Anti-Ice

3 THE LAND LINER

We spent a few days in Ostend. Then we traveled on to the landlocked construction site of the Prince Albert, which lay some eleven miles south of Brussels.

En route our Light Rail arced from north to south over the Belgian capital, following the line of the land railway. We peered down at the Domaine Royale’s sylvan expanse and swept over the bristling roof of the Gare du Nord, the main rail station. Brussels, in the bright sunlight, had something of the look of a medieval painting: elegant, golden and ornate, and full of color and life.

At last we slid over the Parc du Bruxelles, a pocket handkerchief of green and white spread out over the breast of the city, and moved on south away from the city.

The countryside to the south was green, quaint and almost English—amid which the Prince Albert graving-yard, which soon came sliding over the horizon, was a startling splash of cobbles, rusty iron and oil.

At about six in the evening we arrived at the land dock terminus. The velvet-clad girths of a party of matrons preceded us down the Mechanical Staircase to the ground, and Holden and I were amused to observe these ladies picking their way through the mud and rust of a dockyard, their hems swishing through oily puddles.

The launch of the Albert was scheduled for noon of the next day, and Holden and I summoned a hansom to take us to our inn. The hansom jolted over roughly cobbled roads, and we peered out, bemused. A veritable makeshift city had grown up around the graving-yard—a city constructed of untarred timber, corrugated iron and cardboard, but a city nonetheless. The lanes were lined with pubs and gin houses, already doing a roaring trade despite the earliness of the evening. The ale being quaffed in great quantities was clearly of the heavy, dark English kind. There was something of the atmosphere of a county fair: tumblers rolled endlessly across our path, and we noticed a Punch and Judy stand that might have been brought nail by nail from the East End entrancing a group of children well-dressed enough for nobility; there were notices for exhibitions of such novelties as the Six-Legged Sheep and the Human Arithmometer; and everywhere there was the smell of hot chestnuts, toffee apples and sweetmeats, the bray of the hurdy-gurdy and the roundabout, and the discordant piping of penny whistlers.

“Good Lord, Holden,” I said, exhilarated by it all, “it’s scarcely like Belgium at all. It’s more like the blessed Isle of Dogs.”

His small eyes twinkled. “There speaks the cosmopolitan diplomat. And what would you be seeking in the Isle of Dogs, young Ned, eh?” I fear I blushed, but he held up a pudgy hand. “Never mind, lad; I was young once too. But you should scarcely be surprised. The Prince Albert is the first land cruiser, intended to sail the plains of northern Europe, but she is an English ship—designed by English naval architects, fitted out by English engineers, and built by English shipwrights. And so a square mile of Belgian soil has become an annex of the East End of London. This is an English colony, lad; a symbol, perhaps, of our technological dominance of Europe.”

Now we came to the center of this bustling community. Here, the taverns and boarding-houses clustered thick around a strange hillock. This grass-covered cone of earth, clearly artificial, rose some 150 feet high. At the peak of the mound rested a stone lion, his paw resting on the globe of Earth, his gaze fixed on the distance.

Again there was a faintly disturbing edge to Holden’s voice. “And here is the Butte du Lion, Ned; the Lion Mound. Built of soil carried from the battlefield in baskets and sacks by the grateful natives, so that our famous victory could be marked for all time.” He gazed up at the noble stone beast, his lower lip working.

And I, too, studied the lion with some awe and tried to imagine that June day a half-century earlier when, not yards from this spot, Wellington had at last faced down the Corsican…

For this was, of course, the village of Waterloo; and what more fitting place could there be to build this new symbol of British triumph? (Even though, I reflected, the English army had that day needed the bold intervention of the Prussians to beat off the rampant French. I forbore to mention this to Holden, however.)

Now Holden leaned forward and pointed with the stem of his pipe. “Look there…”

That new monument, the land liner, bulked on the western horizon, silhouetted against the setting sun. It was a carcass which loomed out of a sea of shanty dwellings, and it bristled with scaffolding and tarpaulin. Electric arcs illuminated the scaffolding; by their light workmen swarmed like ants.

Holden’s voice was gruff, almost as if he were close to tears. “What a sight, Ned. What must these continentals think of such projects? They are like the peasants of the Middle Ages who gazed, straw dangling from their slack jaws, at the soaring lines of the great Gothic cathedrals.”

I was about to remark that if we could find a Belgian in this collection of Cockneys then we could perhaps consult him on the issue—when a sound descended from the sky, a roar so powerful it felt as if the palm of God’s hand were pressing down on the roof of the hansom. Our horses bucked and whinnied, jolting the cab.

A light passed slowly over us, white and fiercely bright, drawing knife-sharp shadows across the makeshift landscape.

Silence spread among the revelers. The light passed beyond the bulk of the Albert and settled behind it, eclipsing the sunset.

“Dear God, Holden,” I breathed. “What was that?”

He grinned. “Sir Josiah Traveller, Fellow of the Royal Society, aboard his air-brougham the Phaeton,” he said with a flourish.

I stared at the fading glow.

Around us the noise of the city flowed back as water scooped away returns to its container, and our hansom jolted into life once more.

Our hostel was run by a native Belgian. The place was small and shabbily furnished, but it was clean, and the food was plain, wholesome—in the English style—and plentiful.

We had an early night and, at eight on the morning of the launch day, the eighth of August, we set off in our finery for the Prince. Our hostel was perhaps two miles from the ship itself, and I made to call a hansom; but Holden advised against it, pointing out that it was a fine morning and a walk might clear our heads.

And so we picked our way through the oily, litter-strewn streets of the Prince Albert land dock. Ale- fueled revelry was already in earnest, despite the earliness of the hour—or perhaps, Holden said, it had not ceased since the previous night. It was like a large, impromptu party; we saw well-dressed city gentlemen pushing shillings across bars to buy beer for grimy shipwrights, while ladies of all classes mingled with astonishing abandon. As we walked through streets lined with laughing faces the blood pumped through my veins and my spirits rapidly picked up.

We turned a corner, and the ship hove into view.

I gasped. Holden drew to a halt and hitched his thumbs in the bright cummerbund around his waist. “Now, there’s a sight. Would you have wanted to come upon such a spectacle from the poky confines of a hansom, Ned?”

The great land cruiser had been shorn of its restraining tarpaulins and scaffolding, and now it rested on the flat Belgian landscape like some huge, unlikely beast, hedged about by cranes and gantries.

We approached from one flank. In form the ship was something like its ocean-going cousins, with a sharp prow and a rounded keel, but there was little evidence of streamlining, and the white-painted flanks were encrusted with windows, glass-coated companionways and viewing galleries. Three pairs of funnels thrust into the air; they were bright red and each tipped by a copper band and a black cap. People swarmed around in great colorful throngs, staring up in awe at the six great iron wheels on which the ship rested.

A plume of white steam arose already from each of the six funnels, but the ship remained at rest. As we neared I could see how the ship was restrained by great cables leading to scoop-like devices, each taller than a man, which clung to the ground—land anchors, Holden explained, a precaution against the effects of slope—and Albert was pinned further to the earth, Gulliver-like, by various gangways and loading ramps.

The Promenade Deck which adorned the upper surface bristled with parasols and glass summer houses, and I made out a bandstand; a small orchestra pumped out tunes which floated out through the still air.

Now we approached one of the wheels; I peered up at a central boss wider than my torso, with spokes fixed by fist-sized iron bolts. “Why, Holden,” I marveled, “each of those wheels must be the height of four men!”

“You’re correct,” he said. “The ship is more than seven hundred feet from prow to stern, eighty feet at her widest point, and over sixty feet from keel to promenade deck. In size and tonnage—eighteen thousand—the craft compares with the great sea-going liners of Brunel… Why, the wheels alone weigh in at thirty-six tons each!”

“It’s a wonder she doesn’t sink into the earth, like an overladen cart on a muddy road.”

“Indeed. But as you can see an ingenious device has been fixed around the wheels in order to distribute the weight of the craft.” And I saw how three wide paddles of iron had been fixed around each wheel; as the ship moved it would lay these sections of portable roadway ahead of it continually.

We moved through the throng around the vessel. The wheels, the cliff-like hull towering over me, made me feel like an insect beside some huge carriage, and Holden continued to list various engineering marvels. But I admit I was barely listening, nor was I studying Traveller’s triumph with the attention it deserved. For my eyes scanned the crowd continually for one face, and one face alone.

At last I saw her.

“Françoise!” I shouted, waving over the heads of those around me.

She was with a small party, strolling slowly up a gangway which led to some dark lower level of the ship. Among the party were a number of mashers and other brightly-dressed young fellows. Now Françoise turned and, spying me, nodded slightly.

I shoved my way through the perfumed throng.

Holden followed, bemused. “What it is to be young,” he said, not unkindly.

We reached the ramp. “Mr. Vicars,” Françoise said. She raised a lace-gloved hand to hide a smile, and her almond face dipped beneath her parasol. “I suspected we might meet again.”

“Really?” I said, breathless and flushed.

“Indeed,” Holden said drily. “What an unlikely coincidence it is that the two of you should—ow!”

I had kicked him. Holden was an amusing chap in his way, but there are times and places…

Her dress was of blue silk, quite light, and becomingly open at the neck; it showed her waist to be so narrow that I could imagine encompassing it in one palm. The morning sunlight, diffused by her parasol, nestled in her hair.

For a few seconds I stood there, gawping like a fool. Then Holden kicked me back, and I composed myself.

Now one of the mashers stepped forward and bowed with comic gravity. “Mr. Vicars, we meet again.” The fellow wore a short, bright red coat over a yellow and black check waistcoat fixed with heavy brass buttons; his boots were tall and bright yellow, and a nosegay adorned his lapel. This was all fashionable stuff, of course, and quite in keeping with the gaiety of the occasion, but I felt quiet relief that—with Françoise there—I was more soberly costumed. From the midst of all this color a dark, rodent-like face peered at me, and for a moment I struggled for the name. “Ah. Monsieur Bourne. What a pleasure.”

He raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Oh, indeed.”

Françoise introduced her other companions—personable young men whose faces and names slid past me, unnoticed.

I turned to her. I had rehearsed some light witticisms for her on the season’s literary sensation—The Two Nations, Disraeli’s dystopian fantasy of the future—but I was interrupted by Frédéric Bourne, who said: “I suspect we shall not encounter your Prussian colleagues this day, Mr. Vicars?”

At a loss, I was aware of my mouth opening and closing. “Ah—”

Françoise studied me with a hint of disapproval. “You are surely aware of the progress of the war, Mr. Vicars?”

Holden came to my rescue. “But the news when we left England was favorable. Marshals Bazaine and MacMahon appeared to be putting up a good fight against the Prussians.”

“The news has worsened, I fear, sir,” Bourne said. “Bazaine has been dislodged from Forbach- Spicheren and is making for Metz, while MacMahon is moving toward Chalons-sur-Marne—”

“You should not hide the gravity of the situation, Frédéric,” Françoise said sharply. I watched the fine dusky hairs on the nape of her neck float in the sunlight. She addressed Holden. “MacMahon was defeated at Worth. Twenty thousand men were lost.”

Holden whistled. “Mam’selle, I have to say your news is a shock. I imagined that the seasoned armies of France would more than hold their own against the Prussian mobs.”

Her elegant face took on a stern frown. “We will not make the mistake again of underestimating them, I imagine.”

Holden rubbed his chin. “I suppose the debate in Manchester must rage ever more fiercely, then.”

“Debate?” I asked.

“On whether Britain should intervene in this dispute. Put an end to this—this medieval squabbling, and princely posturing.”

Françoise bridled; her pretty nostrils flared. “Sir, France would not welcome the intervention of the British. Frenchmen can and will defend France. And this war will not be lost as long as one Frenchman still holds a chasse-pot before him.”

Her words, delivered in a gentle, liquid tone, were hard—not at all, I was abruptly aware through my romantic fug, typical of those of a young society beauty of her class. I had the uneasy feeling that I had much to learn about Mlle. Michelet, and I felt even less confident.

“Well,” I said, “are you making for the Grand Saloon, mam’selle? I hear the champagne is already flowing—”

“Good God, no.” She stifled a mock yawn with one delicate glove. “If I want to study mirrored walls and arabesques I can stay in Paris. We are making for the engine room and stokehold, Mr. Vicars, under the guide of a ship’s engineer.”

Holden laughed, apparently pleased.

“It’s quite a unique opportunity,” Françoise told me coolly. “Would you care to join us, Mr. Vicars?—or is the lure of yet more champagne too strong for you?”

Bourne snickered unattractively.

And so I had no choice. “To the stokehold!” I cried. A doorway cut into the ship’s side lay looming open at the top of the gangway, and we made our way—not without some trepidation, at least on my part—into the dark bowels of the vessel.

Our guide was one Jack Dever, an engineer of the James Watt Company which had fitted out the ship’s engines. Dever was a thin-faced, gloomy young man clad in oil-stained overalls. His receding hair was slicked back from his forehead and I wondered idly if machine-oil had been applied to his scalp.

With every evidence of impatience and irritation, Dever led us in single file along an iron-walled corridor into the heart of the ship.

We emerged into a vast chamber walled with bare iron. This was the engine room, our guide reluctantly explained; it was one of three—one to each of the craft’s axles—and it was as wide as the ship itself. A pair of iron beams the height of two men ran the width of the room, and on these beams rested oscillating-engines—piston-like affairs, now at rest, which leaked gleaming oil. The pistons inclined toward each other in pairs, like mechanical suitors, each pair supporting a huge, T-sectioned metal spindle. The axle itself crossed this stokehold from side to side, piercing through the spindles. Our guide, droning on, told us how these oscillating-engines were keyed to the drive by friction- belts, which could be disengaged on command (relayed by speaking-tube) from the bridge.

I peered up at this mighty metal shaft and envisioned the great wheels borne by the axle, just beyond the hull. In the presence of these idle giants I felt as if I had been reduced to the scale of a mouse. I tried to imagine how this monstrous room would appear when the Albert sailed forth. As its tracks chewed the turf of Europe, how these mighty metal limbs would strain and thrash! The room would be a bedlam of shouted orders, grease-covered torsos, running feet.

Holden leaned close to me, a sour amusement in his eyes. “This Dever fellow. Charming chap, eh, Ned?”

I frowned. “Well, perhaps the fellow’s busy, Holden. One must make allowances.”

“Really? The purpose of today’s event is to drum up funding for the operation of the vessel. We should be charmed, wined, welcomed, even here, in the stinking belly of the ship! I’m sure our Mr. Dever knows his stopcocks and bulkheads, but he is a diplomatic disaster. Do our companions look as if they are willing to make allowances for this oaf?”

I peeked at the French, but I disagreed with Holden’s gloomy diagnosis; the young continentals, looking like a handful of flowers thrown into the midst of the great machines, peered at the huge engines with every sign of excitement and anticipation. Perhaps the charm and novelty of the vessel itself were outside the scope of Holden’s cynical calculations.

I tried to make my way toward the fragrant Françoise, but would have succeeded only at the expense of discretion and good manners. Nevertheless I observed, to my surprise, that she showed no signs of discomfiture in the face of these leviathans of steel. Rather her face was a little flushed, as if she was exhilarated; and she pressed our reluctant guide with a series of baffling questions concerning crank- pins and air pumps.

As I stood admiring that china-delicate profile—oblivious to the competing charms of the greasy machines all around—Holden sidled closer to Françoise. “Rather attractive, all this brute power, mam’selle.”

She turned to him. “Quite so, sir.”

“Imagine those pistons pumping and thrusting,” said Holden in an oily voice, “and the axle gleaming like a sweating limb as it turns—”

Her eyebrows rose by no more than a fraction of an inch and, with the faintest of smiles, she moved away. Holden watched her go, a look of calculation on his round face.

I had not liked his rather obscene tone in this exchange, and as the party moved on through the engine gallery to the stokehold I took the opportunity to draw him to one side and say so.

He frowned and hitched his thumbs in his cummerbund. “I apologize for any offense I’ve dealt you, Ned,” he said, sounding quite insincere, “but I do at least have an object in mind.”

“Which is?” I inquired coolly.

“Think about it, lad,” Holden murmured. “I know you’re smitten with the delightful Miss Michelet, but you have to admit she’s a rum sort of society belle. How many girls her age would take a walk through the smelly heart of some machine? And how many would show such awareness of the ins and outs of the machinery… Not to mention the understanding she’s shown of the political and military situation? There is more to our Mademoiselle Françoise than meets the eye… and it would be nice to know more.”

I felt myself drawing away from Holden somewhat during this speech. He had proved an amusing and informative companion, these last few days, and his perceptiveness where people were concerned was clear; but his cynical detachment, his constant probing beneath the surface of events and people—not to mention the rather foreign streak of excessive patriotism which he revealed from time to time—were proving more than a little irritating.

Perhaps it was something to do with the journalistic profession.

I told him that I was not one of those who held that women are not capable of holding rational and informed thoughts in their heads; he laughed, apologized gracefully enough, and the matter was closed.

The stokehold was one of three aboard the Prince Albert; there was a stokehold to serve each axle, and each hold contained two boilers.

Each boiler was an iron box taller than two men and wider than three resting end to end; as we approached the nearer I saw how the boiler was encrusted with doors and inspection panels, and that a funnel two feet wide thrust from its upper surface and pierced the ceiling of this chamber, a good thirty feet above us. Yards of entrail-like copper and iron piping wrapped around each funnel and clothed the ceiling and upper walls of the hold, so that, if the contents of the engine room had reminded me of the limbs of gigantic athletes, then this was like being swallowed into the workings of those giants’ very bodies.

The heat of the place was remarkable; I felt my collar grow soft and hoped that my appearance would not deteriorate too rapidly. It was beyond me how anyone could work for long periods in such conditions. But, save for a little spilled oil, there was none of the filth and grime one would normally associate with a stokehold; the round bellies of the boilers gleamed with almost autumnal colors, and the polished pipes caught the light in an almost attractive way.

Dever climbed on to a battered wooden stool and opened an inspection hatch perhaps eight feet above the ground; one by one we perched on the stool and peered inside. When it was my turn I made out a nest of more pipes, brass and copper and iron. These pipes carried superheated steam from the boiler to the pistons. If this were an ocean-going craft the water would be supplied by feeds from the sea; but the Albert was forced to haul its own supply, in great million-gallon tanks. In fact much of the water was cycled through the ornamental pond on the Promenade Deck!

Dever told us with some relish that if we were to grasp one of the pipes more likely than not our flesh would stick and stay behind, broiled, allowing white bones to slip out like fingers from a glove…

Dismissing such revolting nonsense I stood by while Françoise took her turn on the stool. I glared at her companions—and even poor Holden—as if daring them to attempt to glimpse Mlle. Michelet’s ankles or lower calves.

When we were done with the pipes, Françoise pressed Dever. “The anti-ice,” she said, her voice deep with enthusiasm. “You must show us the anti-ice.”

Dever reached for an inspection door set at about head height in the boiler, and—in an uncharacteristic moment of showmanship—he hurled it wide, so that it clanged against the boiler’s iron hide, and watched our reactions with something resembling a grin.

As one we stepped back, startled. For, in the midst of the stokehold’s infernal heat, the chamber Dever opened was filled with the frost and ice of winter!

Françoise spoke softly in her native tongue and bent her pretty head to peer into the iced locker. She allowed Dever to murmur his incomprehensible nonsense into her delicate ear, and then she faced the rest of us. “At the heart of this boiler is a Dewar flask,” she said crisply. “As you surely know such a flask contains a layer of vacuum trapped between glass walls, and is silvered inside and out, the purpose being to eliminate the transfer of heat into its interior by the processes of conduction, convection and radiation. And the temperature within the flask is lowered to Arctic proportions by refrigerating coils wrapped around the flask.”

Holden leaned close to me, his bulbous nose gleaming red in the heat. “An uncommon débutante, indeed.”

Françoise went on to explain, fetchingly, how splinters of the anti-ice within the flask were fed by an ingenious system of claws and pistons into a small external chamber, there releasing their pent-up energy in a controlled manner, and so flashing water to steam, hundreds of gallons every minute. “Without such concentrated energy,” she concluded, “it would scarcely be possible to drive engines powerful enough to propel this land cruiser.”

I applauded and called, “Bravo!—How clear your explanation is. And,” I went on, stepping past the Frenchmen and coming close to Françoise, “now I can make sense of the remarkable cleanliness of this place. For the anti-ice stoves eliminate the need for grates banked with burning coal, which are the cause of such grime and dirt.”

I was rather proud of that deduction.

Françoise regarded me through a veil of long eyelashes. “Well thought out, Mr. Vicars.”

“Ned, please!” I said, glowing.

Now she turned away to follow a conversation between Holden and our guide. Holden’s fingers traced the webbing of brass pipes which coated the funnels, and lingered on a stopcock just above the stove itself. Dever nodded gravely and said, “Saving the waste heat from the funnels, that’s what those pipes are there for,” and launched into a long monologue full of dire prophecies of disaster were the stopcock closed and the pipes allowed to boil dry, and how Traveller had ignored the advice of his engineers about this danger, all to make the engines more efficient…

And so on, at dismal and dreary length. The Frenchmen hid yawns behind manicured hands. And I—I only had eyes for Françoise. I watched the gentle curve of her back, the silent movements of her hands over her furled parasol, and I wondered fondly—if a little unscientifically—if, within the Dewar flask of her polite exterior, there might burn a flame of desire which I might kindle!

Our tour concluded at last, to my relief, and we were led back to the exterior hull of the Albert. But instead of returning to the ground we found ourselves climbing a spectacular companionway up to the passenger levels of the ship. The steps of the way were iron panels barely a foot wide—finely cast, bearing the name of their manufacturing foundry surrounded by a delicate filigree—and the way was fastened tightly to the white-painted hull. The Belgian countryside opened out all around me, and I could make out as if in miniature the festivities still proceeding in the bars and taverns of the makeshift construction city; when I glanced down I saw faces like so many coins upturned toward us and lit with wonder. But I felt no sense of vertigo, for a glass tube securely encased this precarious companionway, excluding even the wind which must blow so far above the ground.

At the head of the companionway we entered the hull once more. We stepped across a narrow arcade, a bright and airy place lined with light iron columns and floored with panes of thick glass set in lead. And, beyond the arcade, we came to the Grand Saloon of the Prince Albert.

This magnificent hall stretched the width of the ship. There was a hubbub of excited conversation from over a thousand people, all brightly dressed and chattering like so many peacocks. I glanced down at my dress jacket a little self-consciously; it had survived in a clean state, if a little heat- crumpled.

A waiter approached us bearing a tray. Holden rubbed his hands and retrieved glasses for both of us. He downed his first glass in one and reached for a second; I followed more sedately, savoring the coolness of the fine champagne. “What a relief,” Holden said, stifling a belch behind the back of his hand. “I feel like Odysseus escaped from the forge of the Cyclops.”

I thought to look around for Françoise and her party; but she had melted into the throng already. I felt a foolish stab to my heart.

Holden clapped a fatherly hand on my shoulder. “Never mind, Ned,” he consoled me. “We’re—” he consulted his pocket watch “—a mere thirty minutes from the launch. And here we are quaffing free champagne in the ship’s grandest spot! Look around you. Now, there are those who say this Saloon is an Italianate folly inappropriate to a ship—even a land-going ship. What’s your view?”

Glasses in hand we wandered through the Grand Saloon. Indeed there was something of an Italian feel to the place. The walls were divided into panels by green pilasters; and the panels bore attractive arabesques depicting the ship’s construction, nautical scenes and—incongruously—romping children. The roof was crossed by the ship’s beams, which were painted red, blue and gilt; the panels between the beams were done out in gold, giving the ceiling a harmonious and pleasing appearance.

Two mirror-adorned octagonal pillars pierced the Saloon, from floor to ceiling.

More mirrors covered airshafts on the walls of the Saloon. Portiиres of rich crimson silk hung over the doorways, while sofas of Utrecht velvet, buffets of carved walnut, and leather-topped tables were strewn across a maroon carpet. Chandeliers sparkled with flame, even though the hour was so close to noon.

Holden leaned close to me. “Acetylene lamps. The design showed electric bulbs but they ran out of money.”

“You’re far too cynical, old man,” I said. “The effect is pleasing to the eye. And as for the accusations of decadence I would point to those ship’s beams up there; decorated they may be but their robust nature is scarcely concealed.”

After collecting more champagne we strolled toward one of the octagonal pillars. Now I realized that its four wider faces had been mirrored to reduce the impression of obstruction while its smaller panels were adorned with arabesques showing emblems of the sea. “And this, no doubt,” I said, waving my champagne at the obstruction, “is some structural feature of the vessel, made attractive by the ingenuity of—”

“More than a ‘structural feature,’ by God,” growled a voice behind me. “Those are the funnels from the stokehold, on their way to the fresh air above, lad! Have you never been at sea?”

I jumped, splashing champagne over the leather of my shoes. Bubbles fizzed sadly. I turned.

An imposing figure loomed over me; he was well over six feet tall, even without the stovepipe hat, and dressed in a crumpled black morning suit startlingly out of place amid the plumage of the assembled guests. Eyes of anti-ice blue peered over a platinum nose.

“Good Lord,” I stammered. “I mean, ah, Sir Josiah. You remember my companion, Mr. Holden—”

“I barely remember you, lad. What was it?—Wickers?—but at least you’re a familiar face in this foolish mob. Although if I could have heard you making such dunderheaded remarks about the vessel from across the room, I doubt if I would have sought you out—”

“Well, I’m pleased—”

“Have you met my man?” the great engineer blasted on, utterly ignoring me. I became dimly aware of a slim, hunched chap of about sixty who stood in Sir Josiah’s monumental shadow regarding me nervously, silvered hair gleaming in the chandelier light. “Pocket, step up,” Traveller said. I shook the fellow’s hand—it proved to be dry and surprisingly strong.

“Well, this is a fine business,” Traveller said moodily, glaring about him.

Holden consulted his watch and said, “Only ten minutes to the launch, sir.”

“Can’t stand these bloody affairs,” Traveller snorted. “If I didn’t need their money I’d kick em all over the side.” He eyed me quizzically. “And any minute now the band of the Royal bloody Marines is going to strike up, you know.”

“Really?” I stammered. “Do—do you like music, sir?”

He ignored that, too. “Come on, Pocket,” he said. “I think we’ve done our bit for the shareholders.”

He turned and stalked away a few paces, the stained and crumpled tails of his jacket flapping behind him. Then he looked back. “Well?” he boomed. “Care to join me?”

“Ah… where, sir?”

“In the Phaeton, of course. She’s perched on the top deck. Much better view of the Royal Marines from up there, if you like that sort of thing. And you might be amused to inspect her construction.” He fixed Holden with a searching stare. “And I daresay I could rustle up some stronger poison for your dissolute companion there, who looks as if he needs it.”

Drawing back, I was about to stammer an apology, when Holden kicked me—none too gently—and hissed, “For God’s sake, accept! Have you no curiosity? Traveller’s flying ship is the wonder of the Age.”

“But Françoise—”

Holden ground his teeth. “Françoise will still be here when you get back. Come on, Ned; where’s your spirit?”

And so Holden and I hurried through a corridor of curious stares after Traveller.