Burton rode onto a fairly well-defined trail.
“This is the path I think Speke is following,” he said.
“Wow!” Bombay answered. “It is the one he took before, when I was with him.”
“Then we should proceed with caution.”
They stopped to eat, then rode on at a brisk pace until they emerged from the trees at the head of a shadowed valley. Its sides were thickly wooded and a clear stream ran through its middle with reasonably open ground to either side. There were pandana palms in profusion, rich groves of plantains, and thistles of extraordinary size. In the distance, the land rolled in high undulations to grassy hills, which Burton identified as the districts of Karague and Kishakka.
Late in the afternoon, they approached a village and were surprised when the inhabitants, upon sighting them, ran away.
“By Jove! That hasn't happened since we had the harvestman,” Trounce observed.
Riding among the huts, they noticed that the usual stocks of food were missing. There were also a couple of ominous-looking stains on the ground in the central clearing.
“It looks like they received some non-too-friendly visitors,” the king's agent said. He unpacked two boxes of beads from one of the horses and placed them at the entrance to the chief's dwelling. “Let's leave them a gift, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that not all muzungo mbáyá are bad.”
The remainder of the day was spent travelling through the rest of the valley before crossing fine, rising meadowlands to a stratified sandstone cliff, beneath which they rested for the night.
Another early start. Hilly country. Herds of cattle. Forests of acacias.
All around them, the trees were alive with a profusion of small birds, whistling and chirping with such vigour that, for the entire day, the men had to raise their voices to be heard above the din.
They left the boisterous tree-dwellers behind as the sun was riding low in the sky and drew to a halt on a summit, looking across a broad, junglethick basin. On the far side, they spotted movement on the brow of a hummock. Trounce lifted the field glasses, clipped them onto his head, and adjusted the focusing wheels.
“About twenty men,” he reported. “On foot. And one of those plant-vehicle things.”
“Let me see,” Burton said.
His friend passed the magnifying device and Burton looked through it, watching the distant group as it disappeared from view.
“Speke,” he said.
They decided to stop where they were, quickly set up the camp, and without bothering to eat first immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.
Herbert Spencer stood outside the tent, leaning on his staff. His shadow lengthened, turned a deep shade of purple, then dissipated into the gathering gloom. When they awoke in the morning, he was still there. Burton wound him up.
“I say, Herbert, is your mind still active when your spring is slack?” Swinburne asked as he prepared their breakfast.
“Yus, lad.” The mechanical man tapped a gloved finger to his scarf-enshrouded head. “The babbage in here interprets the electrical field held in the diamonds an' translates its fluctuations as speech an' movement. In the other direction, it channels sensory information about the environment from this brass body to the gemstones, which the field interprets as sound an' sight. When the babbage has no bloomin' power, I have no idea what's happenin' around me, but I can still think.”
“It must feel like you're trapped. I should probably go mad under such circumstances.”
“You're already mad,” Trounce put in.
One of the horses had died during the night. They redistributed its load, then, after eating, began the trek down the slope to the edge of the jungle. When they reached it, they found the verdure to be extravagantly abundant and chaotic, pressing in to either side of the narrow trail. Speke's party had passed this way recently, but there was very little evidence to suggest it, and guiding the horses past the thorny bushes and dangling ant-covered lianas proved extremely difficult.
“I'll set to with me machete, Boss,” Spencer announced, limping to the front of the party.
He unsheathed his blade and began to swipe at the undergrowth. A man would have been exhausted by this very quickly but the clockwork philosopher's mechanical arm hacked without pause, widening the path, until four hours later they emerged onto a huge flat rock as big as a tennis court, surrounded on all sides by lush green vegetation.
Spencer moved onto it, stumbling slightly, then laid down his blade, pulled a 54-bore Beaumont-Adams revolver from his waistband, and said: “Shall we stop here awhile?”
Burton glanced at Trounce and replied, “Yes, I think William's ulcers are paining him. We'll lay up until the day's heat abates a little.”
“I'm fine,” the Scotland Yard man protested.
“Wow! It is a good place to rest, Mr. Trounce,” said Sidi Bombay.
Pox and Malady, who'd been snuggled together on Spencer's head, suddenly squawked and flew into the trees.
“Yes, William,” the brass man said in his hooting voice. “You should take the weight off your feet.”
He lifted his gun, aimed carefully between Trounce's eyes, and pulled the trigger.
“Oh glory, that we wrestle
So valiantly with Time!”
–RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
–OSCAR WILDE
Eighteen-year-old PC53 William Trounce had failed to make his first arrest.
He always timed his beat so he'd reach Constitution Hill in time for Queen Victoria's spin around Green Park. He thought the young monarch—who was just three years into her reign—was taking a needless risk with these daily excursions. He understood her need to escape for a few precious moments from the stuffy formality of Buckingham Palace, but there were many who still thought her a puppet of the unpopular prime minister, Lord Melbourne, and they often took the opportunity to jeer and boo as she rode through the park in her open-topped carriage. Trounce considered it one of his essential duties to be there in time to move the naysayers along.
Today he was going to be late, and it was Dennis the Dip's fault. He'd spotted the notorious East End pickpocket on the Mall. The crook was, as usual, dressed as a gentleman and looked entirely at home among the well-heeled crowd that sauntered back and forth along the ceremonial avenue. He scrubbed up well, did Dennis, and easily passed muster as a gent so long as he kept his mouth shut. Were any of his fellow perambulators to hear him speak, though, they would have instantly recognised the harsh accent and mangled grammar of the Cauldron and would most certainly have given him a very wide berth indeed.
As it was, Dennis mingled with his potential victims with nary a glance of suspicion cast his way. No glances—but there was one unwavering gaze, and that belonged to PC53 Trounce.
It would have been a very satisfying first feather in his cap for the young constable if he'd ended the career of this particular villain today, but alas it was not to be. Dennis's eyes flicked from handbag to handbag, pocket to pocket, but his long, restless fingers remained in plain view the whole time, and Trounce had to settle for warning the man away.
“Oh bleedin’ ’eck, I ain't up to nuffink, am I!” Dennis had whined. “Jest givin’ me Sunday best an airing, that's all.”
“It's Wednesday, Dennis,” Trounce pointed out.
The thief objected and wriggled on the spot a little more before finally scurrying off, and Trounce resumed his beat, a mite disappointed that he'd still not “christened his badge” after two weeks on the beat.