Johann did his duty bravely and well. Pray do not rebuke him when this carriage is found empty.

When last you and I conversed, we spoke of my career as author of books, and teller of slave-stories. A similitude was formed, in which my works to date were likened to so many balls of grapeshot, which when fired at our Enemy pose a nuisance but can never send any slave-ships to David Jones’s Locker where they ought to be all. You exhorted me to leave off gathering more grapeshot and to turn my efforts to finding a single cannonball.

Until today, I assumed that the cannonball-by which is meant, the story that will convince Englishmen, once and for all, of the absurdity and the enormity of slavery-would be found in some slave-auction in Sao Paulo, Kingstown, or Carolina. But to my surprise I, this afternoon, found that cannonball in the pit of mine own stomach. Minerva sails on the morning tide but you may find me in a gaol somewhere in London. I shall require paper, ink, and your prayers.

Your humble and obedient servant,

Dappa

Leaving this on the bench he flung open the door on the carriage’s left side. A small open space welcomed him, since no spectators would stand where the view to the south was blocked by the coach. Johann did not mark him; he was as fascinated as anyone else by the spectacle at the Monument. Dappa strode, but never ran, north through the crowd onto Bishopsgate. He phant’sied he might hear reward-seekers pursuing him through the crowd; never mind, if those did not, others would soon enough.

In a few moments’ time he was seated in a coffee-house literally in the shadow of South Sea House, sipping chocolate and pretending to read the Examiner. As if he’d a right to be there.

Busy men were all around him, unrolling documents on tables: charts of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, loading-diagrams of slave-ships, ledgers heavy with human assets. Familiar names flew around the place: Accra, Elmina, Ijebu, and Bonny. He felt, strangely, at home. Even more strangely, he felt at peace. Flipping the newspaper over, he licked his pencil again, and began to write.

IN A FEW MINUTES SIR Isaac was on the deck of the hooker, his hair gleaming like a comet’s tail in the fierce light of the burning Tor. Daniel stood near him, flat-footed under the weight of his Blanket, peering from beneath his rumpled Cap. A team of four dragoons were bent over the hooker’s rail, straining to heave-ho Colonel Barnes aboard without snapping off his other leg.

Very quickly the longboat rowed away from them, for the water was now deep enough that it could move free of the dredged channel. The hooker drew a bit more water than that, and was confined to the channel for the time being. Pulling his cap off so that he could feel the flow of air over his scalp, Daniel verified his suspicion that the burning Tor was drawing in a powerful flood of air, some of which was catching on the hull and the bare spars of the hooker. She was being sucked directly into the pillar of fire, like a moth into Vulcan’s forge.

Barnes was aware of it. The dragoons had begun exploring the ship, looking for an anchor, or anything that would serve the same end. There were none, as the anchor-cables had been chopped through in the coiners’ haste to escape.

“Is there anything that seems heavy down there?” Barnes demanded of a dragoon who had been groping around belowdecks.

Isaac pricked up his ears, as he too was very keen on finding something heavy.

“Only a great bloody chest,” the dragoon answered, “too heavy to move.”

“Did you look inside of it?” Isaac inquired, tense as a starving cat.

“No, sir. ’Tis locked. But I know what’s in it.”

“How do you know what is in it, if you did not look inside?”

“Why, I can hear it, sir. Ticking away just as steady as you please. It is a great big clock.”

As if the tips of their noses were joined by a hawser that had just snapped taut, Daniel and Isaac swiveled their heads toward each other.

Daniel spoke to the dragoon, though he was looking Isaac in the eye. “Is it so heavy that it could not be carried abovedecks and hurled over the side?” he asked.

“I heaved with all my might and could not budge it a hair’s breadth, sir.”

Daniel was asking himself whether he ought to let the dragoons know what was obvious to him and Isaac: that they were trapped on a derelict vessel with a ticking Infernal Device. But Isaac made up his mind quicker, and said: “Pray forgive Dr. Waterhouse’s curiosity on so trivial a matter. He and I are amateurs of clock-work. As we have little else to do just now, perhaps he and I shall retire belowdecks and amuse ourselves with Horologickal chit-chat.”

“And I’ll join you,” said Barnes, who had caught on, “if you’ll have me, that is.”

“Please be our guest, Colonel,” said Daniel. He then led Isaac and Barnes toward an open hatch, which, against the fire-lit deck planks, stood out as a crisp black rectangle.

FATHER EDOUARD DE GEX of the Society of Jesus stood up on one leg, for he’d damaged an ankle, and turned around to survey the debris trail he had left across the roof of the White Tower. Chiefly he desired to know where the contents of his satchel were. It seemed a good deal lighter now than when he’d jumped off the Monument a few moments earlier.

Under the groaning rope, and interspersed with flattened Scotsmen and their far-flung dirks, sporrans, and tam-o-shanters, was a Milky Way of coins and the small leather bags they’d just sprayed out of. De Gex hobbled back along his track snatching them up and stuffing them into his bag. Ashamed to see a man of the cloth performing stoop-and-pick labor in their midst, the stunned and bruised Highlanders drew themselves up, shook the dust from their kilts, and went to work gleaning coins and wee bags from the roof.

But de Gex did not leave off collecting and counting them until he had worked his way back to the west parapet. There he encountered the first man he had knocked down: a bulky fellow with a patch over one eye, who spoke to him in tolerable French. “In the name of the Auld Alliance,” said he (referring to an extremely spotty but ?on-spanning series of diplomatic trysts between Scotland and France) “I bid you welcome to the Tower of London. Please consider it the property of France-”

“Pourquoi non? Since it was built by us.”

“-and yours to command!”

“Very well, my first command is that you take down the banner of MacIan of MacDonald!” answered de Gex.

Lord Gy was not pleased to hear this. That much was on his face, as plain as a laceration. But he bore it with the insolent calm of one who has heard worse and would like you to notice that he is still alive. “I apologize,” he said, “the lads were a trifle high-spirited. The sobriety and discretion of Paris are foreign to young blades who have just galloped down from the heather.” And making a small bow, he turned in the direction of the banner. So did de Gex.

But both of them were astonished to find no banner at all: only a flag-pole that had been severed at waist level by one stroke of a very good blade. Next to it, the banner-carrier-a being made entirely of freckles, perhaps fourteen years old-was sitting in a gun-slit pinching a bloody nose.

Rufus MacIan hurried over to make inquiries. Edouard de Gex, after the obligatory rolling of the eyes, looked about and noted, for the first time, that Jack was nowhere to be seen. In the commotion of de Gex’s descent upon the White Tower, Jack must have taken the matter of the banner into his own hands. He must then have gone down stairs; and the nearest way down would have been through a door, now standing open, in the round turret that held together the northeastern vertex of the building. That turret loomed above the place where MacIan was interrogating the bloody-nosed freckle-boy, and it was obvious that MacIan would be headed that way in a moment.