience he is currently suffering.”

Burton quickly buttoned up his clothes and tied his bootlaces. He stepped to the door and grasped its handle. “I have to tell my people what you've done, then get us moving,” he said. “Thank you, lad. I'm in your debt.”

First Officer William Henson had just dropped off to sleep when a hammering at his cabin door awoke him. Swearing under his breath, he pulled on a gown, yanked open the door, and was confronted by the captain.

“Sleep is cancelled, Mr. Henson. I need all hands on deck.”

“Right away, sir. Is there a problem?”

“A change of schedule. No layover in Cairo. We're departing immediately. Mr. Gooch and the riggers will be recalibrating the four stern engines while we're in mid-flight. That means four external doors are going to be wide open in the sides of the engineering bay. We'll keep a low altitude, of course, but nevertheless I feel uneasy flying so exposed. I'd like you to oversee things down there until we're properly sealed up again.”

“Certainly, sir, though I'm sure Mr. Gooch—”

“Will have everything under control. I don't doubt it, Henson, but since we have only three riggers and there are four engines that require attention, Mr. Gooch will be out on one of the flight pylons.”

“Ah. I see. I'll get down there at once.”

“You can shave and tidy yourself up first. There are some internal repairs and adjustments to be made before Gooch and his team go outside. Get down there within the hour, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Henson's door was the first of a number to be knocked upon over the course of the next few minutes, and in very short measure the majority of the Orpheus's aeronauts found themselves unexpectedly back on duty.

It was a few minutes past midnight.

The rotorship's flight crew gathered on the bridge. Sir Richard Francis Burton was there, watching each of them carefully. They looked bleary-eyed and dishevelled. Captain Lawless did not. His uniform was buttoned, his eyes were bright, and he was all efficiency.

“What's going on, sir?” Arthur Bingham, the meteorologist, asked.

“I'll have your report, Mr. Bingham, not your questions,” Lawless snapped.

“Yes, sir. A wind has picked up. Rather strong. Easterly, currently at a steady twenty knots. No cloud.”

“You heard that, Mr. Playfair?”

“Yes, sir,” the navigator responded. “Taken into account. Course plotted to Aden.”

“Good man. Mr. Pryce, call down to Mr. Gooch and have him start the engines.”

“Aye, sir.” Wordsworth Pryce, the second officer, moved to the speaking tubes. Moments later, a vibration ran through the rotorship.

“Engage the wings, Mr. Wenham.”

“Engaging. Opening. Rotating…and…up to speed.”

“Take us to two thousand feet.”

On an expanding cone of steam, the Orpheus rose into the night sky and began to power into the southeast, leaving the ill-lit city of Cairo behind her. Above, the Milky Way arced across the heavens, but below, the narrow Red Sea and the lands to either side of it were wreathed in darkness, so it seemed that the ship was sailing through an empty void.

With her stern engines still operating abnormally, the huge vessel rattled and shook as she ate up the miles, speeding at almost 150 knots toward Aden, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

In the engine room, the bearing cradle had been refitted, but it took Daniel Gooch and his fellow engineers almost four hours to reset the synchronisation system, which they achieved by shutting down the four rear engines one at a time while adjusting the various components to which the cradle was connected.

Now all that remained was to recalibrate each of those stern-most engines.

Gooch and the riggers Gordon Champion, Alexander Priestley, and Winford Doe, positioned themselves at the four hull doors and buckled themselves into harnesses. They clipped safety straps to brackets above the portals.

First Officer Henson pulled a speaking tube from the wall.

On the bridge, his call was answered by Oscar Wilde, who said, “Captain Lawless, Mr. Henson is asking permission to open the external doors.”

Lawless was standing by the window with Sir Richard Francis Burton. They were watching al-fajr al-kaadhib, the zodiacal light, which was rising column-like in the western sky. He said, “Tell him permission is granted, Master Wilde.”

“Aye, sir,” the boy replied. He relayed the message down to the engine room.

Lawless stepped over to the helmsman and stood beside him, quietly ordering, “Steady as she goes, please, Mr. Wenham.”

“Aye-aye, sir, but—” Wenham hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I—um—I think—” The helmsman turned to Cedric Playfair, the navigator. “Shouldn't we still be over the Red Sea?”

“Yes,” Playfair answered, glancing at his instruments.

“Then why is there desert below us?”

Lawless and Playfair both looked up and saw what Wenham had spotted—that the vaguest glimmers of light were skimming not over water, but sand dunes.

“Impossible!” Playfair gasped.

Burton joined them and watched as the navigator checked over his console.

“The compass says we're travelling south-southeast,” Playfair muttered. “But if that were true, we'd be where we should be.” He tapped the instrument, then bent, opened a panel in the console, reached in, and felt about, muttering: “Maybe something is interfering with—hello! What's this?” He pulled out a small block of metal, and as he did so, the compass needle swung from SSE to SE.

“A magnet!” Burton observed.

“How the devil—?” Playfair exclaimed.

Lawless clenched his teeth and bunched his fists.

“But it shouldn't make any difference!” Francis Wenham objected. “That compass is just for reference. It isn't used to set the course.”

“He's right, sir,” Playfair put in. “Mr. Wenham follows the instrumentation on his own console. It indicates the degrees to port or starboard he should steer the ship to maintain the course I set. Taking into account the compensation I calculated, if he's followed his indicators exactly, we should be slap bang over the Red Sea.”

“And I have done,” Wenham noted.

“Compensation?” Burton asked.

“For the wind, sir,” Playfair replied.

Burton stepped back to the window. He turned and gestured for Oscar Wilde to join him.

“Yes, sir?” the boy asked.

“Can you find me some field glasses?”

“Right over here,” said Wilde, crossing to a wall cabinet and returning with a large-lensed brass device. Burton took it and raised it to his face, clipping its bracket over his head. He turned back to the window, and with the fingers of both hands rotated the focusing wheels on either side of the apparatus.

The land below was wreathed in darkness, with just the tips of dunes visible in the faint light of al-fajr al-kaadhib. The field glasses threw them into sharp relief.

“Captain Lawless,” Burton murmured, “I have a reasonably clear view of the sand dunes below us.”

“What of it, Sir Richard?”

“They are entirely motionless. There is no sand rippling across their surface or spraying from their peaks. In other words, the strong wind Mr. Playfair just mentioned is nonexistent, at least at ground level, and since we're flying low—”

“If I've been taking into account a wind that isn't actually blowing, it would certainly explain our position,” Playfair put in.

“Mr. Bingham!” Lawless roared, but when he turned to the meteorologist's position, he saw that it was unoccupied. “Where the devil is he?” he demanded.

“Mr. Bingham left the bridge some little time ago, so he did, sir,” said Oscar Wilde.

“Playfair, Wenham, get us back on course! Sir Richard, come with me. We have to find my meteorologist. He has some explaining to do!”

Some minutes later, they located Arthur Bingham in the engine room, standing with Daniel Gooch, Shyamji Bhatti, and Winford Doe near one of the open hull doors. Doe was unbuckling his harness.

“Hallo, Captain Burton, Captain Lawless!” Bhatti called as they approached.

Gooch turned and said, “Almost done, Captain. Mr. Champion is just putting the finishing touches to the last of our wayward engines.”

Lawless ignored the chief engineer and glared at the short, fat meteorologist. “You appear to have deserted your post without permission, Bingham.”

“I—I just came down to watch Mr. Gooch at—at work, sir,” Bingham responded.

“Worried he'd be blown off the pylon by the high winds, were you?”

Bingham took a couple of steps backward.

“Is there a problem?” Gooch asked.

Lawless's eyes flashed angrily. “There most certainly is!”

Bingham pulled a pistol from his pocket and brandished it at them. “Get back, all of you!”

“Bloody traitor!” Lawless snapped.

“Hey! Drop that!” Bhatti cried out.

Bingham swung the pistol toward the constable, then pointed it at Burton, then at Lawless. His lips thinned against his teeth and his eyes flashed threateningly.

Lawless said, “Why?”

“Because I have a wife and two children,” the meteorologist snarled. “And I also happen to have a tumour in my gut and not many months to live. A certain party has agreed to pay my family a large amount of money in return for the sacrifice I'm about to make.” He directed his gun back at the king's agent. “I wouldn't have to do it at all but for you, Burton. I followed you to Ilford and back and took a pot-shot at you.”

“You ruined a perfectly good hat.”

“It's a crying shame I didn't spoil the head it was adorning. If you'd have been decent enough to die then, this ship and its crew would have been spared.”

“You're not the only man Zeppelin hired to kill me,” Burton revealed. “The other was promised money and received instead the count's hands around his neck.”

“Ah, so you know my employer, then! But what do you mean?”

“My other would-be assassin was strangled to death, Bingham. Had you managed to put a bullet in me, I have little doubt that Zeppelin's associates would have then put one in you. As for money being paid to your family, you can forget it. The Prussians will feel no obligation to you once you're dead.”

“Shut your mouth!” Bingham yelled. His finger whitened on the trigger as he jerked his pistol back and forth between Burton, Lawless, and Bhatti.

“Give it up, man!” the latter advised. “Don't leave your family stained with the name of a traitor!”

The meteorologist backed away a step. “Not another word out of you!” he spat at Bhatti. “As for you, Burton, they want an end to your little jaunt to Africa, and this—” With his free hand, Bingham undid his tightly buttoned jacket and pulled it open. He wasn't the fat man they thought he was. He was a slim man made bulky by a vest fashioned from sticks of dynamite. “This will ensure they get what they want!”

“Hell's teeth!” Captain Lawless shouted. “Are you bloody insane, man?”

Bingham sneered nastily. “Blame your friend here, Lawless. He's left me with no choice but to eliminate you all.”

“You do have a choice,” Burton said. “Shoot me now and spare the ship.”

“No. I've overheard you and your companions enough to know that, now they're on their way to Africa, they'd continue your mission without you. This is it for all of you.”

He placed his left index finger over a button in the middle of his chest.

“Bingham! There are women and children on board!” Lawless bellowed.

“To protect my own woman, and my own children, I would do anything, even—”

Shyamji Bhatti suddenly threw himself at the meteorologist, thudded into him, and with his arms wrapped around the saboteur, allowed his momentum to send them both toppling out of the open hull door. There came a blinding flash from outside and a tremendous discharge. The floor swung upward and slapped into the side of Burton's head, stunning him and sending him sliding across its metal surface. Bells jangled in his ears. Through the clamour, as if from a far-off place, he heard someone yell: “We're going down!”