Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (15 page)

The lurcher was below, quivering and jerking as if in the grip of a seizure.

“What's happened to it?” he murmured.

He pulled a match from the box, struck it, put the flame to the torn cotton, and dropped the burning cloth onto the plant, which immediately exploded into flames.

As he watched, the fire turned from blue to yellow and started to belch thick black smoke.

He turned and started to speak but realised that Wells was unconscious.

“Bertie, are you all right?”

The war correspondent shifted and groaned.

Pulling away the tattered mattress, Burton helped his companion to sit upright. Wells's uniform was ripped and bloodstained.

“You're bleeding, Bertie.”

“Nothing serious,” his friend croaked. “So are you. Is it dead?”

“Yes. It was odd, though. The thing appeared to lose control of itself just before I set fire to it. Let's get out of here.”

They limped from the bedroom and down the stairs, pulled open the wrecked front door, and tumbled out onto the street.

The lurcher had already been reduced to a twitching bonfire.

“Wait here,” Burton said. “I'll get your crutches.”

He retrieved them from outside the alley farther down the road and returned.

“You did exactly what he would have done,” he said, handing over the sticks.

“Who?”

“Algernon Swinburne. He's the most fearless man I've ever known.”

“That's where the comparison fails, then. I was scared out of my wits.”

“You're a good chap, Bertie.”

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.

–F
ROM
B
URTON'S INVENTORY NOTES
, A
FRICAN
E
XPEDITI
ON, 1863

T
he
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.