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For a moment a strange sort of calm descended and it seemed that the devastation was complete. Then, one after the other, the ship's boilers exploded-a series of terrific detonations that blew the back half of the ship to pieces, throwing debris hundreds of feet into the air and sending a thick pall of steam rolling outward.
Finally, the scene of the crash became quiet but for occasional clangs and squeals as the wreckage settled.
Of Darkening Towers, nothing remained except a smear across the landscape.
Burton had no idea how long he'd been unconscious. Wrapped in a roll of the thick insulating material, he'd been thrown violently around the small storage bay until his senses were shaken from him. Now, as they returned, he gingerly tested each limb, and though his right arm pained him where Oliphant's sword had pierced it, he found that all his bones were intact.
With much difficulty, he wriggled out of the material onto the slanting and twisted deck, pulled his clockwork lantern from his pocket, and surveyed the ruins around him by its light. The bay was almost ripped in half; the floor was buckled and stars glinted through a wide and jagged gash in the ceiling.
The swathes of insulation were in disarray; the roll he'd bundled Florence Nightingale into had come undone and she lay awkwardly amid the tangle. He crawled over to her and found that she was alive, though out cold.
The folds that contained Swinburne were underneath a tangle of girders from the ruined roof. One long, thin fragment of metal had been driven right into the bundle, and when Burton peered into the end of the roll, he could see a red stain within. For a second, fear gripped him as he imagined his friend dead, but he then realised that the patch of crimson was actually the poet's hair.
"Algernon?" he called. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," came the muffled response.
"It may take a while to get you out of there. You're underneath a pile of debris. Are you hurt?"
"There's something sharp sticking into my left buttock. It's not as thrilling as it sounds!"
"I'll get help as quickly as I can."
"And you, Richard? Are you in one piece?"
"Apart from having my brains scrambled, yes. Hold on! I can hear movement. My light may have attracted someone."
The sound of metal being shifted had reached him, and he wondered whether Detective Inspector Trounce had arrived in a rotorchair while he was unconscious. However, as the noise increased, he realised that something of far greater weight than the burly Scotland Yard man was approaching.
He looked up as mechanical grippers closed over the edges of the torn roof and peeled the metal back with a horrible squeal.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel thudded into view, towering overhead. The arms on one side of him were twisted and bent out of shape.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the wheezing of his bellows, then he chimed, "She is alive?"
"Yes," replied Burton. "Merely unconscious. I wrapped her in this material to protect her from the worst of it."
A pause, then arms stretched down into the room, slid beneath the prone nurse, and lifted her out.
"I thank you, Sir Richard. I am in your debt," rang the huge machine.
It retreated from view and they heard it stamping over the wreckage, onto the earth, and away into the distance.
Burton began to clear the fallen beams away from Swinburne.
Some time later he heard a rotorship rising into the air and departing.
"That must be the medical laboratory," he said to the trapped poet. "Speke is aboard. I wonder where he and Brunel will go?"
Ten minutes or so passed before he heard the approaching paradiddle of rotorchairs. He climbed out onto the roof of the wrecked ship and waved down Detective Inspector Trounce.
Exhaustion hit him.
"By God!" he muttered. "Africa was child's play compared to this!"
CONCLUSION
It is incredible!" exclaimed Mrs. Iris Angell for the umpteenth time. "Poor Mr. Speke. I don't say he was ever a bad man, but perhaps a little lacking in rectitude. He certainly didn't deserve to fall into the hands of that immoral crowd. What will become of him, I wonder?"
"I don't know, but I feel I haven't seen the last of him. Have you finished?"
Mrs. Angell was sitting at one of Sir Richard Francis Burton's desks, where she'd been writing out two copies of his report.
Two days had passed since the Battle of Old Ford.
"Yes. I must say, Sir Richard, your handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. I suggest you have a poke around in the attic. If I remember rightly, one of my late husband's fancies was some sort of mechanical writing device. An autoscribe,' I think he called it. You play it like a piano and it prints onto paper, like a press."
"Thank you, Mother Angell; that sounds like it might be useful."
The old dame stood and rubbed a crick from her back. She passed the two copies to Burton then crossed to the study door.
"I must get back to the kitchen. Your guests will be here in half an hour or so. I expect they'll appreciate some cold cuts and so forth?"
"That would be excellent. Thank you."
She departed.
Burton rolled one of the copies and placed it into a canister. This he put into the messenger pipe. With a blast of steam, it went on its way to Buckingham Palace. A few moments later, he sent the second copy to 10 Downing Street.
He prepared the study for his guests-stoking the fire, arranging armchairs around it, refilling the brandy decanter.
He sat and read for half an hour.
Algernon Swinburne was the first to arrive. Like Burton, he was covered in yellowing bruises and healing injuries. He was limping slightly.
"Your little paperboy, Oscar, just accosted me on the street," he a
"How the dickens did he get wind of it?" exclaimed Burton. "There's been nothing said to the press!"
"You know what these newsboys are like," replied Swinburne, easing himself carefully into a chair. "They know a great deal about far too much. He also asked me to advise you that `one can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."'
Burton laughed. "Quips is being exceptionally optimistic. I hardly think our little victory is enough to mend my reputation. Richard Burton might be battered and bruised but `Ruffian Dick' is alive and well, I'm sure!"
"That might be true in certain quarters, but, for certain, your stock has risen with King Albert and Lord Palmerston, and that's what matters. I'll have a brandy, please-but purely for medicinal reasons."
"How are you, Algy? Recovering?"
"Yes, though the hole in my arse cheek hurts like blazes. I fear I shall have to skip my birchings for a few weeks."
"Bad news for London's houses of ill repute," noted Burton, pouring his friend's drink. "They'll have to tighten their belts, if you'll pardon the pun."
"Thank you," said Swinburne, accepting the glass. "By the sound of those thundering footsteps, old Trounce is coming up the stairs."
The door opened and the thickset Yard man stomped in.
"Greetings, both!" he a