Tall, jagged peaks, dusted with an unseasonal skiff of snow, loomed to either side of us, with another to our fore. The land beneath our hull—what I could see of it through a heavy veil of clouds—was folded and wrinkled as my sheets after a nightmare; dark as a nightmare, too, because the sky had grown charcoal grey with gathering storm clouds. A chill wind hit us from the starboard side, sliding the ship closer to the rocky slopes enclosing us.
“Reef the sails!” Whitcomb shouted, thrusting me to one side as he rushed to help Reuben take in the sails sprouting from the sides of the Mercury.
Where were we? We had no mountain crossings on our route, not between Rome and the Otranto Straits. Had I overslept so much we had made landfall in Greece? No, these were not any mountains I could recall passing over before, and they had too much vegetation on their steep flanks for any mountain in Greece.
“Everley!” Josiah’s bellow electrified me into action. Pounding up the remaining stairs, I burst onto the bridge, flinging aside the heavy curtain that served as a door.
“Sir!” I panted, skidding to a stop behind Josiah, who gripped the ship’s wheel with bloodless fingers. The glass panes enclosing the space revealed a terrifying view of the terrain surrounding us. Charts and maps littered the table to my right. Apparently, Josiah did not know quite where we were, either.
“The ship’s compass requires attention. See to it.” His focus was fixed on canting the Mercury’s propellers in order to hold our position between the narrowing walls of the canyon. The mountain at its head rose ever nearer to the fore.
I hurried forward, expecting to see shards of glass or a crushed case. After all, not many things could go wrong with a compass. Instead, the large brass compass sat serenely in its customary position upon its binnacle, where the helmsman could track our bearing. “What’s amiss?” I asked, studying its action. It seemed consistent, no swinging or wavering aside from that caused by the tossing of the ship.
“The damned thing is reading several degrees off from true,” Josiah replied, his voice steely and steady.
Compasses did not suddenly take it into their heads to swing off course. It could not happen; not without help. Dropping to my knees, I ran my hands over the binnacle, looking for anything metal that could throw the magnetized needle off, but found nothing. I lifted the compass from the wooden clamps that held it steady. Sure enough, the needle shifted a good twenty degrees.
“Here,” I said, stuffing the bulky instrument into Josiah’s generous coat pocket. “You will have to hold it in your hand until I have time to figure out what is throwing it off. For now, we need to get out of this canyon.”
“I am attempting to turn around, but the down-drafts keep trying to toss us into the rocks.”
I leaned around him, gauging the height of the peaks before us. “Do you have a rough estimate of where we are?”
“Somewhere in the Matese mountains.”
Our normal route skirted the Monti Matese range to the west, and crossed the Apennines through a wide valley southward. I could not force my sleep-starved mind to disgorge what facts, if any, I knew of the peaks among which we were currently lost.
Turning to the chart-covered table, I sought for and found the proper map, blinking fogginess from my vision to read the markings. “The highest peaks are only about seven thousand feet. We can go over.”
Josiah shook his head, once, a decisive gesture while keeping his eyes on the obstacles surrounding us. “I told Tibbett to build the fires as hot as they will go, but this wretched weather is sucking the heat away before we can get enough lift.”
Obadiah and I had weathered worse storms than this, and flown higher. Could I do the same without Obadiah’s guidance? Our choices were limited. Either I coaxed a few hundred feet more of lift, or we smashed into a mountainside. We could not set down. Without anchoring towers and docking cradles, our ship would be dragged across the sharp-edged rocks by the winds, ripping her to shreds.
“I can get us enough lift.” I tried to sound as if I had no doubts at all.
Josiah spared me one sharp glance. “Do not promise what you cannot deliver.”
I straightened, coming to attention. “Trust me, sir. I can do this.”
He did not hesitate. “Go, then. Take us as high as you can.”
I turned and ran for the engine room, hoping I had not told Josiah a whopper of a lie.
Chapter Seventeen
Frigid air slapped my face as I rushed from the bridge. I leaped down the ladder two steps at a time and swerved to avoid Lieutenant Whitcomb as he backed away from the last reefed sail. My momentum carried me into the man, and I clipped him with my elbow as I flew past.
“Everley!” he snapped, irritation plain on his ascetic face, grown even more drawn and skeletal from the difficult voyage.
“Beg pardon, sir!” I shouted as the passage to the aft cabins swallowed me. “We’re going up and over!”
I thought I heard him mutter a curse.
“Captain Rollins!” he shouted as he made for the ladder to the bridge. I tumbled inside the engine room and the chugging of the steam engine blotted out any other sound.
Benjamin was peering into the firebox, bouncing from foot to foot, chanting “Burn, burn, burn!”
“Fetch more coal, Benjamin.” I skidded to a halt in front of the fires and reached to open the box. “We have our work cut out for us this day, for certain.”
The boy ran out, and I examined the flames, gauging the heat they gave off by the vigor of their dance.
I saw immediately what had caused Benjamin’s worry. Our forward progress had been sharply curtailed by the mountain rising before us, thus greatly reducing the airflow to the fires. Instead of snapping white flames, the coal anchored dull red and orange waves, lazily rolling with the breeze from the open door. With flames that sleepy, I marveled the Mercury was able maintain even her present altitude.
I threw in several shovels of coal pellets--for luck, mostly--and sprang up to set the air chutes to fully open. It would not be enough.
Benjamin shuffled in, hefting a coal bag that looked almost as big as he was. I grabbed it, swinging it to the floor in the corner by the door where it would be handy, but not in the way.
“Now go back to the storage cabin and bring in the bellows from the bottom shelf in the back,” I told him. “And hurry, or we will all end up smashed upon the mountainside.”
He nodded, eyes wide, and took off at a run.
Snatching the rumpled blanket off my berth, I dashed after him, continuing out onto the open deck. I threw myself up the rungs to the poop, seldom used but for cargo and repairs. Excess steam and the smoke from the fires swirled around me. At the back, the wide leather hose carrying hot air from the engines to the envelope rose upward. I wrapped my blanket around the base of the tube, securing it with a length of string from one of my waistcoat’s numerous pockets.
I had managed to insulate three feet of the more than twelve. I needed more blankets.
I slid down the rungs to the main deck. “Benjamin! Did you find the bellows yet?” I shouted.
“Aye, ma’am,” he gasped.
Darting into the passage, I saw Benjamin drag the unwieldy machine through the engine room door.
Following him into the room, I spun the valve to open the little hatch that fitted the mouth of the bellows. “Lift that end,” I told Benjamin, pointing to the other side of the bellows from me.
Together, we slotted the nozzle into place and clamped it securely.
“Now, pump, and do not stop,” I said, leaning down to peer into the firebox.
Benjamin took hold of the upper handle, which hovered around the height of his chest, stood on the bottom handle, and pumped up and down as if his life depended on it. His young frame strained with the effort.
“Easy, lad. Do not force the air to go faster than it will.”
His face had already gone red, but at my words his grunts of effort lessened. I watched the flames brighten and stand
up from the coal, dancing a regular jig as they sprang to life. “Keep it going, Benjamin. I shall return shortly to spell you.” I ran to confiscate more blankets.
A few minutes later, I had fully insulated the air hose, and Benjamin was exhausted.
“Fetch Reuben.” I stepped into the boy’s place and took over the job of working the big leather bellows.
Between the three of us, we kept the bellows going and the engines adjusted. I cleaned the heat exchangers, arranged the coal as precisely as mathematical equations, and I watched the barometer sink as, slowly, so slowly, we gained altitude.
Then I watched in horror as the barometer ceased moving much at all.
My arms ached, my back and shoulders screamed for relief. I had done all I could think of to gain the precious few hundred feet we needed.
Was it enough?
I gasped as I pushed down on the wooden handle. “Reuben, call the captain.”
Benjamin shook out his arms in the corner, awaiting his turn.
“See if we are high enough.”
Reuben took down the speaking tube, wincing at the reach. He turned back to me. “Nearly. Within two score feet, if we hit the pass correctly. More would be better.”
Forty feet. I glanced out the porthole at the peaks still above us. The captain was cutting it tight to ask for merely forty more feet. We would be scraping the rocks if we made it across at all.
How was I to give him even that inadequate amount of lift? I had plenty of practice hiding my affinity for fire. I had little in using it purposely. But I had to try.
Shifting my attention to the bellows and the fires it fed, I thrust down with all the energy I could muster. “Burn, damn you, burn hotter! We need a little more. Please, just a little hotter.”
I focused on the white-hot flames, squinting until they broke up into millions of points of whirling lights, reminding me of some Impressionistic painting in the galleries Maman liked to drag me to. I imagined shoving my own energy—what was left of it—into those points.
The flames obediently responded. Their dance grew ever wilder. Shades of sapphire tinted the fire where it touched the fuel, a phenomenon I had seen in gas flames, but never with coal. The ease with which I had affected the fire alarmed me, but I had no time to worry about that now.
The barometer’s gauge crept downward once more.
The tocsin rang, and Reuben snatched up the speaking tube before my attention could waver from my task.
“Captain says we’re to make a try for the crossing,” Reuben said, his eyes somber. The merry twinkle seemed to have fled with the passing of Henry. I did not like what I saw there now. Grief, yes, but also a darkness I hadn’t seen in him before. “All ahead full.”
“We will make it over, Reuben.” I infused my tone with as much certainty as I could muster. “Come take over the bellows.” I needed to keep him busy. Action was a better solution for despair than any amount of sympathy.
I moved to make room for his big body, and sighing, he took up position. Grasping the handle, he pushed down, his muscles straining. I sprang to the screws’ controls, never dropping my concentration on the fires.
Outside the porthole, rugged slopes sank slowly away on either side, gray in the stormy light. I hoped Josiah’s calculations were correct.
I worked the levers to disengage the clutch and gear up the screws to their highest setting, slowly allowing the cogs to mesh once more. The Mercury leapt forward.
With one last scan of my instruments, I rushed to help Reuben, pushing down on the wooden frame of the bellows, allowing Reuben to reserve his strength for pulling up. A blast of wind made the ship shudder and veer to one side, perilously close to the mountainside. I could have counted whiskers if any beast had been foolish enough to brave the alpine storm. I squeezed my eyes closed, expecting to hear the scrape of wicker on rock at any moment; to feel the lurch as we dragged across the harsh landscape.
Burn, you fires! I chanted in my head as if in prayer to some ancient, pagan god. Burn hot and high.
My arms ached marginally more than the rest of me did. My head swam. When had I last eaten a proper meal? Nearly a whole day ago; and I had lost all of it to the aconite poisoning.
The shrill of the speaking tube startled me from a sort of weary trance. I jerked upright, stumbling when my hands lost their grip on the bellows. I landed on my rear, blinking owlishly. Benjamin giggled, and hurried to help Reuben in my place. I expected Reuben’s laughter to swiftly follow; but his mouth did not even twitch with the beginnings of a smile.
I had no time to worry about Reuben’s state of mind. I pushed to my feet and snatched up the speaking tube. “Sir,” I snapped out.
“Bring her down slowly, five-hundred feet,” Josiah said. He sounded tired, even over the echo-filled connection. “We made it over.”
“Thank God,” I muttered.
Josiah gave a weary laugh. “Indeed,” he replied. “After we’re down, level her off and cut the engines to two-thirds. Turn the engine room over to Reuben, and report to me on the bridge.”
Right. We still had to deal with the “broken” compass. More sabotage; and this time I could fix the blame on no one but a crewmember. One of us. Not even the thought of the culprit perhaps being the odious Whitcomb could raise my spirits. It appeared that, dislike him though I may, I also had subconsciously trusted the lieutenant at least as much as the other members of our crew.
I finished my assigned tasks, and went one better by shooing Benjamin into the galley to produce tea, eggs, and toast to serve as a noon meal. I left Reuben hauling the bellows back into storage and Benjamin stoking the galley’s stove.
Lieutenant Whitcomb was at the wheel, Josiah at the table studying the charts. He looked up as I entered, reached into his pocket and dumped the ship’s compass onto the pine boards beside him.
“Here,” he said. “Figure out what the problem is with this blasted thing. Quickly, too. We have the wind with us, so I would like to make for Greece directly instead of moving south to the Straits. But for that, I need an accurate compass heading.”
Josiah was correct. If we strayed too far north in the ocean crossing, we would end up in Albania, a politically hostile place for Englishmen at the moment. However, the strong winds of the storm that had nearly run us aground would give the Mercury a significant speed boost toward our destination. We could use some good luck like that on this voyage.
“Aye, sir,” I replied, taking up the compass. The instrument was not the problem, of course.
I carried the compass to the binnacle, edging past a scowling Whitcomb to do so. As the compass approached the stand, the needle swung drunkenly. I backed off until it steadied, moved to another quarter and approached the binnacle once more, marking the point where the needle went crazy with a pencil mark on the decking.
I worked my way entirely around the binnacle, surrounding the wooden stand with a halo of pencil marks. I had no desire to dismantle the stand to find the problem if I did not have to.
It turned out I did not. The halo of pencil marks showed a distinct bulge to one side, to the fore and slightly starboard of the binnacle.
The distortion of the magnetic field seemed worse the closer I got to the decking. I examined the boards, but I could see no disturbance in the planking or the nails that held them to the frame. The problem was not here on the bridge.
No, the source of the distortion had to be under our feet—in Josiah’s quarters.
Was our own captain the one sabotaging our flight?
Chapter Eighteen
I shot a glance at Josiah’s intent face as he studied the charts of our route. As the newest crewman, I ought to choose him as the man to distrust most.
I shook off the thought, remembering the care he had taken when we had all fallen ill from the aconite poisoning. No, I would not believe he had betrayed us and put us in such danger. Besides, it made no sense. Why would Josiah want his own company to fail, and risk his own life, as well? I could think o
f no possible reason.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, breaking into Josiah’s intense focus. “I will need to examine your quarters. May I have your permission to enter your cabin?”
His jaw tensed, a slight bulge of the muscles connecting chin to neck, but he did not deign to look away from his papers and charts. “Go ahead, Everley. Try not to destroy anything.”
My temper flared. My control was as scanty as the amount of sleep I had had on this nightmare of a voyage. “I had not planned on it, sir.”
I left the bridge, slid down the ladder to the main deck and entered the short passage leading to the captain’s cabin. My hand rose to turn the knob, but froze before it completed the action.
How many times had I entered here to speak with Josiah’s father? To show him a new design or a bit of schoolwork he had assigned? Or merely to discuss some petty offense or amusing story I had heard that day?
When I opened this door, Edmund Rollins would not be there. The cabin would look different, smell different. The thought of Edmund Rollins had not even crossed my mind for hours and hours. What kind of a person did that make me, to forget my dear friend so easily?
I felt his absence keenly, a pain as sharp as the cramps from the aconite. Gasping at the sting, I wondered how many years would have to go by before this cabin became Josiah’s instead of his father’s in my mind.
Perhaps it was a good thing it appeared I would have to change ships very soon.
Thrusting down the welling sorrow for another day, I opened the door into Josiah’s cabin. His scent of sandalwood and chamomile rose around me, alien in this room, and yet, somehow, not entirely unwelcome. I studied the small space, absorbing the differences as well as what had stayed the same.
Bedding lay in a tangled heap in the middle of the bunk, a thing I had never seen under Captain Edmund Rollins. Understandable, perhaps, considering the extra duties we had all been pressed into. When would any of us have had the time to straighten blankets and tuck in sheets? Still, the rumpled bedclothes seemed too intimate a detail for my peace of mind in light of my body’s evident fascination with the man.
Fires of Hell: The Alchemystic Page 15
