Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

–OSCAR WILDE

Eighteen-year-old PC53 William Trounce had failed to make his first arrest.

He always timed his beat so he'd reach Constitution Hill in time for Queen Victoria's spin around Green Park. He thought the young monarch—who was just three years into her reign—was taking a needless risk with these daily excursions. He understood her need to escape for a few precious moments from the stuffy formality of Buckingham Palace, but there were many who still thought her a puppet of the unpopular prime minister, Lord Melbourne, and they often took the opportunity to jeer and boo as she rode through the park in her open-topped carriage. Trounce considered it one of his essential duties to be there in time to move the naysayers along.

Today he was going to be late, and it was Dennis the Dip's fault. He'd spotted the notorious East End pickpocket on the Mall. The crook was, as usual, dressed as a gentleman and looked entirely at home among the well-heeled crowd that sauntered back and forth along the ceremonial avenue. He scrubbed up well, did Dennis, and easily passed muster as a gent so long as he kept his mouth shut. Were any of his fellow perambulators to hear him speak, though, they would have instantly recognised the harsh accent and mangled grammar of the Cauldron and would most certainly have given him a very wide berth indeed.

As it was, Dennis mingled with his potential victims with nary a glance of suspicion cast his way. No glances—but there was one unwavering gaze, and that belonged to PC53 Trounce.

It would have been a very satisfying first feather in his cap for the young constable if he'd ended the career of this particular villain today, but alas it was not to be. Dennis's eyes flicked from handbag to handbag, pocket to pocket, but his long, restless fingers remained in plain view the whole time, and Trounce had to settle for warning the man away.

“Oh bleedin’ ’eck, I ain't up to nuffink, am I!” Dennis had whined. “Jest givin’ me Sunday best an airing, that's all.”

“It's Wednesday, Dennis,” Trounce pointed out.

The thief objected and wriggled on the spot a little more before finally scurrying off, and Trounce resumed his beat, a mite disappointed that he'd still not “christened his badge” after two weeks on the beat.

At the end of the Mall he passed Buckingham Palace and turned right into the park. He preferred to walk along on the grass rather than on the Constitution Hill path itself; it was better to position himself behind the crowds that often gathered along Victoria's route, for the troublemakers nearly always hid at the back, where they could more easily take to their heels should anyone object to their catcalls.

He saw that Her Majesty's carriage, drawn by four horses—the front left ridden by a postilion—was already trundling along a little way ahead of him. He increased his pace to catch up, striding down a gentle slope with an excellent view of the scene. Despite the mild weather, the crowd was sparse today. There were no protests and few hurrahs.

He jumped at the sound of a gunshot.

What the hell?

Breaking into a run, he peered ahead and noticed a man wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches walking beside the slow-moving carriage. He was throwing down a smoking flintlock and drawing, with his left hand, a second gun from his coat.

In an instant, horror sucked the heat from Trounce's body and time slowed to a crawl.

His legs pumped; his boots thudded into the grass; he heard himself shout: “No!”

He saw heads turning toward the man.

His breath thundered in his ears.

The man's left arm came up.

The queen stood, raising her hands to the white lace around her throat.

Her husband reached for her.

A second man leaped forward and grabbed the gunman. “No, Edward!” came a faint yell.

The scene seemed to freeze; the two men entwined; their faces, even from this distance, so similar, like brothers; each person in the crowd poised in mid-motion, some stepping forward, some stepping back; the queen upright in the carriage, wearing a cream-coloured dress and bonnet; her consort, in a top hat and red jacket, reaching for her; the four outriders turning their horses.

Christ! thought Trounce. Christ, no! Please, no!

A freakish creature suddenly flew past.

Tall, loose-limbed, bouncing on spring-loaded stilts, it skidded to a halt in front of him. Trounce stumbled and fell to his knees.

“Stop, Edward!” the weird apparition bellowed.

A bolt of lightning crackled from its side into the ground and the lean figure staggered, groaning and clutching at itself. Below, the two struggling men turned and looked up.

A second shot echoed across the park.

Mist-enshrouded Tabora was dirty and crowded and filled with oppressively monolithic buildings and bustling, noisy streets. Its many vehicles reminded Sir Richard Francis Burton of hansom cabs, except their steam-horses had been incorporated into the body of the cabin, so the things rumbled along on four wheels with no visible means of locomotion. Bertie Wells referred to them as “motor-carriages.”

The two men were in one now, along with the three Tommies from the Britannia, one of whom was driving the contraption by means of a wheel and foot pedals. Burton watched him and thought the operation looked exceedingly complicated.

Upon the rolling sphere's arrival in the besieged city, the king's agent had been hustled out of the ship and marched straight to a rather more luxurious motor-carriage than the one in which he was currently sitting. He'd waited in it for a while before being joined by Wells, General Aitken, and a driver. The latter started the engine, steered the vehicle onto a broad street, and sent it rattling along until they reached the centre of the city. A second conveyance—the one Burton was now in—had followed behind.

He was escorted into a large square building that, from the outside, reminded him of London's Athenaeum Club but which, on the inside, proved far less opulent. Here, he was presented to twelve generals who, along with Aitken, acted in lieu of an elected government. They ordered him to explain how he'd come to be in the Ugogi POW camp and why he was being moved. He answered the first part of the question truthfully. To the second part he said simply: “I don't know.”

The men then requested a full description of Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck and demanded that Burton recount everything the German had said to him. He told them as much as he could without revealing his identity.

Finally, they questioned him about the approaching L.59 Zeppelin and its payload, the A-bomb.

When he'd finished explaining, he was summarily dismissed.

Bertie Wells had taken him back outside and to the second car, in which the Tommies were waiting.

They were now on their way to a secret destination.

“We're supposed to be escorting you to Colonel Crowley,” Wells said, “but we're disobeying orders. When he finds out, if we're lucky, we'll be court marshalled and executed by firing squad.”

Burton looked at his companion and asked, “And if you're unlucky?”

“He'll use his mediumistic powers on us. I dread to think how that might turn out. One way or the other, though, this is a suicide mission.”

“Bloody hell!” Burton exclaimed. “Why didn't you tell me that before? I'd rather face this Crowley character than have you sacrifice yourself!”

“Which is exactly the reason I kept it quiet. I'm only telling you now so you'll realise the importance of what we're doing. I trust my editor implicitly, despite his eccentricities, and if he says the future depends on him meeting you, then I'm willing to bet my life that it does. Here, strap on this pistol, you shouldn't be without a weapon.”

Burton clipped the holster to his belt. He watched, amazed, as three smaller versions of the Britannia suddenly sped out of the billowing mist and swept past the motor-carriage. They were about eight feet in diameter and lacked the jungle-slicing arms of the bigger ship.

“What are those things?”

“Steam spheres. I suppose the nearest equivalent you had in your time was the velocipede.”

Burton shook his head in wonder, then said, “Eccentricities?”

Wells smiled. “The old man has a rather unconventional sense of style and his, um, ‘living arrangements’ tend to raise eyebrows.”

“Why so?”

“The gentleman he lodges with is, er, rather more than a friend, if you know what I mean.”

Burton threw up his hands in exasperation. “Good grief! It's 1918 and that's still considered unconventional? Has the human race not evolved at all since my time?”

The driver swung the motor-carriage into a narrow side street and accelerated down to the end of it, drawing to a stop outside a plain metal door.

Bertie stepped out of the vehicle. Burton and the Tommies followed. The explorer wiped perspiration from his eyes and muttered an imprecation. Tabora possessed the atmosphere of a Turkish bath.

“Keep alert,” the war correspondent said to the three soldiers. They nodded, drew pistols from their holsters, and stood guard at the door while Wells ushered Burton through it.

“Up the stairs, please, Richard.”

The king's agent passed an opening on his left and ascended. There was an oil lamp hanging from the upper landing's ceiling, and by its light he saw that the walls were painted a pale lilac and decorated with colourful theatre posters, most of them dating from the 1880s. He reached the top and stopped outside a wooden door with a glowing fanlight above it. Wells reached past him and rapped his knuckles against the portal: Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock.

“Code?” Burton asked.

“Open sesame,” Wells replied.

Algernon Swinburne's face flashed before the explorer's mind's eye.

“Come,” a voice called from the room beyond.

They pushed the door open and stepped through into a large chamber. It was lit by four wall lamps and reminded Burton of his study in Montagu Place, for it was lined with bookshelves, had two large desks, and was decorated with all manner of ornaments and pictures and nicknacks.

A crimson rug lay between four leather armchairs in the centre of the room. A heavyset man was standing on it, and, immediately, Burton felt that he'd seen him somewhere before. He was tall, rather fat, and appeared to be in his mid-sixties. His brown hair—which had obviously been dyed, for its roots were grey—was long and fell in waves to his shoulders. It framed a jowly face, with creases and wrinkles around the grey, indolent eyes, and full-lipped mouth. He was wearing a black velvet smoking jacket, inky-blue slacks, and leather button-up boots. There was a long cigarette holder between the pudgy ringed fingers of his left hand.

After a long pause, spent staring fixedly at the king's agent, the man drawled: “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

His voice was deep and mellow and lazy. It possessed an Irish lilt.

Burton almost collapsed.

“Quips!” he cried out. “Bismillah! It's Quips!”

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde grinned, displaying crooked teeth, threw his cigarette holder onto a table, rushed forward, and took Burton by both hands.

“Captain Burton!” he exclaimed. “You're alive and young again! By heavens! How have you done it? I demand to know the secret! To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable!”

Burton gave a bark of laughter. “Still the rapier-sharp wit! The war hasn't blunted that, I see, and praise be to Allah for it! It's good to see you, lad! It's bloody good to see you!”

“Sure and begorra, he's calling me lad now! And here's me a quarter of a century his senior by the looks of it!” Wilde caught Burton as the explorer suddenly sagged. “Hey now, you're trembling all over! Come and sit down. Bertie, in the drinks cabinet—there's a decanter of brandy. Fetch it over, would you? Sit, Captain. Sit here. Are you feeling faint?”

“I'm all right,” Burton croaked, but, to his horror, he suddenly found himself weeping.

“It's the shock, so it is,” Wilde said. “A dash of brandy will put you right. Pour generously, Bertie, the captain probably hasn't tasted the good stuff for a long while.”

“I haven't—I haven't tasted it at all since—since Dut'humi,” Burton said, his voice weak and quavering.

Wells passed him a glass but Burton's hand was shaking so violently that Wilde had to put his own around it and guide the drink to the explorer's mouth. Burton gulped, coughed, took a deep shuddering breath, and sat back.

“Quips,” he said. “It's really you.”

“It is, too, Captain. Are you feeling a little more steady now?”

“Yes. My apologies. I think—I never—I never expected to find a little piece of home in this hellish world.”

Wilde chuckled and looked down at himself. “Not so little any more, I fear.” He addressed Herbert Wells: “Bertie, you'd best be getting off—we don't have much time. The devil himself will be snapping at our heels soon enough, so he will.”

Wells nodded. “Richard,” he said, “I'm going to prepare our escape. All being well, I'll see you within a couple of hours.”

“Escape?”

Wilde said, “Are you fit to take a walk? I'll explain as we go.”

“Yes.” Burton drained his glass and stood up. “By ‘the devil himself,’ I assume you mean Crowley.”

The three men moved to the door and started down the stairs.

“That I do, Captain.”

They reached the lower hallway. Wells opened the street door and peered out. The three Tommies were waiting by the car. The little war correspondent nodded to Burton and Wilde and slipped out into the mist, closing the portal behind him.

Wilde gestured to the opening in the side wall. “Into the basement, if you please, Captain.”

Burton stepped through and started down the wooden stairs he found beyond. “I don't understand Crowley and all this mediumistic business, Quips. The only evidence I've seen of it is the Germans occasionally manipulating the weather.”

“When the Hun destroyed London, they killed most of our best mediums, which is horribly ironic, do you not think? Here we are. Wait a moment.”

The stairs had ended in a large basement, which was filled with old furniture and tea chests. Wilde crossed to a heavy armoire standing against the far wall.

“Ironic?” Burton asked.

“Yes, because our clairvoyants didn't predict it! As a matter of fact, we now think their opposite numbers, on the German side, may have perfected some sort of mediumistic blanket that can render things undetectable.”

“Such as the approaching A-Bomb, for instance?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Ah-ha! That's got it!”

Wilde had been fiddling with something behind the big wooden unit. Now the whole thing slid smoothly aside, revealing the entrance to a passage. He turned and grinned at Burton. “Do y'know, I became the captain of a rotorship thanks to you? Do you remember old Nathaniel Lawless? A fine gentleman!”

“I remember him very clearly, and I agree.”

“After you wangled me the job on the poor old Orpheus, Lawless would never settle for another cabin boy. He sponsored my training, helped me rise through the ranks, and, before you know it, I was given captaincy of HMA Audacious. A lovely vessel, so she was, but the war had broken out by then and she was put to fiendish use. I soon found that I was losing myself in the mesmeric brutality of battle. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it's looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. It took me a few years, I must confess, to realise that vulgarity.”

He indicated that Burton should follow and disappeared into the secret passage.

“So I had myself drummed out of the Air Force.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Through what they call ‘conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman.’ I inspired the wrath of a certain Colonel Queensberry, and he rather gleefully put his proverbial boot to my backside. It caused a bit of a stir at the time, I can tell you.”

“And afterward you became a newspaper man?”

“Aye, I did that—going back to my roots, as you might say—and I wound up in Tabora.”

The passage made a sharp turn to the right. As they continued on, Burton looked at the small lights that, strung along a long wire, gave illumination. “How do these work?” he asked, pointing at one.

“Electricity.”

“Ah! Like I saw on the Britannia! Was it Isambard who mastered the technique?”

“Good Lord!” Wilde cried out. “Brunel! I haven't thought of him in years! What a genius he was!”

“And for all his faults, loved by the public,” Burton noted.

“To be sure! To be sure! Ah, what a delight it must be to be a Technologist! So much more romantic than being the editor of a newspaper! I can assure you that popularity is the one insult I have never suffered. But to answer your question: yes, he mastered electricity—in 1863, as it happens.”

They hurried on, with Wilde panting and puffing as he propelled his bulk forward.

“Where are we going, Quips?”

“All in good time, Captain.”

Burton began to wonder if the tunnel spanned the entire city.

“So the mediums,” he said. “They were killed when London fell?”

“So they were. And we had no more of them until 1907, when Crowley came to the fore. In recent years he's focused his talents on defending this city, which is why the Germans have never managed to conquer it.”

“Surely, then, he should be regarded as a hero? Why is it that no one seems to have a good word to say of him?”

Wilde shrugged. “That's a difficult one. There's just something about him. He's sinister. People suspect that he has some sort of hidden agenda. Here we are.”

They'd reached a door. Wilde knocked on it, the same arrhythmic sequence Wells had used earlier. It was opened by a seven-foot-tall Askari—obviously of the Masai race—who whispered, “You'll have to be quick. There's some sort of flap on. They're going to move the prisoner.”

Wilde muttered an acknowledgement. He and Burton stepped into what appeared to be a records room, followed the soldier out of it into a brightly lit corridor, and ran a short distance along it until they came to a cell door. However, when it was unlocked and opened, the room behind it proved to be not a cell at all but a very large and luxurious chamber, decorated in the English style, with Jacobean furniture and paintings on its papered walls.

In its middle, there was a metal frame with a wizened little man—naked but for a cloth wrapped around his loins—suspended upright inside it. He was held in place by thin metal cables that appeared to have been bolted straight through his parchment-like skin into the bones beneath. His flesh was a network of long surgical scars and he was horribly contorted, his arms and legs twisted out of shape, their joints swollen and gnarled, and his spine curved unnaturally to one side. His finger-and toenails were more than two feet long and had grown into irregular spirals. Bizarrely, they were varnished black.

Large glass bulbs also hung from the frame, and were connected to the figure by tubes through which pink liquid was pumping. Each one held an organ: a throbbing heart, pulsating lungs, things that quivered and twitched.

Burton saw all this in a single glance, then his eyes rested on the man's face and he couldn't look away.

It was Palmerston.

Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was bald, and the skin of his face was stretched so tightly that it rendered him almost featureless. But despite the eyes being mere slits, the nose a jagged hole, and the mouth a horribly wide frog-like gash; despite that the ears had been replaced by two brass forward-pointing hearing trumpets, riveted directly into the sides of his skull; despite all this, it was plainly Palmerston.

The old man's eyes glittered as he watched his visitors enter.

Wilde closed the door and stepped to one side of it. He gently pushed Burton forward. The king's agent approached and stopped in front of the man who'd once been prime minister. He tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was: “Hello.”

Just above Palmerston's head, an accordion-like apparatus suddenly jerked then expanded with a wheeze. It gave a number of rapid clicks, expelled a puff of steam, then contracted and emitted a sound like a gurgling drain. Words bubbled out of it.

“You filthy traitorous bastard!”

Burton recoiled in shock. “What?”

“You backstabbing quisling!”

The explorer turned to Wilde. “Did you bring me here to be maligned?”

“Please allow him a moment to get it out of his system, Captain. It's been pent up for half a century.”

“Prussian spy! Treasonous snake! You dirty collaborator!”

“I have no idea what he's talking about. Is he sane?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“How old is he?

“A hundred and thirty-four.”

“You never bloody told me!” Palmerston gurgled.

“Have you finally run out of insults, Pam?” Burton asked.

“Lord Palmerston, you insolent cur! You never told me!”

“Told you what?”

The misshapen figure squirmed and stretched spasmodically.

Wilde said, “Calm yourself, please, Lord Palmerston. We don't have time for tantrums.”

The ex-prime minister went limp. He glared at Burton with sulphurous hatred. The accordion-thing shook and rattled and groaned, expanded, blew out more steam, and squeezed shut.

“I sent you to Africa to find the Eye of Nāga. You succeeded in your mission but you neglected to report that, in the course of retrieving it, you'd visited the future!”

“Sir,” Burton replied. “You must understand: you're berating me for something that, from my point of view, I haven't done yet.”

“You saw this damned war. You saw that the Germans were running rampant over the entire globe. You saw that the British Empire had been reduced to this one small enclave. Yet you purposely kept it from me! You were working for the Prussians all along!”

“No, I was not.”

“Then why?”

“How can I possibly account for decisions I haven't yet made?”

“Traitor!”

Burton looked at Oscar Wilde and gave a helpless shrug.

Wilde stepped forward. “Gentlemen, let us get straight to the point. Captain, if I might explain—Lord Palmerston is blamed by the majority of Britishers for the woeful position we find ourselves in.”

“Yes, Bertie Wells expressed such a sentiment.”

“Indeed. Fortunately, Bertie has acted counter to his views on the matter out of loyalty to me, for I, along with a few others, am of the opinion that Lord Palmerston only ever had the best interests of the Empire in mind when he made the decisions that led to this war.”

Burton looked at the monstrosity hanging in the frame and murmured, “I don't disagree. But, Quips, those ‘best interests’ were envisioned according to the manner in which he comprehended the influences at play: the political landscape; the perceived shape of society and culture; the advice of his ministers; and so forth. In my opinion, his judgement of those things was erroneous in the extreme, and so too, inevitably, were his decisions.”

Palmerston emitted a spiteful hiss.

Wilde nodded. “A fair statement, but is it not the case that the manner in which a man apprehends the present is shaped by his past?”

“Then where does the responsibility for his decisions lay? With Time itself? If so, then you're proposing that Palmerston is a victim of Fate.”

“I am. Furthermore, I submit that you are, too. So perhaps you should stop striving to understand what is happening and, instead, simply allow it to play out however it will. You've just learned that you'll return to the past, which, I'm sure, is very welcome news indeed. Bertie is currently making arrangements to ensure that you get out of Tabora. When you do so, I suggest that you placidly follow whatever sequence of events leads you home.”

Burton was suddenly filled with longing. How he missed Mrs. Angell, his comfortable old saddlebag armchair, his library, even Mr. Grub, the street vendor, whose pitch was on the corner of Montagu Place!

“Captain,” Wilde continued, “just as Lord Palmerston made his decisions according to how the past taught him to gauge the state of affairs, so, too, will you. In 1863, you'll determine—you did determine—not to reveal that you had survived for a number of years in a war-torn future where you witnessed the death of the British Empire. Our history books, such as they are, don't reveal anything that casts light on why you took this course of action. Biographies written about you don't even mention that you were the king's agent, for that was a state secret. They say the second half of your life was lived quietly, indulging in scholarly pursuits. This is only partially true. What really happened is that you exiled yourself to Trieste, on the northeastern coast of Italy, from there to watch the seeds of war sprouting. You died in that city in 1890, ten years before the Greater German Empire invaded its neighbouring countries.”

Sir Richard Francis Burton moistened his lips with his tongue. He raised his hand and put his fingertips to the deep and jagged scar on his left cheek, the one made by a Somali spear back in '55.

“Am I to take it that you're blaming me for the war?” he asked huskily.

“Yes!” Palmerston gurgled.

“No, not at all,” Wilde corrected. “People are wrong to condemn Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston is wrong to condemn you. You do not represent the evils of this world, Captain Burton—you represent hope.”

“Because you think I can alter history?”

“Indeed so. Lord Palmerston and I were already aware that Crowley had, in 1914, detected an aberrant presence in Africa. When Bertie Wells told me—about eighteen months ago—that he'd met you, we realised what that aberration was and how it—you—could be employed to change everything.”

“So whatever the circumstances I find when I return to 1863, you want me to somehow suppress the reactions that my own past has instilled in me, ignore what I consider to be my better judgement, and—” he turned to face Palmerston,“—and tell you everything I've seen here during the past five years?”

“Tell me everything, Burton!”

“Should I even describe your present—um—condition?”

“I insist upon it. I would like the opportunity to die naturally, with a little grace, at a much earlier time.”

Burton sighed. “I'm sorry. It won't work.”

“Why not?” Wilde asked.

“I will most assuredly do as you suggest, and I might succeed in creating a history in which this war never happens. If so, I'll have the good fortune to live in it. But you won't. Here, nothing will change. You won't wink out of existence and wake up in a new world. Instead, a new history will branch off from the moment I change my actions, and it will run parallel to this one.”

“Is there then no hope for us?”

“If I understand the workings of time correctly, the only way to alter the circumstances in which you exist, as opposed to the future that lies ahead, would be to somehow change the past without leaving the present—like sitting on a tree branch and sawing it through behind you, at the trunk.”

“Isn't that what we're doing by making this request?”

“Asking a person to perform an action is not the same as performing that action yourself.”

“Captain, you're implying that time and history are entirely subjective.”

“Yes, I rather think I am.”

There came a knock at the door. It opened and the Masai guard poked his head into the room. “You have to get out of here,” he said. “They're on their way. They're going to move Lord Palmerston onto the Britannia.”

Wilde nodded and the guard withdrew.

“Don't allow them to move me!”

“The city is about to be destroyed, sir,” Wilde said. “A select few will attempt to escape in the sphere. It appears you'll be among them.”

Palmerston was silent for a moment, then: “Burton, do as we say. If it won't change this world, it will, at least, create another, better one, and Mr. Wilde and I can die knowing that somewhere, other versions of us lived better lives.”

Burton looked at Wilde, who nodded and said, “We have to go.”

“Wait!” Palmerston ordered. “Burton, I don't trust you. You have to demonstrate your loyalty.”

“How?”

“Obey my final order. Without question!”

“What is it?”

“I have received so many Eugenicist treatments that I cannot die a natural death. That fiend Crowley has been feeding off my mental energy like a damned vampire to supplement his mediumistic powers. I cannot stand it any more. Take out your pistol right this minute and shoot me through the head.”

Without hesitation, Burton drew his revolver, raised the weapon, looked Palmerston in the eyes, and pulled the trigger.

“They probably heard that!” Wilde exclaimed. “We'd better leg it!”

They left the cell and raced down the corridor. The Masai ushered them into the records room. Burton saw that the tunnel entrance was normally concealed behind a tall filing cabinet.

“Go through and I'll slide it back,” the guard said. “Then I'll hold them at bay until I'm dead or out of ammo.”

“You're a good fellow, so you are,” Wilde said as he stepped through the opening.

“The word is out,” the Masai replied. “It was announced on the wireless minutes ago. Everyone knows what's coming. It's the end. I might as well go out with a bang!” He vanished from view as he slid the filing cabinet into place.

“The fool!” Burton hissed. “Why doesn't he come with us?”

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it's always from the noblest motives,” Wilde replied. “Come on! Let's not make his death in vain!”

It took them fifteen minutes to reach the other end of the passage. They stepped out into Wilde's basement and the ex-editor panted: “I'm pooped!”

“You never abandoned your diet of gobstoppers and butterscotch, I take it?” Burton ventured.

“I never expected to be running along secret corridors at the age of sixty-four!” Wilde replied. “Up the stairs with you!”

They ascended, stopped at the front door, and Wilde opened it a crack and peeked out.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “Your motor-carriage is still there. The guards will take you to Bertie.”

“You'll come too, of course!”

Wilde took Burton's hand and shook it. “No, old friend. This is where we must say goodbye. I'm too old to go hurrying out into the depths of Africa.”

“But Quips! You'll be killed!”

“Yes. But thanks to the help you gave me when I was a boy, I have lived, Captain, and to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

“But—”

“I want to spend my last hours with the man I love.”

Burton put a hand to his friend's shoulder. “I'm glad you found happiness in this ugly world. What's his name?”

“Paul. He was a shopkeeper in his younger days—what people call a very ordinary man, but it happened that he brought to me extraordinary peace of mind and contentment.”

Burton smiled, and his eyes filled with tears. “I fear I may weep in front of you again, Quips.”

“The clock is ticking. Be off with you, man!”

Burton loosed an unsteady breath, opened the door, and stepped out into the hot mist of the Taboran night. He crossed to the motor-carriage where the three guards waited. One of them opened its door and gestured for him to enter.

“Captain!” Oscar Wilde called from the doorway.

The explorer turned.

“If the processes of time and history truly are subjective, do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present, and the future are but one moment. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.”

Oscar Wilde smiled and closed the door.

Dawn wasn't far off. Tabora was enveloped in steam. A great crowd of people milled through it, moving alongside the motor-carriage in an easterly direction.

“Are they trying to leave the city?” Burton asked.

“I suppose so,” one of the Tommies replied. “But to make it through Hell's Run, you either have to be in a very fast vehicle or crawling along on your own, keeping low and out of sight. A mob like this will never make it. They'll be slaughtered!”

“It's certain death if they stay,” one of the other men noted, “so it's worth taking the risk. I'm going to chance it, for sure.”

Burton watched in horror as shadowy forms occasionally emerged from the pall: people with fear in their eyes, carrying bags and bundles and children, looking hunted and desperate.

“Bismillah!” he muttered. “Nowhere to go, and very little chance of getting there. This is ghastly.”

With delays and diversions, the vehicle made slow progress, and the three soldiers became increasingly nervous.

“I'm sorry, sir. We didn't count on this.”

Screams and shouts came out of the cloud.

A line of steam spheres shot past.

Burton heard a gunshot.

The motor-carriage moved on.

Finally, they drew to a stop and the Tommies disembarked. The king's agent followed and was escorted to a door in the side of a warehouse. Stepping through, he entered a very expansive and well-lit space.

“Good! You made it!” Bertie Wells called.

The little war correspondent was standing beside one of two big harvestman machines. They were of the variety Burton had become familiar with here in the future—with a saddle on top of the carapace instead of a seat inside it—but they were slung rather lower to the ground than he'd seen in other models, with the middle joints of the legs rising high to either side of the body.

“Built for speed!” Wells announced.

“I assume we're to escape the city on these things?”

“Yes. We have to set off now while fortune favours us.”

“In what manner is it doing that?”

Wells grinned. “The lurchers are attacking the Germans! Hell's Run is clear!”

“The lurchers? Why?”

“No one knows!”

Burton turned to his escort: “You men heard that?”

They nodded.

“So get going! Get out of the city. Africa's a big continent. Find a quiet valley, build a village, live off the land, stay out of trouble.”

“And learn to speak German,” one of the men said.

“Yes, that might be advisable.”

They saluted and hastily departed.

Burton joined his friend by the giant arachnids. There were bulging pannier bags hanging against their sides. Wells reached up and patted one. “Food and supplies to keep us going for at least a couple of weeks.” He touched a long leather sheath. “And Lee-Enfield sniper rifles. I'll start the engines. You go and open up.” He indicated large double doors. Burton strode over and, with some difficulty, slid them apart. It was lighter outside: dawn was breaking. Mist rolled in around him as he returned to the now chugging harvestmen. Wells was already mounted on one. Burton reached up to the other's stirrup and hauled himself into its saddle. He took hold of the two control levers.

“Follow me!” Wells called.

The two spiders clanked out of the warehouse and onto a wide thoroughfare. For half a mile, the machines scuttled along the road, weaving in and out between other vehicles, with crowds surging along to either side of them. Then they passed the last outlying building and Wells led the way off the road and onto the dusty savannah, leaving the fleeing Taborans behind. He stopped his vehicle and Burton drew his own to a halt beside him. The mist was thinning and, through it, the huge orange globe of the sun was visible ahead of them.

“We'll go eastward across country,” Wells said. “If we stay a little north of the exodus, we'll be closer to the German forces but free of the crowds.”

“What's your destination, Bertie?”

“My only objective is to get past the end of Hell's Run. After that, I don't know. Where do we have to go to get you home to 1863?”

“To the Mountains of the Moon.”

Wells shook his head. “We'll not get through the Blood Jungle. It's impassable.”

“Nevertheless.”

The war correspondent lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “Whatever you say. Onward!”

“Wait!” Burton snapped. He pointed to Wells's left, at the ground.

His friend looked down. “What the hell?” he uttered in astonishment.

A line of poppies was sprouting out of the hard earth.

Wells looked at Burton, a baffled expression on his face.

“It keeps happening,” the king's agent said. “They bloom right in front of me, in an instant.”

“It's impossible, Richard. How can they grow so fast? Have the Eugenicists made them?”

“How is one thing, Bertie, but I'm more interested in why!”

They watched as the flowers opened, a long line of them, snaking unevenly into the haze.

“North,” Burton muttered. “Bertie, I want to follow them.”

“It will take us straight into the German trenches. If the Hun doesn't do for us, the lurchers will.”

“Maybe.”

Wells reached down and unclipped the sheath containing his rifle. He took his pistol from its holster, checked that it was fully loaded, then slipped it back into place. He looked at Burton, smiled, and, in his high-pitched squeaky voice, said, “Well then: in for a penny, in for a pound!”

The two harvestmen scurried northward, following the line of red flowers, and disappeared into the mist.

“What the devil are you playing at?” William Trounce roared. “You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack!”

Herbert Spencer lowered the pistol, which, when he'd pulled the trigger, had done nothing.

“Herbert! Explain yourself!” Burton demanded.

“I'm sorry, William,” Spencer said. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“How in blue blazes can shooting at a man's head not scare him, you tin-headed dolt?”

“But I didn't shoot, an' that's the point.”

“Not for want of trying! I clearly saw you squeeze the trigger!”

“So did I,” Swinburne added. He'd drawn his own weapon and was pointing it uncertainly at the philosopher.

“Yus, an'—as I expected—nothin' bloomin' well happened, did it!”

Burton paced forward and snatched the gun out of Spencer's hand. “As you expected? What are you talking about?”

“When we stepped onto this rock, Boss, I felt every spring in me body go slack. We've entered the Eye of Nāga's area of influence. None o' the guns will work now. Nor will any other mechanical device. Henry Morton Stanley couldn't fly his rotorchairs any farther than this. You'll remember they was found by Arabs, an' they weren't functionin' at all.”

Swinburne directed his gun at the sky and squeezed the trigger. It felt loose under his finger. The weapon didn't fire.

Trounce scowled. “Firstly, Spencer, there was no need for a bloody demonstration, especially one that involved me! You've been fitted with voice apparatus—ruddy well use it! Secondly, why are you still standing?”

Burton answered before Spencer could. “We encountered this same emanation when we went after the South American Eye. The fact that Herbert's mind is embedded in the Cambodian stones gives him the ability to neutralise it.”

“I say, Herbert!” Swinburne exclaimed. “If you radiate an opposing force, could you cast it wide enough to make our guns work? It would give us one up on the Prussians!”

“Perhaps a gun I was holdin' meself,” Spencer replied.

“By thunder!” Trounce yelled furiously. “You see! What if your magic rays, or whatever they are, had worked on the pistol in your hand? You'd have blown my bloody head off!”

“All right, all right,” Burton growled impatiently. “Let's leave it be. But if you ever pull a stunt like that again, Herbert, I'll throw your key into the middle of the Ukerewe Lake.”

“I'm sorry, Boss.”

Leading the horses, they moved to the edge of the rock, which the jungle overhung, and settled in the shade. The trees around them were crowded with blue monkeys that had fallen silent when the men appeared but which now took up their distinctive and piercing cries again—Pee-oww! Pee-oww!—and began to pelt the group with fruit and sticks. Sidi Bombay shouted and waved his arms but the tormentors took no notice.

“Confound the little monsters!” Trounce grumbled. “We'll not get any peace here!”

Swinburne removed the dressings from the detective's legs and applied fresh poultices. He checked the wound on his friend's arm. It was red and puckered but the infection had disappeared.

They abandoned the clearing and plunged back into the jungle, the men trailing behind Spencer as he swiped his machete back and forth, clearing the route. Pox and Malady had elected to sit on one of the horse's saddles rather than in their habitual position on the clockwork philosopher's head, causing Swinburne to wonder whether Spencer had fallen out of favour with the two parakeets as well.

The poet struggled with his thoughts. Hadn't he noticed something about the brass man's philosophical treatise back in Ugogi? Something unusual? What was it? Why couldn't he remember? Why was a part of him feeling ambivalent about Spencer? It didn't make sense—Herbert was a fine fellow!

Moving to Burton's side, he opened his mouth to ask if the explorer shared his misgivings. Instead, he found himself saying, “It's awfully humid, just like in the coast regions.”

“Humph!” Burton replied, by way of agreement.

It was near sundown by the time they stumbled wearily out of the vegetation. They were at the base of a hill, with a wide, clear, and shallow stream crossing their path.

The horses drank greedily. One of them collapsed.

“It's done for, poor thing,” Trounce said. “I'd put a bullet through its brain if I could. It's the proper thing to do.”

“If our guns worked,” Burton responded, “that would alert Speke to our presence.”

“Allow me,” said Spencer, limping over to the stricken animal. He bent, took its head in his hands, and twisted it with all his mechanical might. The horse's neck popped. It kicked and died.

They moved half a mile upstream, washed, ate, and set up camp.

Burton spoke to Pox: “Message for Isabel Arundell. Please report. Message ends. Go.”

Pox blew a raspberry, took to the air, and disappeared over the jungle.

“Weasel thief!” Malady screeched, and flew after his mate.

The men sat quietly for a little while then entered the tent and almost immediately fell into a deep slumber.

Dawn came, and so did a warning from their clockwork sentry: “Rouse yourselves, gents! Twenty men approachin' an' they don't look very cheerful!”

Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce crawled into the open and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. They found Spencer and Bombay watching a gang of men, some way off, marching toward them. Their hair was fashioned into multiple spikes and held in place with red mud, their faces striped with ridged scars, their noses adorned with copper rings, and their shadows stretched across the golden hillside. They were armed with spears and held long oval shields.

“Wow! They are Wanyambo,” Sidi Bombay advised. “A peaceful people.”

“Not if their expressions are anything to go by,” Burton observed. “Do you speak their language, Bombay?”

“Yes. I shall talk with them.” The African set off to greet the newcomers, braving their scowls and brandished weapons. Burton and his friends watched as an argument commenced, gradually cooled to a heated debate, then settled into a passionate discussion, and, finally, became a long conversation.

Bombay returned. “Wow! These fine warriors are from the village of Kisaho. They say the muzungo mbáyá arrived at Kufro, which is nearby, and took all the food and weapons from the people. Wow! The jungle moved among them and killed nine men.”

“The Prussian plant vehicle!” Burton murmured.

“And a mighty wizard took the chief by the neck and turned him into a tree which killed three more villagers by sucking out their blood. The men had to burn it to kill it.” Bombay gestured back toward the Wanyambo. “These from Kisaho came to fight you but I told them that, although you are ugly and strange, you are an enemy of the wizard and you have come to punish the wicked white men. They will help.”

“Tell them we will be honoured if they join us. Ask them to send a man running ahead to inform the villages that we are approaching, and that we are here to avenge the dead.”

This was done, and the Britishers packed their tent and set off up the hill, following the warriors over its brow and down into the forested valley beyond.

They passed along a dirt path bordered by fruit-bearing trees and fragrant flowery shrubs, then stepped out into cultivated fields where peas grew in profusion. While they were crossing these, Pox and Malady returned.

“Message from Isabel Arundell. The Arabs are holding stinking cesspit Kazeh. My witless reinforcements from Mzizima have arrived but Prussian numbers are building steadily. We're keeping them occupied. Isabella and Sadhvi are safe. Mucous-bag Mirambo is injured but will recover. When you get home, tell Palmerston to send troops as a matter of urgency. May Allah guide and protect you. Bettawfeeq!”

“That means ‘good luck,’” Burton explained in response to a puzzled look from Trounce.

“Are you going to send the bird to Maneesh?” the police detective asked.

“No. I fear it's too great a distance by now.”

The whole day was spent crossing valleys and hills. On the next, they trekked over an alluvial plain until they reached the Kitangule Kagera, a river that, according to Speke's account of his earlier expeditions, flowed into the Ukerewe Lake. Crossing it proved so awkward that their supplies got soaked and another of the horses died.

The swelling terrain on the other side was alive with antelope, which scattered as the twenty Wanyambo led the Britishers up to the crest of a hill. From there they saw, stretching for miles and miles to their right, a rich, well-wooded, swampy plain containing large open patches of water.

A band of light blazed across the horizon.

Burton waved a fly away from his face and shaded his eyes.

“Bismillah!” he exclaimed. “Look at the size of it!”

“Is it a mirage?” Swinburne asked, squinting.

“No, Algy. That's it. That's the lake!”

“Ukerewe? Are you sure? It looks like the sea! Perhaps we've walked right across Africa—or we've wandered in an enormous circle!”

Burton cast his eyes around the landscape, taking in every topographical detail, making rapid mental calculations, adding it to his knowledge of the country to the southwest, around Lake Tanganyika.

“I think he was right all along,” he murmured. “I think Speke got it. Ukerewe has to be the source!”

“But I don't want him to be right!” Swinburne objected. “He doesn't deserve it!”

They continued west.

The ground rose and fell, rose and fell, and rolled away to the hazy horizon. Through the moisture-heavy air, distant peaks faded into view, dark green at their base, blanching up to such a pale blue that they merged with the sky. Hovering above, as if floating, their jagged peaks were white.

“It's wonderful!” Swinburne enthused, jerking and waving his arms. “Snow in the middle of Africa! No one will believe it!”

“Our destination!” Burton announced. “The Mountains of the Moon!”

“Wow! I do not want to go there again,” Sidi Bombay said softly. “But I shall because I am with you, and I am certain you will pay me very well indeed.”

Yet another horse succumbed. The men were all on foot now, the baggage divided between the remaining animals. There wasn't much of it. Burton had no idea how they were going to make it back to Zanzibar.

As they progressed, villagers turned out to greet them and to press food and weapons into their hands. Word had spread like wildfire across the lands between the lake and the mountains, and now the air throbbed with drums—a deep, thunderous booming, ominous and threatening and incessant.

“I don't think we'll be taking Speke by surprise,” Swinburne commented.

In one settlement, the p'hazi led them into a hut where four men lay groaning. Their skin was lacerated, in some places to the bone, and none were likely to live.

Bombay translated: “Warriors attacked Mr. Speke's people but the jungle thing killed many. Wow! Five died in this village, and the p'hazi says that in the next, Karagu, you will discover all the men gone, for there was a very big battle there.”

“How far behind Speke are we?” Burton asked.

“He says the wicked muzungo mbáyá are four or five villages ahead.”

“We're too done in to catch up with him today. Ask if we can stay here overnight.”

Permission was granted, and the Britishers slept with drums pounding through their dreams.

In the morning, the women intoned a warlike chant as the expedition set off again. Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, Bombay, and the twenty Wanyambo marched out of the village and onto marshy plains studded with rounded knolls, each topped by an umbrella cactus. They pushed through tall grasses where buffalo were numerous and mosquitoes were legion.

At noon, they arrived at Karagu, which was nestled against a strip of jungle, and found it half-wrecked and filled with keening women. The men, as the p'hazi had stated, were all dead.

On Burton's behalf, Bombay promised the women that vengeance would soon fall upon those responsible.

The expedition rested and ate a light meal, then prepared to move on.

“Kwecha!” Burton called. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!”

The Wanyambo gathered at the edge of the jungle. One of them shouldered through a screen of vegetation to the path beyond. He suddenly howled and came flying back out, cartwheeling over the heads of his fellows, spraying blood onto them. He thudded to the ground and lay still.

“What the—” Trounce began, then tottered back as the Prussian plant vehicle burst out of the undergrowth and plunged into the warriors. He cried out in horror as the thing's spine-covered tendrils lashed like whips, opening skin, sending blood splashing. The Wanyambo yelled in agony as their flesh was sliced and torn. Sidi Bombay was hoisted into the air and flung into the trees. The village women screamed and raced away. Trounce instinctively drew his pistol, aimed at the plant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He threw the weapon down in disgust and swore at himself.

“Stop it!” Swinburne shouted. He hefted a spear and charged forward, plunging the shaft into the centre of the repulsive bloom. Its point sank into the driver's stomach but had little effect. A thorny appendage slashed across the poet's forehead and sent him spinning away, with red droplets showering around him. He crashed into the side of a wrecked hut, which collapsed under the impact, burying the poet beneath sticks and dried mud.

The Wanyambo fought desperately, dodging and ducking, lunging in then backing away. They fell over one another and became wet with each other's blood. They went down and struggled up again. They threw and jabbed their spears until the huge weed-like thing was bristling with shafts. But despite their efforts, the plant continued to lurch back and forth, with the Prussian cradled in its bloom screeching furiously in incomprehensible German.

Burton looked this way and that, hoping to see fire somewhere in the village—sticks burning beneath a cooking pot, anything that he might fling at the plant to set it alight—but there was nothing. He snatched a spear from the ground and started to circle the monstrosity, looking for an opening that would allow him to leap in and drive the weapon through the Prussian's head. He got too close; a thick ropey limb smacked against his torso and ripped upward, shredding his shirt and flaying a long strip of skin from his chest. He stumbled and dropped to his knees.

“Stay back, Boss!” a voice piped.

A bundled mass of robes dived past Burton and launched itself into the writhing vegetation. Herbert Spencer landed on top of the driver and was immediately entwined by creepers. His robes and polymethylene suit were ripped apart as he fought with the frenzied, flailing appendages. A thick coil whipped around him, its thorns gouging deep scratches into his brass body.

The philosopher groped downward and forced his right hand into the fleshy petals. His three brass fingers slid over the driver's face. The man hollered and the plant shook and bucked as two of Spencer's digits found his eyes. The philosopher put his full weight on his arm and drove his fingers through the back of the Prussian's eye sockets and into the brain behind. The vehicle convulsed. Burton ran over and thrust his spear through the man's neck, severing the spine. The plant's tendrils flopped down, a tremor ran through it, then it was still.

Spencer fell backward and clanged onto the ground.

“Oof!” he piped.

The Wanyambo—those who weren't dead, unconscious, or in too much pain to notice—stared at him in astonishment. A metal man!

Burton tottered away from the Eugenicist creation, pulled what remained of his shirt off, and pressed the material against the deep laceration that angled up over his chest onto his left shoulder. He groaned with the pain of it, but, upon looking at the African warriors, saw that many had suffered much worse injuries.

He made his way over to Swinburne, who was crawling out from beneath the collapsed hut. Blood was streaming down the poet's face, dripping onto his clothing.

The king's agent called to Trounce, who was standing dazed. “William, are you hurt?”

“What? Huh, no.”

“Come and bandage Algy, would you?”

The Scotland Yard man dragged a hand over his face as if to clear his mind, nodded, then ran over to the horses, which were being held on the far side of the village by a woman who'd had the foresight and courage to stop them from stampeding away. Pox and Malady were huddled on the saddle of one. The parakeets had slept through the entire drama.

Trounce retrieved the medical kit and returned to the poet.

Burton, meanwhile, spoke to Spencer: “Are you all right, Herbert?”

“Battered, Boss. Dented an' scratched all over—but tickin' an' serviceable.”

Burton saw that the able-bodied among the Wanyambo had drawn together and were talking quietly, with many a gesture in Spencer's direction.

“I don't think our friends consider you a leper any more,” he said.

Sidi Bombay crawled out of the undergrowth. “Wow! Mr. Spencer is like the thing called pocket watch, which you gave me long and long ago and which one of my six wives stole!”

“Yes, he is, Bombay,” Burton agreed. “Can you explain that to the Wanyambo?”

“I shall try, though none of them has met my wives.”

While Bombay joined the surviving warriors, Burton checked the injuries of the fallen. Three were dead and five too seriously hurt to continue on to the Mountains of the Moon. That left twelve—which meant his forces and Speke's were about even.

Bombay rejoined him and explained: “Wow! I told them that, just as the bad muzungo mbáyá has bad magic, so the good muzungo mbáyá has good magic. And Mr. Spencer is good magic.”

“And they believed you?”

“Not at all. But they will continue with us to the mountains anyway.”

“Good.”

“They will not go into them, though, for the Wanyambo are afraid of the Chwezi, who you say don't exist.”

“Very well. Help me with these injured, then we'll regroup and go after Speke. It's high time he and I brought our feud to an end—whatever it takes to do so.”

Sidi Bombay stood motionless and gazed up at the mountains. He made clicking noises with his tongue.

Burton watched him, then stepped to his side and asked, “You are sure this is the route Speke took?”

Without moving, his eyes remaining glued to the scene ahead, Bombay answered: “Oh yes, this is it. Wow! It is an evil place. There is a bad feeling in the air, like when my wives stop speaking to me because I have come home drunk.”

“It's certainly quiet,” Burton replied. “An oppressive silence.”

“There are no birds in the trees.”

“There are two. We're having the devil of a time getting Pox and Malady down. Algy is climbing up to them.”

“Your friend is like a little monkey.”

“I'll be sure to tell him.”

“I do not like these mountains, Mr. Burton. The Chwezi live here. The Chwezi who don't exist, and who serve the Batembuzi.”

“And who are the Batembuzi?”

“They are the children of the gods who once ruled these lands. Long and long ago they disappeared into the underworld.”

“We have no choice but to go on, Bombay,” Burton said, “but you aren't obliged to accompany us. Do you want to remain here in the camp with the Wanyambo?”

“Wow! I want to, but I will not, because I have five wives and I expect you will pay me much more if I accompany you.”

“I thought you had six wives?”

“I am trying to forget number four.”

It was early in the morning. Two days had passed since the plant vehicle had attacked them. In that time they'd trekked across sodden and difficult terrain, and had at last reached the base of the Mountains of the Moon. They were now camped at the tree line.

A steep ravine lay ahead of them. Tall pointed rocks of a blueish hue stood like gateposts at the foot of the slope leading into it. According to Bombay, this was the path to the Temple of the Eye.

“I found them!” Swinburne announced as he shinned down the trunk of the Red Stinkwood tree into which the parakeets had vanished the night before. “They've nested in a hollow—and Pox has laid an egg!”

“By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “And what did the happy parents-to-be have to say on the matter?”

Swinburne jumped to the ground. “Pox called me a fumbling toad-gobbler, and Malady told me to sod off.”

Burton moved away from Bombay and over to his friends. “It looks like this expedition has had a happy ending for one of our little family, anyway,” he said. “Come on, let's leave them to it and get ourselves moving.”

“I've divided what's left of the supplies into light packs,” Trounce advised. “What equipment remains, we'll have to leave here.”

Swinburne, looking up into the branches he'd just vacated, shook his head. “Why would they want to live in a place like this?” he asked. “There are no other birds.”

“P'raps they likes their privacy,” Herbert Spencer suggested.

“Maybe they need the space so they can begin a dynasty,” Trounce offered.

The poet sighed. “I shall miss the foul-mouthed little blighters.”

They hefted their bags, took up their spears, and started to scrabble up steep loose shale, sending rivulets of stone clattering down behind them.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Algernon Swinburne, William Trounce, Herbert Spencer—with his discoloured, scratched, and dented body unencumbered by robes or polymethylene—and Sidi Bombay entered the Mountains of the Moon, and more than one of them had a question on his mind.

How many of us will come back?