The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [176]
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
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
-ALGrERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
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