opposite pavement, clutched at the brim of his hat.
The racket faded upward and tendrils of vapour came snaking back toward Burton.
He allowed a minute to pass then took hold of the middle lever and gently pulled it while simultaneously pressing his toes down softly on the footboard. The wings above his head jerked, turned, began to rotate, then suddenly transformed into a circular blur.
The fog whipped away again.
The rotorchair scraped over the cobbles then slid into the air. The ground dropped away and vanished as the mist closed up beneath the vehicle. Strangely, there was very little sense of movement.
Entombed in the cloud, Burton felt as if he'd been transported to Limbo, until suddenly his rotorchair burst out of it and he was dazzled by the low morning sun. Grabbing at the left lever, he yanked it to turn the vehicle away from the blazing orb. The rotorchair gyrated crazily. He clutched at the right lever, struggled to stabilise the car, and eventually got it under control.
The blanket of fog stretched from horizon to horizon. Though dirty, it was made eye-wateringly bright by the sun.
Burton experimented with the controls until he felt comfortable with them then turned the rotorchair slowly until it faced Constable Kapoor's machine. A column of steam, like an umbilical cord, streamed from the policeman's vehicle to the cloud below.
For a moment they hovered, facing each other, then the policeman banked his machine and flew off in a southeasterly direction. Burton followed the leading vehicle's white plume. He took deep breaths of the wonderfully fresh air, feeling his tiredness dissipate as the oxygen cleaned out the night's contaminations.
The rotorchairs picked up speed and flew across the enshrouded city; over Soho, the Thames, and Waterloo Bridge, Elephant and Castle, Peckham, and on to Lewisham, where the thick pall below started to break up, revealing glimpses of houses, streets, and gardens.
Burton had never flown before and he was thoroughly enjoying the sensation. He thought of John Speke sitting in a box kite being towed by a giant swan over East Africa and felt a pang of jealousy-then intense regret. Bismillah! It was only three days ago that he'd learned John had shot himself!
Soon, woods and tracts of cultivated land started to separate the clumps of houses and the fog retreated, reduced to a white mist, which lay in heavier ribbons along the courses of rivers, canals, and streams.
The rotorchair ahead of Burton started to lose altitude. He gently pushed the middle lever and felt his own machine sink.
They flew on for a mile, past the outskirts of Chislehurst, then Kapoor angled his machine slightly more eastward and descended, with Burton following. They landed in a field near cottages on the edge of a village, which Burton would later learn was named Mickleham. There were six rotorchairs already parked on the grass beside a mud-caked traction engine to which a plough was attached.
Even before the wings of Kapoor's rotorchair had stopped spinning, the young constable was out of it and sprinting across the grass to where a couple of policemen stood by a garden gate outside a ramshackle old dwelling. He spoke to them briefly then came running back, reaching Burton just as he stepped out of his machine.
'No!' he shouted above the noise of the engines. 'We have to go up again!'
'Why-what's happening?'
'Spring Heeled Jack is still in the area! They've chased him northward. We'll have to circle, see if we can spot anything. We'll spread out and fly low, Captain, cover as much ground as we can. Look out for a group of villagers and policemen-but keep me in sight and head my way if you see me land!'
Burton jumped back into the rotorchair, buckled himself in, and powered up the wings. He took off and followed Kapoor. The vapour trails they'd made on their way to the field were still hanging in the air.
Burton bore to the west until the other machine was a mere speck in the sky off to his right, with an irregular white line extending out behind it. They flew back past Chislehurst, the king's agent peering at the landscape to the right, left, and ahead.
Five minutes later he saw figures gathered on a golf course. He steered his rotorchair toward it and, as he approached and descended, saw that it was a crowd of constables and townspeople. The latter were milling about, brandishing shovels and broom handles.
People scattered as he landed the machine, thudding into the grass rather too heavily.
A burly man came running over; it was Detective Inspector Trounce.
'Captain Burton!' he yelled. 'It's gone into Marvel's Wood, there!'-he waved his cane at a wide expanse of forest on the eastern edge of the course'Fly over, see if you can drive it out!'
The king's agent nodded and took to the air again.
As his machine slid over the trees, he flew it as low as he dared, sending loose leaves flying in every direction as branches whipped about beneath the rotorchair's downdraught. Leaning over the side, Burton scanned the woods below, seeing flashes of the ground through the foliage. He passed at a slow speed around the outer part of the wood then began to spiral inward.
Despite his heavy overcoat, he was feeling cold. The past few days had pushed his body too far; he'd been drunk, attacked, and beaten; had spent an entire night in the noxious atmosphere of the East End; and had slept a mere two hours. The quinine he'd taken might stave off a malarial attack but he was nevertheless concerned; he needed proper rest.
Something moved below but he'd flown past before he could see what it was. He dug his heels into the footboard, bringing the rotorchair to a stop, then turned it around to face the way he'd come. To avoid flying back into his machine's trail of steam, he reduced his altitude until the runners were brushing the tops of the trees, then inched forward while looking down through the agitated branches.
Burton was leaning over the right side when the rotorchair suddenly lurched heavily to the left, shaking horribly as the wings sliced into twigs and leaves. His toes instinctively pressed hard on the footboard and he yanked back the middle lever, sending the rotorchair soaring upward, spinning wildly on its axis. As he fought with the levers, he became aware, through the edge of his goggles, of a large shape clinging to the side of the machine, unbalancing it.
He turned his head and looked into the eyes of Spring Heeled Jack.
The creature's mouth was moving as if shouting something but, though its face was very close to Burton's, the words were obliterated by the roar of the engines and the drumming of the wings. It reached out and grabbed his wrist.
The rotorchair spiralled downward.
Burton struggled to free himself but everything was happening too fast. He'd barely registered the presence of Spring Heeled Jack before the rotorchair plunged into the woods, keeling over sideways, its wings snapping and shooting away, one arcing high into the air, the others clattering through the branches.
The vehicle twisted and tumbled, knocking its driver this way and that as it fell through the foliage, hit the ground back-end first, then toppled onto its side and came to rest.
Steam screamed through a rent in its boiler and Burton, shaken but conscious enough to fear an explosion, fumbled with the buckle straps, finally released them, and crawled out of and away from the machine.
He lay panting, facedown in the loam.
Rustling footsteps approached and, as Burton rolled over onto his back, a foot-or, rather, a stilt-was placed to either side of him.
Spring Heeled Jack, light dappling his face, stood astride the king's agent and gazed down at him. He squatted.
'Who are you?' the creature asked.
Blue flame formed a corona around its head; sparks spat from its chest. The eyes blazed with madness.
'You know damned well who I am,' said Burton.
'I don't. I've never seen you before, though I must admit, I feel I should know you.'
'Never seen me! You gave me this damned black eye!'
Even as he said it, though, Burton thought about Trounce's suggestion that there might be more than one of the stilted creatures. 'Or maybe that was your brother?' he added.
The creature grinned. 'I don't have a brother. I don't even have parents!'
It threw back its head and let loose a peal of insane laughter, then looked down and ran its eyes over
