Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

This arrangement was followed, and just under an hour later, Burton was striding through the stifling fog along the banks of Limehouse Cut canal. The factories that lined it had finished production for the day, and the thousands of workers who toiled within them had dispersed, returning to their lodgings in the loathsome slum that was London's East End-or “the Cauldron” as it was more commonly known.

Burton had left his velocipede in the charge of a constable back on the High Road. It wouldn't do to bring such an expensive vehicle into this district. He'd left his top hat with the policeman, too. The men in this area were most often bare-headed or wore flat caps. Best not to stand out.

The king's agent did, however, carry his sword cane-with its silver panther-head handle-held in such a manner so as to be able to quickly unsheathe the blade should it become necessary.

He arrived at a towering factory that, unlike the others, stood derelict. Nearly every one of its windows was cracked or broken, and its doors were boarded up. He circled around it until he came to a narrow dock at the side of the canal. In a niche in the building's wall, he found iron rungs set into the brickwork. He climbed them.

The edifice was seven storeys high, and by the time Burton reached the roof, he was breathing heavily. Hauling himself over the parapet, he sat and rested a moment.

There were two skylights set into the flat roof with eight chimneys rising around them. The third one from the eastern edge had rungs set into its side, and, after the king's agent had got his breath back, he began to ascend it. Halfway up, he stopped to rest again, then pressed on until he came to the top of the structure. He swung himself onto the lip of the chimney and sat with one leg to either side of it. He'd picked up a number of stones on his way here, and now he retrieved three of them from his pocket and dropped them one by one into the flue. This signal would summon the Beetle.

Burton had never actually seen the strange leader of the League of Chimney Sweeps. All he knew about him was that he was a boy, he lived in this chimney, and he had a voracious appetite for books. The Beetle had been of significant help during the strange affair of Spring Heeled Jack, when he'd arranged for Swinburne to pose as a sweep-a move that led directly to the exposure of Darwin and his cronies-and since then Burton had visited regularly, always bringing with him a supply of literature and poetry. The Beetle was especially desirous of anything written by Swinburne, whose talent he practically worshipped.

Burton wrapped his scarf around the lower half of his face and waited.

From this height there was usually a stunning view across London but today the king's agent could barely see his own hand in front of his face. The fog was dense and cold, and the “blacks” were falling-coal dust that coalesced with ice at a higher altitude and drifted down like dark snow.

He frowned. The Beetle should have responded by now.

“Hi!” he called into the flue. “Are you there, lad? It's Burton!”

There was no answer. He dropped three more stones into the darkness and sat patiently. The minutes ticked by and there was still no sound of movement, no whispery voice from the shadows.

Burton called again, waited a little longer, then gave up.

Where was the Beetle?

Half an hour later, after retrieving his vehicle and headwear, Burton continued homeward. For a few minutes he thought a hansom was following him, but when he reached the main thoroughfares, he became so ensnarled in traffic that he lost sight of it.

Central London had ground to a complete halt, the streets jammed solid with a bizarre mishmash of technologies. There were horses pulling carts and carriages; prodigious drays harnessed to huge pantechnicons; steam-horse-drawn hansoms and growlers; velocipedes; and adapted arachnids and insects, such as harvestmen and Folks' Wagon Beetles, silverfish racers and omnipedes. Burton even saw a farmer trying to drive a herd of goats through the streets to Covent Garden Market.

It seemed to the king's agent that the past, present, and future had all been compressed into the capital's streets, as if the structure of time itself was deteriorating.

None of the vehicles or pedestrians was making any progress, being more engaged in battling one another than in moving forward. The horses were whinnying and shying away from the insects, the insects were getting tangled up in each other's legs and mounting the pavements in an attempt to pass one another, and among them all, cloaked in fog and steam, crowds of people were shouting and cursing and shaking their fists in fury.

Slowly, with many a diversion down dark and narrow side streets and alleyways, Burton made his way out of Cheapside, past the Bank of England, and along Holborn Road. Here, at the junction with Red Lion Street, he collided with another velocipede-whose driver had lost control after his vehicle's boiler burst and knocked the gyroscope out of kilter-and was almost forced into an enormously deep and wide hole in the road. Clutching at the barrier around the pit so as not to topple from his penny-farthing, Burton cursed vehemently, then reached down and turned off his engine. The other man, who'd fallen onto the cobbles, picked himself up and kicked his machine. “Stupid bloody thing!” he cried out, then looked up at the king's agent. “Bless me, sir, you almost came a cropper! Pray forgive me!”

“It wasn't your fault,” Burton said, dismounting. “Are you hurt?”

“I've ripped my trouser knee and knocked my elbow but nothing more life-threatening than that. What's this whacking great crater all about?”

“They're building a station here for the new London Underground railway system. The Technologists say it'll make moving around the city a lot easier.”

“Well, it couldn't be any more difficult,” the man answered. “Strike a light! What was that?”

Something had whined past his ear and knocked off Burton's top hat.

“Get down!” the king's agent snapped, pushing the other man to the ground.

“Hey up! What's your game?”

“Someone's shooting!”

“I beg your pardon? Did you say shooting?”

The explorer scanned the milling crowd, then reached for his hat and snatched it up from the road. There was a hole in its front, near the top edge. At the back, an exit hole was set a bit lower.

“The shot was fired from slightly above ground level,” he murmured.

“Shot? Shot?” the man at his side stammered. “Why are we being shot at? I've never done anything! I'm just a bank clerk!”

“Not we- me.”

“But why? Who are you?”

“Nobody. Pick up your boneshaker and get out of here.”

“But-I-um-should I call for a policeman?”

“Just go!”

The man scuttled sideways on his hands and knees, pushed his penny-farthing upright, and wheeled it away while crouching behind it, as if it might shelter him from further bullets. As he disappeared into the noisy throng, Burton also moved, sliding along the edge of the barrier with his eyes flicking left and right, trying to pierce the fog.

“Confound it!” he hissed. He had no idea where the shootist might be. In one of the nearby carriages, perhaps? On a velocipede? Not in a building, that much was certain, for the windows along this side of the street were nothing but faint rectangular smudges of light-no one could possibly have identified him through the intervening murk.

He decided to follow Falstaff's dictum that “discretion is the better part of valour,” and, bending low, he retrieved his cane, abandoned his conveyance, and shouldered his way into the crowd. He ducked between the legs of a harvestman, squeezed past a brewery wagon, and hurried away as fast as the many obstructions would allow. It was a shame to leave the penny-farthing behind but he couldn't risk climbing up onto its saddle again-that would make him far too visible.