The oddity of the day began with Captain Sparrow asking me to act as First Mate of his newly-salvaged ship, the Yao Ying—temporarily, of course.  Thinking this would be a good way to keep him under our eyes, I took it up with Sir Cosmo, and he agreed. 

As if Captain Sparrow himself weren’t difficult enough to manage, I have Albert, and an entire crew  made up of Oompah Loompahs.  They are reliably good-hearted and highly ingenious, but otherwise of a completely incomprehensible nature.  I am beginning to understand a smattering of their language, but so much of its meaning seems to depend on subtleties of tone, I can scarcely make myself understood to them.  We had a difficult time coordinating the movements of our fleet until the various crews realised that while the Loompah crews of my Captain Sparrow’s ship and Mr O’Flaherty’s ship were waving their semaphore flags emphatically, they do not know the semaphore codes.  Any sailor attempting to decode their signals and follow the instructions would quickly find himself in difficulty.

We determined to put most of our various prisoners to shelter in the harbour near Sir Phillip’s former camp and site, along with the Arabis and a goodly complement of marines to guard them.  The persons with mystical capabilities were secured aboard Skylark, and Sir Philip was to stay aboard Foxglove, where our own Mystics could watch over them but they could not easily communicate amongst themselves.  Mr Quaid O'Flaherty was also on Skylark, handy to us if he might have useful information.

The rest of our ships set sail, following the west coast of the Island down to the Colossus, where we could search for the Moonblade.

It was only a few hours sailing, and we all anchored in the shadow of the Colossus.  Wilhelmina was nearly ecstatic as she and Sir Cosmo prepared the diving suits.  I was slightly disappointed that I couldn’t go below the surface.  Lady Cowperthwaite naturally insisted on taking her own suit, and Wilhelmina had hers (with the special controls made to be manipulated with the toes).  Sir Spencer has his own suit as well.  Sir Cosmo was convinced to remain on the deck, recuperating from his most recent brush with death, as well as being on hand to mind the air hoses &c.  For some reason Lt Wooster was selected to use Sir Cosmo’s suit—perhaps because few of the gentlemen are trained in the use of the diving suits, and Lt Wooster was the only one foolish enough to undertake to use one without training. 

True to form, the undersea search party ran into a difficulty, in this instance an enormous octopus or squid of some kind.  Before we knew it, the water was roiling and the air hoses were jerking and snapping wildly, causing anxiety and consternation to those on deck. Lt Wooster activated an underwater rocket built into his suit, causing further uproar.

George and Mr Salmalin were over the side and into the depths very quickly—I later learned that Mr Wonka had given them each a lozenge which gave them the power to breathe underwater.  I wish I had known about that!  My only recourse to assist was to commandeer the submersible assembled by the Loompahs crewing Mr O’Flaherty’s vessel.  It was built to one of Wilhelmina’s slightly out-dated sketches, and made of shipwreck salvage and cocoanut shells—much like the infernal Slice. I was frankly amazed that this wooden vessel could so closely mimic the metal one in function, that wooden pumps and clockwork could safely submerge an air-filled wooden structure (and more to the point, could return it to the surface when desired). Because I had survived the maiden voyage of the Slice, and because the circumstances were so dire for my colleagues below, I was willing to trust my life to this craft and to the skills of the Loompah pilot.  If I wasn't an accomplished swimmer, I would not have tried it no matter the Loompahs' confidence.

Traveling in the submersible took rather a long time, considering the urgency of the circumstances.  We made our way through the murky, inky water, only to find that the very large Cephalopod had vanished, and our partisans were not apparent.  Mrs Salmalin appeared in short order, visible thorough the salvaged porthole, walking along the rough ocean bottom with a cannonball in each hand and a very determined expression.  We came to a strange round portal.  The way through was gleaming much as the water’s surface glows when one looks up from below toward a bright sky.  I could discern nothing save the brilliance of the light.  Mrs Salmalin looked at the markings around its perimeter and stepped through.  I urged my pilot to sidle the submersible up to the portal, which he did very deftly.  We could see through the port on the hatch that beyond was a cave, apparently full of air, also full of our friends and a number of hacked-up snakes.

From my arrival in the cave, this adventure took on that bizarre quality which seems to be de rigeur for this Island.  I was told, in a disjointed manner, that the snakes had appeared as a trio of women, who had cryptically hinted at being the guardians of the Moonblade or some such thing.  They seemed cooperative at first, but then they had taken umbrage at some wayward behaviour of Wilhelmina's (which I can hardly fault), and transformed into snakes and tried to kill everyone (which I certainly do fault).  By the time I had arrived, most of the mayhem was concluded--for the moment. 

We followed a tunnel back into the caverns and found ourselves in a sort of herbalist's workshop.  We were welcomed by a peculiar little Oriental man, who called himself "Sukino", and  who told us that we must go to the Moon to find the Moonblade.  He described several other parties who had come to inquire, including one unmistakably the former Captain Forrester and another who could possibly be the infamous Nemo (whose handiwork we had been seeing in the form of severly holed shipwrecks).

The strange man gave us some seed pods from a cassia plant, and told us to eat them when the moon was directly above us in the sky, and we would be able to travel to the moon.  Indeed.  We tried to ask more questions, but the little man, though friendly, was quite cryptic.  We made out way back to the portal--the antechamber formerly strewn with snake parts was now empty, as though the entire snake scene had been staged for our benefit and would now be reset for some other seeker.

We all made our particular ways back to our respective vessels.  Some of the diving suits were not especially sea-worthy now, but we managed with the help of Mr Wonka's oxygen lozenges.  If only I had had more time, I should have liked to explore.  Perhaps Mr Wonka will consent to give me some for later.

Once we had described our experiences to our colleagues who had remained on deck, the next topic was exactly who would eat the seed pods and supposedly go to the moon.  Mrs Wooster did not want to go, so I agreed to go as Wilhelmina's chaperone—I had my doubts that we would go anywhere in any case.  Almost everyone else wanted to go.  The children and the nurserymaids were to stay (though the former were predictably eager to go).  Major Powell was detailed to remain to keep watch over our particular prisoners. 

When the Moon was at last in the specified position, we put the seeds in our mouths.  Lt Wooster impulsively put one into his wife's mouth, in spite of her professed unwillingness to go.  Cheeky.

I can't exactly explain what happened for the following few hours—several events and observations were entirely contradictory to facts I know from previous direct experience.  All of us chewing the seeds began to float upward into the air (thank goodness for trousers!), and we rose at an increasing but not alarming speed until we were approaching the Moon.  It was a very quick journey, given how far my previous trip to the vicinity of the Moon seemed to take me (though it's hard to say, as that transit had been instantaneous).  I had been certain, from that previous trip, that the moon was so far from the Earth that the intervening space was largely outside of the Earth's atmosphere, and there should be no air to breathe.  My previous view of the moon suggested that it was quite barren and rocky, but when we drifted gently down to the "ground" of the moon, it looked very much like a terrestrial landscape:  a seashore, a river, meadows, hills, and cherry trees in bloom.

The local inhabitants, however, were not ordinary people.  Several of those we met resembled animals in face and some details of form, but they spoke, walked upright and wore clothing—like characters in some kind of children's story.  In fact, the entire experience resembled nothing so much as a novel by that Carroll man.  We proceeded to speak with several of these animals peopl creatures, including Sukino, who looked different now, having the face and ears of a rabbit. Various of these strange persons gave us directions, suggestions, and warnings.

In additions to these not completely credible entities, we also met up with a number of persons whom we know to be dead.  While that's hardly new to us, it was strange to meet them in such concentrations.  Some of our occult-inclined partisans concluded that it was a feature of this "Moon" land, which resembles descriptions of the afterworld some chinese and hindu mythological accounts—the afterworld in these cases located on the moon.  I suppose it makes as much sense as a heaven up in some indistinct part of the sky—though I don't believe that either.  We recognized a few of the deceased, including Count von Reckenburg, whose murder at the hands of Major Mercer I had witness during our apparent time travels with Mr Voach. 

Mr O'Flaherty discovered that the mirror given him by the girl at the dragon's cave seems to have scrying qualities.  He saw in it our party being approached by two long boats full of men, coming to us there by the seashore.  Shortly thereafter, we met the former Prince of Bundlekund, also known as Nemo, who arrived with a contingent of his crew in two longboats. 

I was uncertain at first whether to rejoice or despair at this encroachment, but Wilhelmina and Lady Cowperthwaite were so delighted to meet Nemo, he could not resist their friendly overtures.  He seems to be a very polite person, if rather flinty.  One must be cautious with those types obsessed with honourable causes, as they seem to lack instincts both for self-preservation and for applied compassion.  He seemed to think that Mrs Voach had the Moonblade herself, and asked her to give it to him.  His own Mystic had determined that she had it, yet she was certain she had no such thing. 

Before we could pursue the question further, however, we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by another interested faction:  Sir Ephraim Sloane.  He had brought his assorted petty thugs, and his more dangerous thugs, Major Mercer and Mr Munroe.  And his paramount thug, the former Captain Forrester.  Sir Ephraim was very rude, and continued to deny the validity of Sir Cosmo's credentials.  He attempted to wrest Mrs Voach from us by force.  You can imagine how meekly that was accepted.  Wilhelmina threw a glass phial to the ground, which burst and filled the area with an obscuring vapour.  She shouted to us to drop to the ground, and Lt Wooster fired his particular fast pistol into the mass of Sir Ephraim's force.  And the battle erupted.

Sir Ephraim's forces were not inconsiderable.  His men outnumbered ours and Nemo's by a small margin.  Both Mr Munroe and Major Mercer were formidable fighters.  The latter was especially inclined to dirty tricks—but we know all of those so we weren't surprised.  The so-called Fist of Shiva was causing us a lot of difficulty, until George caught hold of his armour right at the back of the shoulders where he couldn't be dislodged, and used some kind of Thuggee chant on him.  Both George and the Former Captain Forrester rose into the air and seemed to fly back toward the earth.  This gave the rest of us a chance to work our way through the rest of Sir Ephraim's group.  I accounted for a few of them with my pistol, mainly guarding the backs of my colleagues and looking unimposing, so as not to draw fire myself.

We had a very near thing of it—Sir Ephraim had a second-rate copy of an etheric pulse gun, and used it on Sir Cosmo.  Sir Cosmo was unconscious, but now Lady Cowperthwaite was very angry and her thunderous voice boded rather direly for Sir Ephraim.

Captain Sparrow was fencing spectacularly with Mr Munroe, and seemed to be holding his own well enough, and keeping Mr Munroe occupied.

Mrs Wooster sustained serious injury at the hands of Major Mercer (who some of us have reason to suspect is her natural father--a strange coincidence).  Mrs Cuthbert disabled him by making him forget where he was and what he was doing, but at the same time, Lt Wooster saw what had happened to his wife, and shot the villain quite to gobbets.  Mrs Salmalin searched his remains to find the heart of Captain Forrester, which we knew from previous scrying he still carried.  We were just contemplating how to use it to disable Captain Forrester (as we had discussed at some length yesterday), and Mrs Salmalin was trying to remember how to perform Major Powell's ritual for returning items to "home". 

As if on cue, the former Captain Forrester came hurtling again out of the sky, and he landed directly on Mr Munroe, apparently flattening the latter.   Captain Forrester lay insensible long enough for Lady Cowpertwaite to fire an etheric pulse weapon repeatedly into the eyeslit of his helmet.  Captain Forrester did not sustain much injury from this, but it did prevent him from rising to fight again.

At nearly the same time, Major Powell fell out of the sky, along with Galen, who had filched one of the cassia pods and come along to help his Mother.  He seems to be irresistably drawn whenever she is moved to use her "Kali" voice.  Or perhaps that is simply a pretext for an inquisitive child going where the action is.

Major Powell had come in the nick of time to use his ritual, which he did, with help from Mrs Salmalin.  When they had enacted the ritual, the real heart (rather disgustingly fresh-looking, despite months of being carried about the tropics in a little sack), had popped into its right place in Captain Forrester's chest cavity, and a huge ruby, the Star of Victory, had popped out.  I tried to catch it, but Nemo caught it instead.  I considered trying to take it, but he commented that he would see us again at the crossroads, implying that he would bring the Star to be reunited with the other artifacts instead of using it for his own purposes.  I judged we were too depleted in force to justify me picking a fight with our uneasy ally at this point.  I suppose if we must, we can seek him out and retrieve it a little later.

Meanwhile, Mrs Cuthbert and Wilhelmina applied their respective arts to both Mrs Wooster and Sir Cosmo, with Lady Cowperthwaite and various others of us protecting them, polishing off the last few opponents.  Mr Voach and his dairy wagon appeared, and he gave our injured partisans some of his healing milk. 

Mr Frazer and I managed to convince Lady Cowperthwaite not to kill Sir Ephraim, as he was needed to stand trial for his crimes and to testify as to the relative innocence of Tiberius Frazer and Quaid O'Flaherty in the theft of the Arabis.   She was then distracted by the sight of something on the ground—a jeweled hairpin.  She recognised it as beloning to Mrs Voach, but as soon as she had returned it, Mrs Voach gave it back to her, saying it suited Lady Cowperthwiate better.  As soon as it returned to Lady Cowperthwaite's hand, it metamorphosed into a very large, gleaming sword—the Sword of Sovereignity had been in our midst all along.  The light in Lady Cowperthwaite's eye was rather fearsome.

We had very little time to catch our breath before we began to rise again, now toward the Earth.  We made the effort to catch up the most important of our prisoners.  We brought Sir Ephraim, but the body of Captain Forrester disappeared before our eyes, and Munroe's body was not to be found beneath it.  We tried to take the body of Major Mercer as well, but the late Count von Reckenburg appeared and held onto it until we gave it up. Captain Nemo and his men also began to float up.  Each of us would return to where we started.

During the passage back, we had quite a vantage over the Island, and we saw a fleet of ships approaching our little fleet's position.  I counted 21 ships of various sizes and styles—another group of pirates.  Every one of them was flying a green banner, with an emblem I recognized from the stronghold of the so-called Dragon Lady. 

When we touched down (some of us more easily than others), we had a very short time to prepare.  We held an unusually short discussion abord the Selene to assess our strength and plan our strategy.  Fortunately, between Mrs Cuthbert and Mr Voach, no-one of us was too injured to fight, though many of us were not up to our usual standards. 

The fundaments of our strategy involved deploying etheric mines; allowing  Selene, Foxglove, Skylark, and Mr O'Flaherty's K.O. to appear unprepared and thus luring the pirate ships close and into the minefield before detonating the explosives;  sending Slice off to retrieve Arabis, and hoping they would arrive back in time to attack the rear or flank of the pirates (Slice certainly would, and its speed would surely provide a surprise to our advantage), and Captain Sparrow and the Yao Ying to provide an unspecified distraction.  We deployed to our various vessels.

I was somewhat uneasy about being part of an unspecified distraction, but I had determined to be a correct First Mate, and follow the Captain's orders without argument.  I am sure I wouldn't like Captain Sparrow's explanations anyhow.  His particular strengths do not lie in planning and strategy, but in impulse and surprise.  As these are not my strengths, I would simply have to rely on his impenetrable judgement. 

Thus it was that when Captain Sparrow ordered us to batten down, I battened along with our tiny crew, and then secured myself, as ordered, by the wheel.  The Captain gave the order to Sally Ship, even though we were not aground, and I could not see what he meant; still, I relayed the order.  The Captain himself participated in the sally manouever, running to and fro across the deck, exhorting the Loompahs to do the same.  He exclaimed that we needed more crew, and more Loompahs obligingly appeared (they seem to do this when they need more hands;  in this case, the new ones were quite exactly the same in appearance to the three of our own crew, but I will not question this at present). 

We continued the sally until it became apparent that Captain Sparrow meant to capsize us.  This was alarming, but I continued keeping the time for the runners on the deck.  I wished I had had more time to speak to my children before coming back to the Yao Ying.  I hoped that my husband would not panic when we capsized (though I knew that he, too, would adhere firmly to his duties while all of us were in peril).  I was suddenly glad that I was not in the same condition as nearly all my female colleagues.  And then we were under. 

I held my breath, wishing our impulsive Captain had told me his plan so I could have used one of Mr Wonka's oxygen lozenges.  The Yao Ying's  profound swaying eased, until we were more-or-less at rest, entirely upside-down in the water.  Then we began to sink. Then I could see light from the bottom.  Then, without any change in our orientation, I felt that we were rising.  The light below became light above us, and were rising to the surface.  A surface.  A different place.   The water was very still, the light bright but diffuse.  I  could see no land in any direction, only water, nearly still. 

Then off to our aft port quarter, the water roiled, and the K.O. emerged from below.  Mr O'Flaherty looked a bit wild eyed, but with more enthusiasm than fear.  He shouted across that he had seen our manouever, and when he looked into his mirror (the Sun Shield), he saw that we had arrived safely in this other place.  He decided to join us.  With no idea, mind you, if Captain Sparrow had any sort of particular ritual, or artifact, or anything specifially necessary to complete the manouever safely.  Sometimes that man astounds me.  Fortunately for all of us, it worked. 

It proved convenient, actually, because Mr O'Flaherty's mirror allowed us to see what was happening on the other side, allowing us to choose the optimum time and position to sally again and reemerge behind the enemy fleet.

The battle was quite fierce.  There are many details as yet unknown to me, as I was quite busy with my own the Yao Ying.  Our cannon contributed to sinking several of the enemy fleet.

The so-called Dragon Lady employed some explosives and rocketry with her cannon, though they weren't nearly as good as our rockets and explosives.   The Yao Ying came quite close to her ship, and I got a few shots in her direction (it's a miracle that my rifle stayed dry enough to fire), but I didn't get her myself.  Lady Cowperthwaite had somehow boarded her vessel with Mr Salmalin, and the two of them were wreaking significant havoc--that sword in her fearless hand was really terrifying.

The Dragon Lady's  most powerful ploy was to generate a very large whirlpool, and the Yao Ying was in some danger from that quarter.  We had taken one of the other enemy vessels just before the Yao Ying came irretrievably into the maelstrom's influence.  The crew and I had boarded it when Captain Sparrow, in typical defiance of self-preservation, had turned the Yao Ying's rudder to ram the Dragon Lady's ship, and both vessels were being dragged in.   The Selene was also being pulled in, and I had a pang of worry, knowing the children were aboard—in fact, I could see them on the deck, sticking close to Mrs Salmalin as she was chanting with Major Powell and Professor Oddbody.

We attempted to get ropes to our partisans on the Dragon Lady's ship, but the lot of them were clinging to the rail in a human chain as the whole ship slipped inexorably sideways down the side of the whirlpool.  Somehow—I lost sight of them for a bit—Lady Cowperthwaite and Mr Salmalin dropped the Dragon Lady into the whirlpool and escaped themselves.  Captain Sparrow was, I am told, also falling into the whirlpool when he was caught up in the rigging of a ship coming up out of the whirlpool.  Three ships all told emerged from this whirlpool.  One was, I was told, the Flying Dutchman, one called the Black Pearl, and one the Jiu Shi.  The last, I knew from Captain Sparrow's endless description, was Captain Sparrow's own ship, and it was crewed by his usual first mate and crew.  The whirlpool subsided with the successful casting by our Mystics, but several pirate vessels remained.  The latter two ships assisted with the last of the Dragon Lady's fleet, though the first had arrived primarily to collect the souls of dead sailors after the battle. 

I found this rather odd.  I had heard sailors' stories of the Flying Dutchman, but of course never credited them.  All the stories I had heard placed it in the North Sea, around Scotland or Norway.  The vessel I saw now, though clearly out of the ordinary, did not seem the same in any feature save the name.  The Captain was not Dutch, in fact he spoke in English with a faint Barbados colonial accent.  The crew of not-exactly-dead sailors did not look at all Northern.  The ship was encrusted with sea life not found in the North, only in the tropics.  The stories I had heard had never indicated any psychopompery, just a curse of eternal sailing.  This could not really be the same vessel.  Perhaps it's some kind of franchise.  But this speculation falls into the realm of topics I have determined not to vex myself with.

When the fighting was done, we had lost not only the Yao Ying, but the Slice and the K.O.  The K.O. crew had assisted in taking the vessel I was on, and were all accounted for.  The Slice had been exploded quite suddenly, and we had feared the loss of all hands (part of what drove Lady Cowperthwaite to such rage against the Dragon Lady).  The escape of Wilhelmina, Mrs Wooster, and George from the explosion was due largely to the intervention of Mr Voach, whose dairy wagon appeared on the Slice's deck in the nick of time to effect a rescue.  Lt Wooster and Mr Caine had also survived, no one is exactly sure how, but they had turned up sitting atop one of Lt Woosters sea chests, still shooting at pirates.  The Foxglove has also sustained heavy damage, and was only saved from sinking when Sir Spencer ran it aground.  The Selene has had some rather extensive emergency patching. 

I was very alarmed to learn that early on, the Selene had taken a hit amidships, right above the Nursery.  The decking above the Nursery had collapsed and both Violet and Daru were seriously injured.  The children were very brave and performed first aid (pretty well, I might add) until Mrs Salmalin arrived.  They continued to be helpful as they could, and more obedient than usual, throughout the fighting, and stayed close to Mrs Salmalin and Daru and Violet. Robert had a bit of a cry at first, I'm told, but as soon as Caroline told him how to be useful, he shook off his fear and got to work.  Caroline ragged on him a bit for crying, but I noticed that he was the one holding her hand later, and she has been inclined to stick very tightly to myself or Benton or Turgenov in the intervening time.  She also cried a bit when we said she could not go to the Nursery, because it wasn't safe yet.  I think it is one thing for her to be brave in the midst of crisis, but when the seriousness of it comes to her later, she feels a belated fear.  Interesting. 

While we have emerged from this particular battle a bit ruffled but mostly unbroken, our difficulties are not over yet.

Aboard the enemy vessel taken and claimed by Mr O'Flaherty, we found a small brig containing Mr Gordon Spillett. He had some very interestng intelligence for us, which will dictate our next course.  Matters are in a very serious state back at Labuan.  When Mr Spillett left Labuan, It was June 4, and Wu Chang had reappeared, gathered a further very large fleet, and was sailing about claiming he had the Sword of Sovereignity.  He had been fomenting rebellion around the South China Sea with increasing fervour.  He had successfully engineered the assassination of Admiral Naismith.

This sounds very serious indeed.  We have a hope, however.  We have noted that time has more fluid properties here in the area of this Island, as demonstrated by the fact that we of the League reckon the date at May 4, everyone who came with Sir Phillip's expedition thinks that it is 14 March, and those from the Arabis and from Sir Ephraim's expedition have all had different ideas.  Captain Sparrow (meaning our Will Sparrow, not his yet more peculiar ancestor aboard the Black Pearl) claims that we can get back there before the time that Mr Spillett left, and actually change the events that he remembers.  I will not contemplate too closely how this works; I will simply work as hard as I can with my colleagues to ready our ships and our strategies for the next (subjective) month, until it is time for us to travel back out of this Island's influence.

I should note also that we have also lost Sir Phillip, whose cell on the Foxglove was holed by a shot;  We have not found his body, and if things proceed true to usual form, he will reappear at some time highly inconvenient to us.  He will probably arrive arm-in-arm with the Dragon Lady, whose body is likewise not found.

I must put out this light and go to bed.  Caroline and Robert are "bunking" on the floor of our cabin tonight, both because their rooms adjacent to the nursery are perhaps not entirely safe, and because I expect nightmares.  And in truth, after the day's struggles, I will feel better having all my nearest family under my eye. 

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