The Steampunk Trilogy (18 page)

Captain Stormfield leaned back where he sat, and poked his unlit pipe into his mouth with dire meaning. There was a stunned silence for a moment. Then one of the sailors spoke.

“What’s that there word ‘nun-yew-clit-ian’ mean?”

Another sailor piped up. “And what about ‘squamous’? It got anything to do with Indian squaws?”

But before Captain Stormfield could enlighten his listeners, the lookout in the crows-nest let out a call.

“Rowboat approaching!”

Captain Stormfield rose. “Well, I’d best be gettin back to my ship. Howie’s a mite suspicious of strangers, and there’s no way he will tie up to this here clipper.”

Agassiz spoke up. “Wait one moment, Captain. Surely you do not intend to meet with this conspirator alone. What if he intends some kind of double-cross?”

“I guess I could take one other brave soul with me.”

All eyes—including Lizzie’s—now turned to Agassiz. He felt himself irrevocably nominated. With no small amount of trepidation, he said, “Very well, let us be off.”

In the darkling air, Agassiz found it clumsy work to transfer himself to the
Dolly Peach
.
He managed to clamber aboard after nearly taking an unplanned dip when he set his foot down on the stickleback which Captain Stormfield had been using as a comb that morning. Captain Stormfield hoisted anchor and they sailed off to meet the emissary from Marblehead.

As the crafts converged, Agassiz could discern a pair of shadowy figures in the rowboat. One, sitting, propelled the boat, while the other stiffly stood.

“That’s Howie a-standin’,” said Stormfield. “I guess his arthritis was actin’ up, and he dragooned a young un’ to row him.”

The creaking of the oarlocks grew louder and louder. Soon the rowboat pulled alongside the
Dolly Peach
.
Agassiz hastened to the side to help the men aboard.

As he bent forward, he instantly noticed two important details previously hidden in the darkness.

Stormfield’s cousin, the erstwhile Howard Phillips, was dead as the proverbial doornail, and propped up on a tripod of marlinspikes.

Ant the man rowing was Hans Bopp.

Agassiz staggered back. In the next second, Bopp swarmed aboard.

The Prussian spymaster wore a raptor’s grin. His hellish single eye seemed to focus and reflect the light from the emerging stars like a lens.

“So,
Herr
Professor, you thought to renege on our gentlemen’s agreement? I fear now that you must meet the same fate as the turncoat on the spikes, from whom I extracted all I needed to know. Rest assured, however, that your death will mark a terminus to the contract you signed. We will not be calling on your progeny to fulfill it.”

Bopp’s hand suddenly held his gleaming rapier. Agassiz watched helplessly as the tip of the sword sketched a pattern of death before his face.

“Louie, catch!”

Something came hurtling through the night air at Agassiz. Instinctively, he snatched it.

He held by its narrow tail the legendary seamstress swordfish, stuffed and rigid, which had previously hung on Stormfield’s cabin wall.

The feel of the old garments he wore, along with the heft of the swordfish, plunged Agassiz back twenty years, to when he had been a champion fencer at Heidelberg. Had he not beaten four German students in the space of an hour once? Surely he had lost none of that skill—

“
En garde
!”
yelled Agassiz, and lunged.

Bopp parried expertly and effortlessly. “Very good,” he said. “This gives me my exercise for the day. And you will die as befits a renegade member of the Master Race, rather than like a mongrel dog.”

Now the duel became intense. It took all of Agassiz’s concentration to maintain a barely viable defense, never mind press an attack. After a few minutes, he was huffing and puffing, while Bopp was breathing easily. The Hun even began to whistle. Damn that Jane and her rich cooking!

At last Agassiz knew Bopp was merely toying with him. He tried to prepare himself mentally for death. Yet even now he could not quite bring himself to believe that the world would soon be deprived of the genius of Agassiz—

Panting, Agassiz dropped his leaden arm. As he saw Bopp prepare to lunge, he took an involuntary step backwards.

His foot came down on the stickleback and he began to topple. He threw his arms up in a vain attempt to stabilize himself.

Taken offguard, Bopp awkwardly altered the direction of his thrust.

By a fluke—so to speak—the Prussian impaled himself on the waving swordfish. Together, he and Agassiz fell to the deck.

For a moment they lay entwined in a grim embrace. Then Agassiz wormed out from under the dead Prussian.

The bloody tip of the swordfish protruded from Bopp’s back. Incredulously, Agassiz noted that it featured an eye, just as Stormfield had promised.

Done to death by a fishy sewing machine—It served the arrogant bastard right.

“Well fought, Louie! I takes pleasure in you avengin’ my cousin’s murder. As we can’t learn nothin’ more here, I suspect we’d best be gettin’ back to the
Bibb
,
for whatever shall eventuate.”

Stormfield turned their nose toward the clipper ship. Soon, they had rejoined the others on the deck of the
Bibb
.

Agassiz began to recount his thrilling duel, but was cut short by Captain Davis.

“Another ship has put out from the harbor. We suspect that it’s the Deep Ones.”

“Shall we intercept them?”

Captain Davis started to reply, but in his turn was cut off by a shout from Dottie, who had been scanning the waters on the portside.

“Something’s surfacing!”

“Mister Melville, to your weapon! Gunners, take aim!”

All hands rushed to the portside, causing a slight list in the
Bibb
.
Agassiz was carried with them.

The water a few feet away from the
Bibb
bubbled and churned. Something tall and slender poked out of the roiling water. The neck-like appendage revealed itself to be attached to a rising body of some sort. More and more of the creature surfaced, illuminated by torches held by the crew.

Agassiz was the first to recognize it. “Why, it’s a submersible vessel, like Robert Fulton’s
Nautilus!
”

And so it was. Soon the submarine, at equilibrium, floated peacefully.

A hatch was violently pushed open. A man thrust himself out. He began to gasp deep lungfuls of air.

Agassiz was astounded. “Why, it’s that radical, Kosciuszko!”

A rope was lowered to the pitiful submariner, who gratefully grasped it and climbed aboard the
Bibb
.

Once on deck, Kosciuszko proved hardy enough to exhibit some of his insane
sang-froid
.

“Never trust these international arms-merchants, my friends. They promised me six hours of air, but it turned out to be only five and three-quarters.”

Agassiz confronted the anarchist. “Sir, we are embroiled in the midst of a life or death situation. Can we count on you to maintain civilized behavior, or must we clap you in irons?”

“Oh, no, I’ll abide by your bourgeois laws as long as I’m aboard your vessel. You have my word as a Polish-Hibernian.”

“And I’ll hold you to it. Very well. Captain, I recommend that we move to capture this new ship before they accomplish their nefarious goals.”

“As you wish, sir. First Mate, prepare to sail!”

Within seconds the highly trained crew of the
Bibb
had her in motion toward the Marblehead craft of the Deep Ones. (The
Dolly Peach
,
unskippered and unmanned, save for the unmourned corpse of Hans Bopp, remained near Cat Island.)

The
Bibb
drew nearer and nearer to the Marblehead ship, which sailed on undaunted, as if confident of its superiority against the much larger vessel.

When they were still some hundred yards apart, a new noise rent the ocean stillness: the ominous beat of a tribal drum.

“It’s dot D’guzeri! He’s zummoning up der voodoo forces!”

“Woo-too?” asked Agassiz.

“No, der voodoo!”

The drum fell silent. Less than a few dozen feet separated the two ships. Shambling figures could be seen crawling among the shrouds and creeping across the deck of the Marblehead craft. At the rail suddenly appeared the Hottentot sorcerer, flanked by squat figures carrying flaring torches.

T’guzeri was approximately three feet tall. He wore nothing but a jackal-skin genital pouch and the hide of a lion with attached skull: the lion’s jawless head rested atop his own, its front paws were tied around his neck, and the rest trailed a goodly distance along the deck.

He held aloft in his two hands a glass bottle.

With the fetiche finally in sight, Agassiz grew impatient. Didn’t this savage have the good grace to admit when he was beaten?

“Set that relic down and surrender!” yelled Agassiz.

T’guzeri seemed about to comply. He did indeed set the bottle down. When he straightened, he held a long stick in his hands.

“Oh mine Gott!” yelled Cezar. “Everyvun, duck!”

Agassiz turned completely around. “Duck? Why should we be frightened of a stick—?”

At that instant, Agassiz felt a sting in his arse.

He looked over his shoulder.

A plumed dart was embedded in one buttock.

Before he knew what had happened, he was thrown to the deck on his stomach. His pants were summarily and without invitation pulled down around his ankles, as were his drawers. Someone was sitting on his legs. A knife bit twice into his arse cheek. The whole process took only a second.

“Ow!”

“Don’t ztruggle! It’s der only vay!”

To his utmost horror, Agassiz felt a warm mouth pressed to his buttock. There was much sucking, interspersed with spitting. At last, he was allowed to stand.

Dottie was rinsing her mouth with water. Her small blade, bearing Agassiz’s blood, lay on the deck.

Agassiz nearly swooned. When he saw Lizzie looking on wide-eyed, his humiliation was complete.

“Dot dart vas full of der venom of der horned snake, Louie. If Dottie hadn’t moved zo qvick, you’d be dead now!”

Endeavoring to retain the smallest semblance of dignity, Agassiz stooped to pull his pants up. Striving to fasten them, he found all the buttons popped. Plenty of sewing for Jane. . . . Someone handed him a length of rope, which he clumsily employed. To Cezar, he said, “I almost wish I were.”

During this incident, the
Bibb
had continued to advance on the sorcerer’s ship. Evidently realizing that he could not halt the
Bibb
single-handedly, T’guzeri had abandoned his blowpipe and picked up the fetiche. He began now to chant harsh syllables of mystic import, an invocation to unseen deities.

“Vee must ztop him before he can finish!”

Captain Davis addressed his crew. “Prepare the grapples and cock your pistols, men. We’re going to board!”

Within seconds, the clipper was warped to the other ship. The attackers hurled themselves over.

The Marbleheaders had grouped themselves around the sorcerer, offering their bodies as a sacrifice to permit him to complete his spell. Although more heavily armed, the men of the
Bibb
found the Marbleheaders no mean opponents. The fighting was fierce and bloody.

At last, though, the Deep Ones were all dispatched, and the invaders advanced on the sorcerer.

With a shout, T’guzeri uttered a final throat-twisting vocable and managed to toss the fetiche overboard, before being collared by the sailors.

The small splash was followed by another, larger sound. From the
Bibb
,
Agassiz watched as Dottie surfaced with the fetiche under one arm. She swam to the Marblehead vessel and was helped aboard.

Eager to contemplate the fetiche, Agassiz clambered over, followed by Cezar, Stormfield, and others.

A drenched and dripping Dottie proudly held up her mother’s relic.

There is a family of marine creatures known as the sea slugs: order,
Nudibranchia;
class,
Gastropoda;
subclass,
Opisthobranchia
.
These fringed and limbless, horned and squishy creatures are studded with many curious excresences called
cerata
.
Variously colored, with intricate fringes, folds and convolutions, they prowl through waters warm and cold, twisting their boneless bodies with alien agility.

Saartjie Baartmann’s quim with its curtain of shame and attached portions, swimming in its
dacka
tea, resembled nothing so much as one of these sea slugs: specifically, the Maned Nudibranch,
Aeolidia papillosa
.

Agassiz moved to examine the relic that had cost him so much effort.

“Stop right there!”

All eyes swivelled to Kosciuszko. The anarchist held a round bomb with a long dangling sizzling fuse.

“I’ll take the fetiche, if you please.”

Furious, Agassiz accused, “But you promised—”

“Only as long as I was on your vessel. And now I’m on another, which I hereby commandeer in the name of liberation movements everywhere. Back on board your own ship. And don’t attempt to follow me, or I’ll destroy the fetiche! I go now to ignite a conflagration in a Europe ripe for revolution, the likes of which the world has never seen!”

Now Captain Stormfield spoke up over the anarchist’s fanfaronade. “Ye danged lying scalliwag! You’re not half the man your pappy was!”

Kosciuszko looked astounded. “You knew my father?”

“Aye, didn’t he and I fight side by side at Saratoga?”

“How old are you?”

“One hundred and twenty-eight, and I can still lick a tad like ye!”

Kosciuszko lowered the sputtering bomb, tears in his eyes. “I never even saw Dad more than twice. He was always off fighting someplace. Mom and I really missed him. To meet someone who actually knew him—”

Stormfield sidled up to the weeping anarchist and put an arm around his shoulder. “There, there, lad—”

“For God’s sake,” shouted Agassiz, “someone put that bomb out!”

Before anyone could act, there came another interruption.