Anti-Ice

We were whisked away from our corner of Kent. We were given little time to say goodbye to each other— which is perhaps as well, for I felt a surprisingly strong bond with my fellow voyagers. I would not go so far as to say I experienced a nostalgia for those long weeks trapped in the Phaeton, but I did feel quite exposed without my companions close by.

Traveller soon installed himself in a pleasant inn close to the Lubbocks’ field where his precious Phaeton lay, and threw himself into the restoration of the craft to his laboratory in Surrey. The faithful Pocket begged, and was granted, a few days’ leave to visit his precious grandchildren and reassure them of his continued existence; then, as usual, he returned to work, determining and quietly serving his employer’s needs.

As for Bourne, he was taken without ceremony from Kent under close arrest, and soon disappeared into the complexities of international law. The confusion of the case brought against him as a saboteur by the British, an extradition warrant issued by the Belgians, and protests lodged by the beleaguered French government—not to mention the practical difficulties of communication with that nebulous body—all conspired to threaten the hapless Bourne with a long imprisonment before even he came to trial.

Holden, as soon as he could, made for Manchester, urging us not to disclose details of our adventure to any other journalist. It was amusing to see how his ample form, reduced to the status of a sack of potatoes wheeled about in a bath chair, became filled with agitation as the size of the story he had to tell—and the subsequent fees he would command—grew ever larger in his scribbler’s mind; it was as if one could see his very fingers itching.

Still, Holden’s account, when it appeared in the Manchester press a few days later, did come close to doing justice to our adventure. I read through the rather lurid prose and will admit to some shivers of remembered terror as he evoked my jaunt through the vacuum and (as he overstated it) my battle with the rock monsters of Luna. The piece in the Manchester Guardian was handsomely illustrated by lithographs of various scenes from the account, and was topped off by a reproduction of Holden’s famous photograph of myself and the ill-fated model of Brunel’s ocean liner.

My only disappointment was with Holden’s unsympathetic portrayal of Traveller. The journalist dwelled on Traveller’s near-Anarchist sympathies in a manner which aroused adverse comment about the engineer, even at this moment of his greatest fame. I took the opportunity to read more widely on the various Anarchist thinkers— dismissing the insurrectionist crackpots such as Bakunin, and concentrating on the deeper thinkers like Proudhon, who declared that the desire for property and political power served only to encourage the violent and irrational elements in man.

Surely, I reflected, this present war in Europe was ample evidence for Proudhon’s thesis, and I regretted Holden’s disloyalty.

In any event, thanks to Holden’s account, I became briefly famous.

I returned to the comfort of my parents’ home in Sussex; my family were quite inordinately glad to see me whole and healthy. I suffered a moving reunion with my brother Hedley; his scarred face crumpled with pleasure as I described Josiah Traveller, who had become something of a fascination for Hedley since their one-sided acquaintance in the Crimea. My London friends, several of whom came to visit, urged me to make a dramatic re- entrance into society, the more to capitalize on my heroic status. I looked on their faces, which seemed astonishingly young and fresh, and declined their various invitations—not from any uncharacteristic burst of modesty, for I should quite have enjoyed the admiring attention of the season’s belles as I described how it hadn’t been as bad as all that, really—but more from a lingering feeling of isolation. And besides, my confused feelings about Francoise were a turmoil inside me, incapable of resolution.

I went for long, solitary walks in the woods near my parents’ home, exploring these odd feelings. It was almost as if, having once shaken the dust of Earth from my boots, I felt unfit to return with whole heart to human society. And I found I missed the company of my erstwhile companions more and more.

I watched the colors of autumn spread through the trees, and wondered how such a sight would look from space.

I promised myself that I should immerse myself into the world of men as soon as my moment of fame had faded; and sure enough, fade it did—though not for reasons I would have welcomed. For as the nights of autumn drew in, so the plight of the French grew steadily more desperate.

The Prussians maintained their walls of men and guns around both Paris and Metz. In the Manchester press there were constant tales of famine stalking the streets of the French capital, and some rather more reliable accounts of how the armies of Marshal Bazaine, in Metz, were languishing in the mud, and were growing steadily more incapable even of defending themselves, let alone liberating Paris.

I perused the papers with endless, and morbid, fascination, as the leader writers discussed the choices and dangers facing Gladstone and his government. No civilized man, it was commonly agreed, would again wish to see anti-ice used as a weapon of war. But the Balance of Power was undoubtedly under its severest test, and there seemed a growing mood for some intervention before this precious and venerable guarantor of peace in Europe should be lost for ever.

Against this there were those who, remembering Bonaparte, had no desire to intercede in favor of the beleaguered French. And at the other extreme the Sons of Gascony and their like became ever more vocal in their demands that Britain should exert her evident power, not just to restore peace, but to impose order on the warring factions of Europe. The influence of these stern-minded gentlemen on the debate seemed to be growing; it was even rumored that the King himself sympathized with such views.

Reading this depressing stuff I was reminded of my conversations on the Phaeton with Bourne. No longer did I feel bound into such arguments, as I may have before my adventure; now I saw with a new aloofness how this national debate paralleled the internal ramblings of a deranged mind, which seeks to impose its inward fears and daemons on those around it.

At last, at the end of October, came the news that Bazaine’s forces in Metz—wet, starved and demoralized—had capitulated; this time the rampant Prussians took away 1,400 guns and more than 170,000 men. Although French forces fought on in various parts of the country, it was generally agreed in Manchester that the decisive moment of the war had come; that the Prussians, victorious in the field of combat, would soon be riding through the battered streets of Paris—and that if Britain were ever to intercede in this struggle for the future of Europe, now was the moment.

The clamor of newsprint, demanding action from Gladstone, grew until it seemed a silent shout all around me, and I felt I could bear the tension no longer.

I knew of only one way to resolve these feelings; and I packed a bag, bade a hasty goodbye to my parents, and made my way by Light and steam train to the home of Josiah Traveller.

* * *

I walked the last few miles to Traveller’s home. Not far from Farnham, the place was based around a small converted farmhouse, and it would not have attracted the eye—save for a brooding giant some thirty feet high which stood defiant at the rear of the house, its great aluminum shoulders covered by sewn-together tarpaulins. This was of course the Phaeton; and as that magical carriage loomed out of the dull landscape, I felt my heart lift.

I came around a hedgerow to Traveller’s house—and there, standing before his front door, was a rather splendid brougham of rich, polished wood. I realized immediately that I was not Sir Josiah’s only visitor of the day.

Pocket greeted my unheralded arrival with tremendous enthusiasm; he even begged my permission to pump my hand on his own behalf. The manservant was spry and secure now he was on firm ground, and he said, “I am sure that Sir Josiah will be delighted to see you, but at the moment he’s with a visitor. In the meantime, may I offer you tea; and perhaps you would care for a glance around the premises, sir?”

He did not volunteer the identity of this “visitor” and I did not press him.

As I sipped tea I said, “I’ll be honest with you, Pocket. I’m not entirely clear why I’ve come…”

He smiled with surprising wisdom, and said, “You don’t need to explain, sir. In these troubled times, I’m sure I can speak for Sir Josiah in stating that this house is a home to you. Just as the Phaeton was.”