2 May 1875, Sunday
Who knew an adventure could be so fraught with vexation and aggravation!
After breaking our journey with Mr Voach, we followed the trail of the Fist of Shiva up a ridge
and back down into a vale containing ruins similar to those that Sir
Philip and his expedition had been examining. In addition to the
quite unmistakable trail left my ex-husb the Fist of Shiva, Sir Spencer
and the Frazers found occasional marks that led them to believe that
Sir Philip, Mrs Domokos, and Mrs Voach were making their way along the
same path.
Inspector MacGreggor was surprised to find that his Uncle, Sir Ephraim
Sloane was in charge of the expedition at this site. We were
surprised to see the Reverend Parslo-Parslo, a Mr Cribb (also
from Sir Philip's expedition), and the Reverend's maid-- a Mrs
Gribble at the site and not on the Skylark where we had left
them. Lieutenant Turner was surprised to see Mrs Gribble, because
Turner claims, and I believe him, that she kidnapped his twin brother
and sold the boy to Captain Sparrow's crew. Captain Sparrow
vigorously denied any wrongdoing but did claim to recognize Mrs Gribble
as well, stating that she had used the name Ruth Malloy when she came
to his ship. His claimed that she had presented herself as the
mother of the boy and had given the boy into Captain Sparrow's care and
he did not find out until after she left the ship that the boy was not
hers.
The three of them had a vigorous three-way argument while Sir Ephraim,
Sir Spencer, and Inspector MacGreggor discussed some of what brought
our party here. Sir Ephraim was apparently unaware of Sir
Philip's expedition until this morning when the Reverend's party
arrived.
Sir Philip and Mrs Domokos were not at this encampment. Sir
Ephraim claimed not to have seen anyone new except for the Reverend and
his party. Sir Spencer felt certain that the tracks ended with
their arrival at this location. Mrs Cuthbert found a private spot
to pull out her scrying glass, since the only other place Sir Philip
was likely to be was back a the boats, causing mischief.
Lady Cowperthwaite and I huddled around Mrs Cuthbert while she looked
into her glass. We were reassured when she started
laughing. Eventually, she regained her composure and told us that
all was well back at the boats. Mrs Domokos was bound, gagged and
locked in one cabin while Sir Philip, half the hair burned from his
head, was similarly bound on a separate ship. Both Lady
Cowperthwaite and I were sorely tempted to make for the boats, but Mrs
Cuthbert gave us the strongest assurances that she was seeing
true. That, combined with the practical fact that it would take
us several hours to hike back to the bay where the boats were
sheltering, convinced us to stay with our party and follow up on the
leads provided by the Fist
of Shiva.
My concentration was greatly impaired by the distracting thought of
what Ravvi and Sir Cosmo might have gone through which would result in
Sir Philip's hair being burned away. I'm afraid I was not much
good to any of our party during our stay at Sir Ephraim's camp.
My one accomplishment was to cast a history spell near the site of some
astounding ruins, monuments really, that revealed that my ex-husb the Fist of Shiva, had been a
member of Sir Ephraim's party. Sir Ephraim claimed to have
no knowledge of such matters.
I cast the spell at the base of one of five statues. There was
one at each of five roads that came to a central point. The five
horsemen were: Death, Pestilence, Famine, War (Conqueror), and
Havoc. Sir Ephraim's archaeologist, Mr Raines, explained this to
us and translated various passages that were inscribed at the base of
each statue. (This was before we made him uncomfortable, when,
under close questioning, he let slip that “Captain Forrester” had been
with the expedition.)
I don't know that I would have made the connection if Mr Voach's aura
was not so blindingly 'other' but, after so many years of doing word
jumbles, anagrams are something I do without thinking. I couldn't
help but notice that “Voach” is an anagram of “Havoc”.
Despite my distracted and distractable state, I managed to cast the
history spell without difficultly and saw the past day replayed before
my eyes. I saw Mr Raines working with an array of complex
equipment in the centre of the circle formed by the five roads.
He was trying to measure the etheric field (which he had droned on
about for a good long while when he was giving us the tour
earlier). My ex-husb
the Fist of
Shiva Captain Forrester, was wandering around the open space
looking at the swords carried by both the Conqueror and Havoc. He
reached up and grabbed the sword held by the Conqueror and broke both
hand and sword off of the statue. As he was walking away with the
stone sword it vanished from his grasp and reappeared, whole and
unbroken on the Conqueror's arm, leaving only a few small stone chips
on the ground near the statue as evidence that the statue had been
tampered with. He swore a blue streak and yelled at Mr Raines,
who came out of his fog long enough to comprehend that Captain
Forrester thought he had broken the statue. When it appeared that
no damage had been done, Mr Raines quickly returned to work and Captain
Forrester stormed off toward the camp. The vision ended there.
One of the reasons I cast the history spell in the first place was to
act as something of a distraction for Mr O'Flaherty. He had
rescued a native of the island who was being held captive in one of the
expedition tents and was smuggling the small person out of the camp
under his top hat. I have no idea how he found the small person
to rescue him nor why Mr O'Flaherty feels it necessary to traverse a
tropical island wearing a top hat.
Events moved rather quickly after that.
Mr Voach's carriage (to which Mr O'Flaherty was trying to take the
small person to hide him) escaped control with Mr O'Flaherty and Bey
(the small person) aboard and Captain Sparrow and Lieutenant Wooster
either clinging to, or being dragged along by, various parts of the
wagon.
What was left of our party took rapid leave of Sir Ephraim and chased
after the wagon. After an hour or so of hiking, we heard gunshots
in the distance. We made our way as swiftly as possible to a
vantage point and saw the wagon at the base of the ridge we had hiked
over earlier in the day. Lt. Wooster and Mr O'Flaherty had faced
down a gang of pirates. Bey was cheering them on while Captain
Sparrow lay on the ground, apparently trying to tie off a wound of some
sort. Mr O'Flaherty was in fine form, with a tight grip on the
only remain conscious pirate.
We were about to go down and provide aid when Mrs Frazer spotted
another party on the far ridge. Lady Cowperthwaite was in favour
on firing on them immediately. I begged her to wait on the chance that
it was our partisans from the ship, come to join us.. Mr and Mrs
Frazer rapidly confirmed that the opposing party was made up of Wu
Chang and his confederates. With that information we opened fire
with will.
I felt the odd shiver that occurs when others are raising magic around
me. I gave Mrs Frazer my rifle so she could shoot twice before
reloading and began raising power of my own. Major Powell joined
me.
It was astonishing how quickly we had a frightening amount of
power. With our friends below fully exposed to the pirates fire,
I debated between two courses of action. My first thought was to
send a fog to shroud them, however, Mrs Cuthbert, Inspector MacGreggor,
and others of our party were making their way to the wagon hoping to
get Mrs Cuthbert safely to our wounded comrades. Fearing that fog
would only make things more difficult, I settled on trying to raise the
stones to block the sight lines of our enemies and upset their
aim. I cast my spell and a wave of granite rose up, disturbing
the pirates greatly. At that same moment, a pirate sorcerer
struck at Sir Spencer with a water spout. The water threw Sir
Spencer several feet back but quickly faded.
In the meantime, Mr O'Flaherty had run up the ridge (we learned later
that he had a seriously injured leg). He signalled that the
pirates had fled. Lady Cowperthwaite, Mrs Frazer and I gathered
our guns and made haste to the pirate's position. My rock wall
was even more impressive up close-- as was the damage done by our
rifles. Lady Cowperthwaite took particular pains to point out the
body of a pirate that had been cut in half by one of Sir Spencer's
shots.
Mrs Cuthbert tended to Captain Sparrow and Mr O'Flaherty whilst we
discussed our options-- for once we were quickly in agreement. We
would head back to the ships to check in with Sir Cosmo. From the
ridge we could see that there were at least four pirate ships in the
bay below. Mr Frazer sent up a flare to warn our ships of the
lurking threat. After consulting with Major Powell, I made an
attempt to damage the pirate ships in a way that might cause minimal
injuries but the spell did not appear to be successful.
Bey decided to travel with us, as his village was along the way.
We followed our own trail back to the boats. We were still a ways
inland when we were suddenly surrounded by people who looked much like
Bey. The were small but fierce and spoke no language that I
recognized. Events were rapidly becoming quite confusing.
Then we heard a voice many of us recognized. It was Natesh.
Now Albert-- Edward's near twin-- who serves with with Lt Pellew in the
Navy. He had made friends with Bey's tribe. After talking
the Oompa-Loompas out of attacking us, he went on to explain that Lt
Pellew was back at the Oompa-Loompa village where he and his crew had
been attempting to build a boat-- their own having be stolen by
Tiberius Frazer.
It was more than I could take in, frankly.
It was soon apparent that, regardless of what any of us said,
Wilhelmina would be going back with Natesh to the village. Mr
O'Flaherty, Inspector MacGreggor and I agreed to return to Sir Cosmo
and give him our report, whilst the rest of the party went ahead to the
village.
We parted company with our friends (taking Captain Sparrow with us) and
made our way to the beach, but before we could signal for a launch we
had Giant Rats to contend with. Sparrow insists on calling them
Whangdoodles-- the one I saw looked like a hairless rat about the size
of a wild boar. Captain Sparrow stepped in a nest of the things whilst
trying to flank the one watching us and there was a great deal of
shouting back and forth from the forest before he was rescued and
returned to us. I stayed on the beach with my rifle, ready to
shoot anything that might come out of the bush at me. The long
rifle's stopping power is well worth the price of a sore
shoulder. Once we had extracted ourselves from the Giant Rat
situation we were at last able to summon the launch to come fetch us.
Since then we have eaten. I changed out of my sandy, mud-stained
dress and checked on the children-- Violet and Daru seem to have things
under control. Mrs Voach helped them watch the children today and
they seem pleased with her efforts in that regard. Given their
high standards, I am impressed. Mrs Voach seems to have changed a
great deal since leaving London.
Mr O'Flaherty, Inspector MacGreggor and I gave Sir Cosmo our full
report.
Sir Cosmo had taken action upon seeing our flare and had mined the
harbour. He showed all of us how to arm and use the etheric pulse
cannon to ignite the mines-- fortunately it is the only thing that can
set them off, so if we need to leave the harbour we can sail over them
with no fear for our ships.
While he was showing us how to use the weapon, I was reminded of
something that Wilhelmina had let slip. She had the makings of an
autinite bomb in her luggage. She had not meant to tell me this
and I am certain she will not be happy that I passed the information on
to Sir Cosmo, but she had also made it clear that Sir Cosmo did not
know that such volatile material was aboard the ship.
Once he recovered his composure, he told us of his adventures with Sir
Philip. Apparently Helen was instrumental in causing a
distraction when she went over the Skylark in search Sir Cosmo
and my husband. Mrs Domokos had befuddled the minds of the crew
of the Skylark
causing them to believe what Sir Philip told them. They locked
Sir Cosmo and Mr Salmalin in the brig (together, only confirming my
opinion that Sir Philip is an idiot in some matters). When Sir
Cosmo was ready, they escaped, met up with Helen and her outriders (she
had taken the precaution of bringing some of the men detailed to our
expedition with her), retook the ship and confined the miscreants in
the positions Mrs Cuthbert had seen in her scrying glass.
Mr Voach requested permission to see Sir Philip and I requested
permission to witness whatever was going to happen. Sir Cosmo
seemed perplexed at my request, but granted me leave to listen from the
corridor. I do not know what Face Mr Voach showed Sir Philip for
he said very little, but soon Sir Philip was nearly gibbering, trying
to appease Mr Voach. After listening to Sir Philip, Mr Voach said
that he knew what kind of man Sir Philip was-- a man who treated people
as cogs in the machine of his own machinations. He then cursed
Sir Philip, saying that from this day on, all of Sir Philip's intricate
plans would fall into ruin.
We went out on deck and breathed the sea air. For the first time
this day, I was feeling a sense of satisfaction and contentment (the
presence of my husband greatly added to that feeling) when we saw a
star fall from the sky and plough into the island. We could hear
the sound of the impact from our place on the ships.
I knew it was too good to last. I pulled the letter I had written
earlier in the day from my pocket and set fire to it. I can only
hope it will be of some help as Captain Forrester, the Fist of Shiva, has
returned.
Proceed to Distressing
look
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