“How I lived with the good people of the tribe for three years, I shall not bore you with. Nor how I rescued the chief’s beautiful daughter Zip Code from a ravening bear, how she fell in love with me, and how I was forced to make my escape from her angry fiance. Nor even how I travelled north again, up on to the ice, and so returned, after many more adventures, to the Great Hunting Ground. You can read about it all in my interpolitan bestseller America the Beautiful when we reach Brighton.”

Tom sat for a long time without speaking, his head filled with the wonderful visions which Pennyroyal’s account had painted. He could hardly believe that he had never heard of the professor’s great discovery before. It was world-shattering! Monumental! What fools the Guild of Historians must have been, to turn away such a man!

At last he said, “But did you never go back, Professor? Surely a second expedition, with better equipment…”

“Alas, Tom,” sighed Pennyroyal. “I could never find anyone to fund a return trip. You must remember that my cameras and sampling equipment were all destroyed in the wreck of the Allan Quatermain. I took a few artefacts along with me when I left the tribe, but all were lost along my journey home. Without proof, how could I hope to fund a return expedition? The word of an Alternative Historian is not enough, I find. Why,” he said sadly, “to this day, Tom, there are people who believe I never went to America at all.”

5

THE FOX SPIRITS

Pennyroyal’s voice was still blaring away on the flight deck when Hester woke the next morning. Had he been there all night? Probably not, she realized, washing her face at the small basin in the Jenny ’s galley. He’d been to bed, unlike poor Tom, and had now come back down, lured by the smell of Tom’s morning cup of coffee.