“Too late, mate,” grinned the harbour master, who took a certain pleasure in delivering bad news. “He came in on one of the first balloons from Arkangel, asking after south-bound ships. I put him in touch with those youngsters who fly the Jenny Haniver. She pulled out not ten minutes past, bound for the Middle Sea.”
Blinkoe groaned, rubbing a hand wearily over his large, pale face. He could ill afford to lose the twenty sovereigns Pennyroyal had promised. Oh why, why, why had he not made the scoundrel pay in advance? He had been so flattered when Pennyroyal presented him with a signed copy of America the Beautiful (“To my good friend Widgery, with Kindest Regards”) and so excited by the promise of a mention in the great man’s next work, that he hadn’t even smelled a rat when Pennyroyal started charging wine-merchants’ bills to his account. Hadn’t even objected when he began flirting so openly with the younger Mrs Blinkoes! Bother and blast all writers!
And then something that the harbour master had said cut through the fog of self-pity and the incipient headache which had been clouding Blinkoe’s thoughts. A name. A familiar name. A valuable name!
“Did you say the Jenny Haniver?”
“I did, sir.”
“But that’s impossible! She was lost when the gods destroyed London!”
The harbour master shook his head. “Not so, sir; not a bit of it. Been in foreign skies these past two years; trading aboard them Nuevo-Mayan ziggurat cities, I heard.”
Mr Blinkoe thanked him and ran out on to the quay. He was a portly man, and did not often run, but this seemed worth running for. He shoved aside some children who were taking turns to peer through a telescope mounted on the handrail and used it to scan the sky. A little west of south, late sunlight flashed on an airship’s stern windows; a small, red airship with a clinker-built gondola and twin Jeunet-Carot engine pods.
Mr Blinkoe hurried back to his own ship, the Temporary Blip, and his long-suffering wives. “Quick!” he shouted, as he burst into the gondola. “Switch on the radio set!”