Chapter 1 – The Empty Cottage

Chapter 2 – Reminiscence

Chapter 3 – Scotland

Chapter 4 – Old Friends

Chapter 5 – Further West

Chapter 6 – The Isle of Mull

Chapter 7 – The Highlands

Chapter 8 – Meanwhile in Ardnamurchan

Chapter 9 – A Very Peculiar Painting

Chapter 10 – The Boathouse

Chapter 11 – Ireland

Chapter 12 – Philosophy

Chapter 13 – A Lead

Chapter 14 – Deductions

Chapter 15 – Magpie

Chapter 16 – Hidden Routes

Chapter 17 – Brains and Batshit

Chapter 18 – Rye Marina

Chapter 19 – Canals

Chapter 20 – An Apprenticeship

Chapter 21 – The Explanation

Chapter 22 – Sunflower Seeds

Chapter 23 – Towpath Intelligence

Chapter 24 – Northbound by Narrowboat

Chapter 25 – The Pin Mill Report

Chapter 26 – The Silver Star Consignments

Chapter 27 – The Silver-Star Routes

Chapter 28 – The Penny Drops

Chapter 29 – Lundy

Chapter 30 – Plymouth

Chapter 31 – The Hoe

Chapter 32 – The Sound

Chapter 33 – Breaking News

Chapter 34 – Preparations

Chapter 35 – The Box of Distractions

Chapter 36 – No Arrest Record

Chapter 37 – The Tide Turns

Chapter 38 – Drake’s Island

Chapter 39 – Bank Holiday Monday

Chapter 40 – The Dreadnork

Chapter 41 – The Expedition Begins

Chapter 42 – Supplies

Chapter 43 – Bearings

Chapter 44 – Three Weeks Under Sail

Chapter 45 – Portland, Maine

Chapter 46 – The Rustler

Chapter 47 – The Hidden Cargo

Chapter 48 – Infiltration

Chapter 49 – The Paper Trail

Chapter 50 – The Customs Copy

Chapter 51 – The Laminated Napkin

Chapter 52 – An Unscheduled Boarding

Chapter 53 – The Homecoming

The smugglers had been handed over, Customs had acquired enough paperwork to remain happy for several months, and Talmere had begun explaining why none of it was really their fault. For now that would have to do. Everyone was simply home.

Gosie sat comfortably and watched the room. She liked this part. The adventure was over. People became themselves again.

Swashbuckled and RandomHypatia were discussing seamanship with NotAtMyAge and the serious Scandinavians. JanesLittleGirl chipped in with her analysis of the correct method to stow cargo. Nobody appeared willing to concede anything. Fortunately, the arrival of EdithStourton with Brains and Batshit meant none of it mattered.

Octavia Briefcase and Hedgehog had found a legal disagreement and were carefully polishing it into a full evening’s entertainment. DauntlessDamson and Hussie were comparing battle scars.

AngleofRepose, Magpiecomplex and Chickadee were listening to Boily explain something involving a warehouse, a crate of Tunnock’s Teacakes and a route through Portland that became less convincing every time she described it.

Fuzzy's whereabouts remained unknown. This did not prevent several people from claiming to know exactly where she was.

Around the room stories were beginning to improve. The emergency Scottish resupply had become considerably more dramatic by the time SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius finished describing it. ErroltheDragon's signal fire was steadily increasing in size and ChristmasStars was being credited with preventing disasters that nobody else remembered occurring.

Distances increased. Obstacles multiplied. Weather conditions deteriorated. The yacht became steadily larger. Gosie suspected this process would continue for several hours.

The banquet was well underway when Octavia Briefcase returned carrying a wooden case. She placed it on the table and resumed her seat without explanation. MyrtleLion lifted the lid.

Inside sat row upon row of dark green packets bearing elegant gold lettering. Vesper Gold Monastery Helianthus.

The effect was immediate. Chairs scraped quietly against floorboards as heads turned toward the table.

Governance closed a notebook. Glockenspiel carefully removed her spectacles and cleaned them. Gardenia stopped eating and stared at the open case. A ribbon of gravy continued its slow descent from her fork entirely unnoticed. Galatia abandoned an argument halfway through a sentence and simply gawped. Gasket set down a teacup and then tried to set it down again.

Octavia anticipated the questions before anyone spoke. “The chain of custody was broken. Nobody can prove it belonged to the seized consignment, nobody can prove it was stolen and nobody is likely to claim ownership. Legally speaking, it is simply a box of sunflower seeds that I happened to have in my briefcase.”

“In that case,” said MyrtleLion, reaching into the case and removing a single packet, “thank you, all.” She looked at the gerbils. “For helping.”

The distribution that followed was remarkably orderly. Gimbal accepted three seeds, stared at them for a moment and then carefully placed one back. Across the table Galliard counted hers twice before handing one to the gerbil beside her. Gasket accepted her share, nodded solemnly and immediately hid two for later. Nobody appeared entirely certain how many seeds constituted the correct amount, but somehow everybody ended up with exactly the right number.

When all the gerbils had had their share, MyrtleLion took out a second packet and opened it. “And this,” she said, “is because we’re glad you all came home safely.”

For a moment nobody moved. Gimbal looked down at the seed in her paw as though it had become unexpectedly heavier.

“Oh,” said Galliard quietly.

Around the table several gerbils found sudden and urgent reasons to inspect their sunflower seeds very closely. MyrtleLion pretended not to notice.

Eventually Griffin looked at the case and noticed it was still almost full. “What about the rest?”

MyrtleLion closed the lid. “For special occasions only.”

Within minutes the gerbils had identified a number of forthcoming events that would clearly qualify as special occasions. At least two anniversaries had been invented and Ganges was attempting to organise a commemorative regatta.

“What about the Summer Festival?” asked Greengage. “What Summer Festival?” asked Gingerbread. “The one we shall now organise.”

“And Founders’ Day,” suggested Geode. “We don’t have a Founders’ Day,” replied Garnet. “We do now.”

MyrtleLion waited patiently until the discussion exhausted itself. Then she simply said, “You’ll know,” and handed the box to Boiledbeetle for safekeeping among her Tunnock’s.

The evening gradually dissolved into stories, laughter and entirely too many sunflower seeds. Somewhere along the way, the gerbils formed what appeared to be a formal Appreciation Society.

Finally, Gingham looked up at Gosie and said, “Tell us again about Octavia Breakfast stopping the smugglers.”

“Briefcase,” said Octavia.

Gingham nodded, “That’s what I said.”

Gosie suspected they were no longer discussing the same voyage she remembered. She didn’t mind.

Gosie settled herself into her armchair. Before she began the story she slipped a hand into her pocket and felt for the torn fragment. For a moment she considered taking it out. Then she left it where it was.

Tomorrow would do.

The End

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His confusion lasted approximately three seconds. “Who the hell—” he began, reaching for his phone.

“Hands visible,” said DauntlessDamson, and she quickly relieved him of the device.

A hatch opened nearby. Hussie emerged onto the deck carrying a ring of keys. “Found these,” she said.

“But you’ve only been aboard for seven seconds,” said the smuggler.

“Busy seven seconds.”

The others began to board. The gerbils were in a tight, purposeful cluster while the serious Scandinavians moved like a diagram in a seamanship manual. EdithStourton looked as though boarding smugglers’ yachts was an entirely ordinary part of her day. Batshit trotted excited circles around her as Brains headed straight for the cabin.

From the companionway came a second smuggler, half an arm into a waterproof jacket and fully committed to disbelief. “You can’t just board us.”

“We just have,” said Edith.

“That’s not—”

“It is, obviously.”

The third smuggler took a step backwards and discovered his way blocked by one of the Scandinavians. He opened his mouth. DauntlessDamson looked at him. He reconsidered whatever he had intended to say.

One of them asked Edith, “Are you Customs?”

“No. Worse.”

Had this been a normal raiding party, the smugglers might have expected shouting, confusion and perhaps one heroic lunge. Instead they faced a crew who knew where to stand, which lines to secure, which hatches to watch and how to make a yacht feel suddenly much smaller.

The Rustler’s engine was killed. The wheel was secured. The hatches were covered. The sea slapped politely against the hull, as if applauding under its breath.

DauntlessDamson looked around once. “Yacht secure.”

By the time Gosie, Octavia Briefcase and Hedgehog came aboard, the Rustler had changed character completely. It was still white, expensive and trying too hard, but now its decks were occupied by competence. The smugglers sat in a line under guard, hands zip-tied, expressions arranged somewhere between resentment and dawning professional respect.

Finally one of the smugglers gathered enough courage to speak. “Do you have a warrant?”

“No,” said Octavia.

The smuggler brightened immediately. “Then this is illegal.”

“Noted,” said Octavia. “Now, about this smuggling operation.”

The gerbils began their search of the cargo.

“Crate one,” announced Gadget, peering into a box packed with straw. “Contains six hand-carved mahogany humidors. Labelled Bulk Stationery.”

Graft and Grind reached another crate. They pried it open with a surgical precision that made one of the smugglers wince. Inside, packed with excessive cushioning, were dozens of panes of stained glass, glowing faintly in the moonlight.

“Ah,” said Graft, consulting the manifest. “These are supposed to be Greenhouse Panes.”

“Inefficient,” observed Grind, shaking her head. “They would shatter at the first sign of a summer storm.”

The gerbils nodded.

The bow compartment held rare, hand-labelled orchids, each stem meticulously sleeved and rooted in damp moss.

Within minutes, Geometry had deconstructed the cardboard packing inserts and reconfigured them into a miniature Dutch windmill. The yacht’s motion powered the sails, while the orchids were repurposed as the surrounding landscape: a yellow blossom as livestock, a white one serving as the local parish church. The drainage canals, fashioned from excess scraps, were particularly impressive.

“Ingenious,” Gossamer noted. “Especially the canals.”

The search continued as the sun rose behind the lighthouse. Octavia Briefcase sat at the saloon table, her paws folded over a stack of manifests. Hedgehog sat opposite her, a pair of spectacles perched on her nose. She was currently dissecting a ledger with the intensity of a pathologist, comparing the figures with details highlighted on her tablet.

The circle-and-three-lines symbol appeared repeatedly. Octavia organised documents into neat piles. Invoices. Delivery notes. Shipping instructions. Insurance documents. Labels. Envelopes.

Kitty had been watching the chaos from the safety of a particularly comfortable cushion on one of the saloon benches. She stood, stretched until her back formed a perfect arch, and then hopped onto the table.

She walked over the scattered manifests, her paws landing with disdainful precision. Eventually she sat beside Octavia, settling on a single spreadsheet and refusing to move. Octavia reached for it. “Excuse me.”

Kitty remained where she was. Octavia tugged. Then tugged harder. It tore. Rows of payments covered the page. “Accounts,” she noted. The paper disappeared into a larger pile.

“I found some antique silver tea services,” called out Girdle. “Listed as Replacement Plumbing Fittings on the manifest.” Several gerbils gathered around.

Gasket lifted a teapot, “Good weight,” she said.

Gimbal collected six cups, “Excellent handles,” she agreed.

The tea service was halfway to the galley when Octavia looked up from the table. “Evidence,” said Octavia.

The procession stopped. Gasket looked at the teapot. Then at Octavia. Then at the galley.

“Evidence,” said Octavia.

“Ooh look,” chirped Glissando. “These are silk tapestries from Turkiye. Though it’s conveniently marked Canvas Dropcloths on the outside!” She unrolled a corner. “This would improve the Bluestocking theatre enormously.”

“Evidence,” said Octavia.

Glissando looked down at the tapestry. “Temporary evidence?”

The Rustler travelled toward Portland under escort from The Dreadnork. The smugglers had entered the reflective stage of defeat. One stared at the sea. One stared at the deck. One admired the windmill diorama.

Octavia eyed the piles of paper in front of her. The symbol appeared on most of them. Between them she and Hedgehog had uncovered enough records to prove the organisation was still active. But Aurelia had disappeared as thoroughly as if it had never existed.

EdithStourton entered the cabin and surveyed the documents. “We know they couldn’t prove Aurelia so this must be something else.”

“We are missing something,” said Octavia, “but I don’t know exactly what.”

“Still,” said Edith, “we have intercepted a shipment, identified three smugglers and handed Customs enough evidence to keep several people busy for months. That’s not nothing.”

Octavia nodded, but her eyes returned to the documents. It was not nothing. It was simply not the answer.

When The Dreadnork finally tied up in Portland, the saloon emptied quickly. Documents were gathered, evidence boxed and smugglers handed over. Within minutes only one occupant remained.

As everyone left the saloon Gosie noticed that the cat was still in exactly the same place on the table. There was a torn scrap of paper beneath her left paw. “What have you got there, Kitty?”

The cat lifted her paw. Gosie took the fragment. It was no bigger than a ticket stub. Then she saw the symbol and the words, Donation for Chapter House Window Preservation Fund. Paid on behalf of Margrave.

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The crew had spent several hours discussing the napkin when Boiledbeetle wandered into the chart room carrying a Tunnock’s Teacake. “It’s a pickup at Head Light during high tide on Tuesday the second of June,” she said.

RandomHypatia immediately unfolded the tide tables recovered from the yacht.

Gosie looked up from the chart table. “How do you know that?”

“I heard them talking about it.”

“On the yacht?”

“Yes.”

Nobody had actually questioned Boily very closely about her three-week stay aboard the smugglers’ yacht. By the time they found her nest among the marina brochures there had been rather more urgent matters to deal with.

“What were you doing on the yacht?” asked Hedgehog.

Boily looked puzzled. “Sleeping.”

“My mistake,” said Hedgehog. “That explains everything.” It didn’t.

Boily sighed patiently. “I hid some Tunnock’s in a crate.”

“Then what happened?”

“I had a nap.”

“In the crate?” asked Gosie.

“It was a very comfortable crate.”

“So how did you end up on the yacht?”

Boily considered this. “I may have slept through that part.”

Chickadee hopped onto the edge of the chart table and looked down at the napkin. “Head Light is the lighthouse,” she said. “Portland Head Light.”

RandomHypatia looked up from the tide tables she had been perusing. “That makes sense,” she said. “High tide on Tuesday, second of June is 9.7 metres at 00:49. The pickup’s tonight. Just after midnight.”

“But if Aurelia was ready for reconstruction, and Customs have already seized the cargo,” said Gosie, “what are they picking up?”

Chickadee frowned. “Obviously something that isn’t Aurelia.”

Swashbuckled stood up. “Then we’d better be there.”

The Viking longboat drifted below Portland Head Light while the serious Scandinavians rested on their oars. The reconnaissance party occupied the middle benches. The gerbils occupied considerably more space than their physical dimensions should have permitted.

What had begun as a telescope had somehow become an observation station. Glasseye had brought another telescope. Granite produced a folding desk. Gunwale placed a brass desk lamp next to the second telescope. Governance was updating Coastal Observation Procedures while Gravitas reviewed a second document entitled Amendments to Coastal Observation Procedures.

The landing below the lighthouse remained empty. That did not prevent the gerbils from collecting data. Distances were measured. Angles were calculated. Tide movements were recorded. At one point Gimbal and Gasket produced a folding blackboard and began covering it with figures.

By the time RandomHypatia glanced over, the blackboard contained a bewildering collection of numbers, arrows and diagrams. “Your current solution assumes a crosswind.”

“In case a crosswind develops.” Gimbal returned to the board.

The discussion continued for several minutes. Additional calculations appeared. Guidance objected to the handwriting. Gondola attempted to eat a corner of the blackboard.

Throughout all of this, DauntlessDamson and Hussie sat quietly in the bow looking at the sea. Occasionally DauntlessDamson would say, “Mm” while Hussie would nod and reply, “Mm”. Clearly a great deal of information was being exchanged.

The first sign of activity came from the lighthouse. A vehicle arrived. Boxes were unloaded and transferred to a launch waiting at the dock.

Governance immediately opened a fresh notebook and wrote Compliance Failures across the top of the first page. The first bullet point she wrote was, No visible paperwork.

The launch headed out to sea carrying its cargo. A few minutes later navigation lights indicated that the Rustler was rounding the headland. The launch came alongside.

Cargo moved from one vessel to the other. Governance began writing much faster. Glockenspiel produced a ruler. Gimbal rejected the ruler and produced a superior ruler. Guidance unfolded a chart. Gravitas added a supplementary appendix.

Gosie followed the transfer through binoculars as most of the containers vanished into shadow. Then one crossed beneath a deck light. Clearly visible on the side of the crate was the circle crossed by three diagonal lines.

At the other end of the longboat, the gerbils had reached what appeared to be a conclusion. Governance closed the notebook. Gravitas signed something.

Glockenspiel pulled a tarpaulin aside. A large ballista occupied most of the bow. The gerbils gathered around the ballista with obvious excitement. Ropes were checked. Angles were reviewed. Gasket made a minor adjustment to the elevation.

“Ready,” announced Gimbal.

DauntlessDamson looked at the machine. Then she looked at the yacht. Then she drew her bow. Her arrow vanished into the darkness trailing a line behind it. A heartbeat later the grappling rope snapped tight against the Rustler’s rail. Then DauntlessDamson and Hussie swung aboard the yacht.

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Three representatives from Talmere sat at the conference table with an air of cautious confidence. At the head of the table the Verification Officer prepared to open the folder.

MyrtleLion entered the room accompanied by Octavia Briefcase, Hedgehogforshort, AngleofRepose and several gerbils. The Talmere representatives rose to their feet immediately. Myrtle paused. She still wasn’t entirely comfortable with people doing that. After a few uncomfortable seconds, the representatives sat down again.

At the far end of the table, the verification officer opened the submission package.

The folder was magnificent. Its cover was embossed. The section dividers were colour coded. Every tab was perfectly aligned. The contents page included cross references, indexing marks and what appeared to be a supplementary indexing system for the indexing system.

Graceful visibly relaxed. “I told them the tabs would make a good first impression,” she whispered.

“They do,” said Glamour quietly.

The verification officer nodded with obvious approval and opened the executive summary. She reviewed the contents page, checked the section structure and examined the formatting standards.

Then she turned another page. Her expression changed as she removed a glossy brochure advertising luxury yachts. She checked the tab. “Supporting Documentation,” she read.

A second brochure followed. Then tide tables and a seafood restaurant menu. Then a tourist leaflet with bite marks and a chocolate stain.

The confidence on the Talmere side of the table began to weaken. “There may have been a filing error,” one representative offered.

The verification officer continued searching. Surely, everyone assumed, the actual documentation would appear eventually. It did not. Instead, after a final search, she extracted the last item from the folder and stared at it for several seconds before placing it carefully in the centre of the table. It was a laminated napkin.

On one side, in untidy handwriting, somebody had written:

pickup headlight high tue 2 june

The lamination quality was exceptional. Graceful straightened slightly. “That was Glockenspiel’s work.”

The verification officer closed the folder. “I am unable to verify a shipment whose official customs submission contains no customs documentation.” She folded her hands together and looked around the table. “Verification is suspended pending clarification.”

After a brief silence she added, “Does anyone present possess independent evidence regarding the contents or valuation of this shipment?”

Octavia opened her briefcase.

Several gerbils immediately became alert.

“No,” said Angle.

“Nothing has happened yet,” said Graceful.

“But you’re thinking about it,” said Angle.

Every gerbil froze and tiny noses lifted as Octavia placed the foil-wrapped brick on the table.

The verification officer frowned. “What is that?”

Octavia peeled back the foil to expose the elegant gold leaf lettering on the dark green textured paper.

“Oh,” whispered Glamour.

The officer removed one packet. Vesper Gold Monastery Helianthus.

One of the Talmere representatives squinted at it. “What is that? Birdseed?”

A collective noise of outrage emerged from the gerbils. Nobody claimed responsibility.

“How much does this retail?” asked the officer.

“About £250 a packet,” said Hedgehog.

The officer frowned. “What’s that in dollars?”

“About $340.”

The officer looked at the brick. “Forty packets?” Hedgehog nodded and said, “Fifty bricks per crate. There were six crates.”

The officer reached for a calculator and clicked for a few seconds. She stared at the result. “Just over $4 million?” Nobody contradicted her.

Octavia withdrew a folder from her briefcase and removed a copy of the customs declaration from it.

“There’s another folder?” asked Gosie. “We copied it,” said Garland.

“Why?” asked Gosie. Garland shrugged, “It’s a folder.”

Octavia placed the declaration beside the seed brick. “My team recovered this declaration and the seed packets from the yacht transporting the consignment,” she said.

Glacier began inching across the table toward the seed brick. Angle moved it six inches away. She leaned further. Angle moved it again. A small paw reached out. Angle slapped it away without looking. “Please,” said Glacier quietly. “No.”

The verification officer looked at the declaration. “Low-grade birdseed: declared value: $4,700.”

One of the Talmere representatives immediately shook her head, “You cannot prove that came from the consignment.”

“Correct,” said Octavia.

The representative smiled.

“I can, however, demonstrate sufficient grounds for inspection.”

The smile disappeared.

The verification officer looked from the declaration to the seed brick. “I am authorising a physical inspection of the consignment.”

The bonded warehouse proved disappointingly straightforward.

The verification officer selected the sunflower seed crate first. The declaration described low-grade birdseed. The crate contained Vesper Gold Monastery Helianthus.

Nobody looked surprised. The verification officer made a note and selected another crate.

Glacier attempted to approach the sunflower seed evidence. Angle intercepted her without looking.

All of the declarations undervalued the contents of the crates. Reproduction artwork proved to be originals. Miscellaneous salvage concealed antiquities. By the fourth crate nobody was talking about verification any more. The verification officer compared the paperwork against her notes and closed the folder.

She looked around the warehouse. “I have seen sufficient evidence. The pattern is clear. The declarations consistently understate the value of the goods. I am opening a customs investigation and seizing the entire consignment.” Customs officers immediately began applying seals to the crates.

One of the Talmere representatives cleared her throat and addressed MyrtleLion, “Naturally we’ll need to review the actions of the shipping contractor.”

“The freight declarations originated outside Talmere,” another representative added quickly.

A third was consulting purchase records, “Clearly somebody supplied inaccurate documentation.”

Myrtle listened politely. The representatives seemed encouraged. “We take compliance extremely seriously and I’m sure you appreciate the challenges involved in external procurement.”

Octavia watched the exchange without speaking.

At the far end of the warehouse, Boiledbeetle appeared carrying two Tunnock’s Teacakes.

“There you are,” said Hedgehog. “Where have you been?”

“Listening.” Boily pointed toward the administrative offices above the warehouse floor. “They were talking about Myrtle. One of them said you expedited Aurelia by handling certification personally.”

Octavia looked at the Talmere representatives. “And they’ve lost Aurelia now that the cargo has been seized. But they’re already preparing somebody else to take the blame.”

“Who?” asked Angle, retrieving Glacier again.

“The smugglers,” said Octavia. She reached into her bag and withdrew the laminated napkin. She studied it for a moment.

pickup headlight high tue 2 june

Then she smiled. “I think we just found where to start.”

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“No idea,” said Boily.

“You said they’d reconstruct it tomorrow,” said Magpiecomplex.

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know what it is?” asked AngleofRepose.

“No.”

MyrtleLion folded her arms. “But you’ve only been here five minutes.”

“Yes,” said Boily. “But I can read.”

She pointed at the entries. “Seeds. Maps. Paintings. Ledgers. Stonework. Architectural fragments. Those aren't components,” said Boily. “They're evidence. Seeds prove agriculture. Maps prove territory. Paintings prove culture. Ledgers prove administration. Stonework proves settlements.”

She tapped the board. “Whatever Aurelia is, they’re building a case for it.”

Gosie pointed at the next column. “What does Verified mean?”

Boily read the note beneath it. “Manifest and customs documentation review.”

Octavia looked back at the board. “If the final shipment passes review, Aurelia is complete.”

“Then we need to stop the verification,” said Gosie. “Where is the folder from the yacht?”

Angle looked around and spotted it on top of a shipping crate. It was still stuffed with brochures from Boily’s nest. She gingerly held up a harbour guide stained with Tunnock’s chocolate. “If Customs sees this, they can’t possibly verify anything.”

MyrtleLion frowned. “But if Talmere sees this, they'll know something's wrong.”

“True,” said Octavia. “We’ll need a proper submission for Talmere.”

Hedgehog brightened. “I still have the manifests.” She produced the thick sheaf of paperwork she had taken from the yacht. “I was saving them for bedtime.”

MyrtleLion accepted them automatically.

A supervisor passing the office window saw the exchange and stopped dead. “You’re handling verification personally?”

“Apparently so,” said MyrtleLion.

The supervisor nodded as though this explained a great many things. “You'll want access to the boardroom.”

MyrtleLion tucked the manifests under one arm and started walking.

Everyone followed.

The executive boardroom contained a long polished table, twelve leather chairs and a view of the harbour.

By the time everyone arrived, lunch was already waiting. Soup appeared first, followed by sandwiches, followed by cold meats and sushi, then pastries. And then, shortly afterwards, what looked suspiciously like an entirely separate lunch. Nobody questioned this.

Across the room, several of the gerbils had discovered that the chairs rotated and were spinning in them joyfully until Goulash began to feel a little sick. Magpiecomplex was quietly testing whether the silverware was being counted by distributing much of the cutlery about her person. So far no-one had noticed.

At the head of the table, MyrtleLion merely ticked and signed where indicated, while AngleofRepose, Hedgehog and Octavia worked through the manifests, customs declarations and reference numbers. Every few minutes another page arrived requiring confirmation that the previous page had, in fact, arrived.

MyrtleLion signed the final page and pushed the paperwork towards Octavia. “There.”

Octavia gathered the documents into a black binder. “The official submission for Talmere.”

Angle placed the recovered yacht folder onto the table and opened it. “And this one is for Customs.”

The remains of Boily’s nest spilled out. There were harbour brochures. Tide tables. A stained marina guide. Several loose pages bearing evidence of prolonged habitation.

The gerbils immediately stopped spinning on the chairs and got to work. Garland studied the pile with professional concern. Glacier produced divider tabs. Slowly. Gramaphone somehow acquired a laminator. Goulash sat in a chair and looked green.

The transformation began. A contents page appeared. Then section dividers. Then colour-coded tabs. The harbour brochures became Supporting Documentation. The tide tables became Appendix C. A particularly battered leaflet became Historical Reference Material.

The gerbils worked with complete seriousness. Graceful spent ten minutes adjusting a tab that was already straight. Glamour rejected a page because it lacked gravitas. Glockenspiel laminated a napkin.

Twenty minutes later the folder looked magnificent. Its contents remained largely harbour brochures.

MyrtleLion turned a few pages. The brochures appeared to have endured a difficult period in Boily’s care. Gateway to the World’s Best Sailing was missing a corner, Experience Plymouth’s Waterfront had acquired a chocolate stain across June, and Telling the Mayflower Story displayed several prominent tooth marks.

She closed the folder. “Looks official.” Glamour and Glockenspiel swelled with pride.

A Talmere compliance officer arrived shortly afterwards. He reviewed the submission carefully, checking signatures, declarations and approvals before giving a satisfied nod. “Excellent.”

Then he noticed the second folder. “Customs copy?”

Octavia handed it over. He examined the cover. The contents page. The executive summary. Several impeccably tabbed sections. He nodded. “In order.” He signed the authorisation sheet and left with both folders.

As the door closed behind him, the gerbils began stealing office supplies. Pens vanished. Sugar packets followed. Notepads became scarce.

Governance departed with several sheets of flip-chart paper. Gravitas claimed a brass nameplate and Gutteral was carrying off a remote control that appeared to have no corresponding device anywhere in the building.

No-one noticed that Boily had slipped away.

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“I already dislike this place,” said Hedgehog, reading a sign that prohibited unauthorised authorisation.

The infiltration proved surprisingly straightforward.

The receptionist was, in fact, called Tammy. She was managing three separate crises at once. She glanced up as MyrtleLion approached with a clipboard, handed over visitor badges and pointed towards Dock Four.

Nobody asked who they were. Nobody asked why they were there. Several people appeared relieved by their arrival. Two supervisors stepped aside to let Myrtle pass. One of them appeared to be taking notes.

Within minutes MyrtleLion was receiving updates from managers who seemed convinced she outranked them. A passing manager glanced at Myrtle's visitor badge, then hurried away to find a better tie. A warehouse employee approached at speed, handed her a folder marked URGENT and disappeared before she could refuse it. Someone addressed her as Vice-President. Someone else handed her a coffee she had no memory of ordering. MyrtleLion accepted it before she could think of a reason not to.

“I think you’ve been promoted,” said Octavia.

“To what?”

“Nobody appears certain.”

Meanwhile six gerbils in high-vis jackets were now conducting a detailed review of warehouse operations. One forklift operator spent several minutes explaining maintenance procedures before asking MyrtleLion to approve a budget. She handed the paperwork to Octavia and kept walking.

AngleoRepose was cross-checking cargo records with pallets and noticed a familiar red and silver wrapper lying underneath it.

“Tunnock’s,” she said.

“Boily,” said Gosie.

They continued deeper into Dock Four. The cargo became steadily more specialised: rare orchids, carved stone fragments, antique paintings, historical documents, museum consignments.

Then Angle noticed the symbol. A circle crossed by three diagonal lines. The same mark appeared on sunflower seeds, then on orchids, then on stone fragments.

Not often. Very rarely, in fact. Most shipments didn’t carry it. Only a tiny fraction did.

Octavia joined her. “That’s an odd collection.”

“It isn’t a collection.”

A forklift diverted one of the marked consignments from the normal flow to a fenced holding area at the far end of Dock Four. A few minutes later, another marked shipment was diverted the same way.

Different cargo. Same handling. The symbol wasn't marking the contents. It was marking the destination.

Gosie wandered slowly around the collection. “It’s a scavenger hunt.” She paused beside one of the stone crates. “Look at this.”

The paperwork described the contents as fragments from a twelfth-century monastery. The crate beside it contained pages from a dispersed archive. One painting was listed as part of a private collection. None of it was complete.

“Everything’s a piece of something else,” said Gosie. “Not everything. Most things.”

Angle frowned.

“You think that’s deliberate?”

“I think somebody wants parts.”

Before they could pursue the thought further, a supervisor appeared at MyrtleLion’s elbow carrying a clipboard thick enough to stun livestock.

“Excellent,” he said. “You’re still here.”

MyrtleLion regarded the clipboard cautiously. “Apparently.”

“I just need authorisation on the consolidated movement.”

He offered her a pen. MyrtleLion did not take it. “Perhaps you should explain it first.”

The supervisor blinked. “The transfer to the secure facility.” He immediately launched into a torrent of logistics terminology involving transfer protocols, routing priorities, cross-dock procedures and something called harmonised asset aggregation.

Nobody understood a word. Not even Octavia. Especially not Octavia.

Eventually MyrtleLion said, “And in practical terms?”

“The truck leaves in twenty minutes. Everything with the special handling designation goes on it.”

Myrtle glanced down at the paperwork. “All of it?”

The supervisor looked momentarily uneasy. “That’s the procedure. Was there a reason to make an exception?”

The crew exchanged glances. After an entire day following marked cargo through the warehouse, they had finally found the next link in the chain. Across the loading bay, a truck reversed into position. Forklifts immediately began moving towards the holding area. The rear doors stood open.

Myrtle took the pen. “Actually,” she said, signing the form, “I think this movement requires executive oversight.”

The supervisor straightened immediately. “Of course.” He scribbled something on the form, handed it back to her and hurried away.

MyrtleLion glanced down, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT ESCORT AUTHORISED.

“I think I've been promoted again,” she said.

The journey took less than ten minutes. The lorry left the distribution complex, crossed an industrial estate, passed a builders’ merchant and arrived at a perfectly ordinary facility behind a chain-link fence. The sign outside identified it as Talmere Recovery Services.

“It looks disappointingly normal,” said Gosie.

“That is often how the alarming places start,” said Hedgehog.

Something shiny drifted from the open truck and skated across the concrete. Magpiecomplex was on it instantly. She straightened and held up the prize.

A Tunnock’s wrapper.

“Boily,” she said.

A nervous manager appeared almost immediately. “We weren’t expecting an inspection.”

“Neither was I,” said MyrtleLion.

Before he could puzzle over this, she gestured towards the others. “My team will need access to the intake process.”

“Of course.”

“And the documentation.”

“Certainly.”

“And the cargo.”

The manager looked concerned. “All of it?”

MyrtleLion paused as though surprised there might be another option. “That would be best.”

The manager led them inside.

The facility operated with quiet efficiency. Crates were checked, logged and moved onward. Within seconds several gerbils became involved in unloading the cargo. One supervisor thanked Galoshes for her attention to detail. The gerbil made a note on her clipboard.

Then Gosie found the classifications.

Every marked shipment carried the same designation. Component. Stone fragments. Historical documents. Orchids. Even the monastery sunflower seeds. All marked Component.

A planning board stood beside a receiving office. Most of it was obscured, but several column headings remained visible.

Aurelia

No. Identified | No. Verified | % Integrated

Hundreds of entries filled the columns.

At the bottom, a summary box read,

Components Outstanding: 1,473
Reconstruction Progress: 96.7%
Milestone Risk: Low
Project Status: Green

Gosie stared at it. “That looks like a project tracker,” she said.

Before she could say more, Boiledbeetle emerged from one of the newly unloaded crates, carrying three shipping labels and looking entirely at home. She glanced at the board. “That's not just any project tracker, that’s a fully integrated Kanban project management dashboard.”

She licked a final trace of chocolate from a Tunnock's wrapper and dropped it to the floor.

“They’ll be ready to reconstruct Aurelia tomorrow.”

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“We cannot stay here,” snapped Swashbuckled immediately. “We’ve opened the crate. We’ve touched paperwork. If they come back now we’re trapped aboard their vessel.”

On the floor, several gerbils were frantically stuffing their cheeks to bursting with loose sunflower seeds.

“No,” said Hussie firmly, hauling two of them back by the ankles. “Professionalism first. Seed worship later.”

Octavia was already moving. “Take the opened brick,” she said. “It’s evidence.”

Hussie shoved the heavy foil-wrapped brick into a canvas satchel, then swept the manifests, transfer sheets, and dock schedules in after it.

“Problem,” said Hedgehog. “We can’t leave the folder empty.”

AuntieDamsonCrumble said, “Wait,” and opened the locker under the sink. She seized Boily’s shredded nest material and thrust it at Hedgehog. “Stuff it.”

Within seconds the waterproof folder was being rapidly repacked with torn fragments of glossy marina brochures and shredded harbour maps. Hedgehog snapped the folder shut.

Hussie slammed the crate lid down while two gerbils sat on top of it to force the catches shut. One of them saluted.

“Excellent work,” said Hussie. The gerbil beamed with unbearable pride.

She placed the folder on top of the crate and reinstated the false backboard. “That should fool them long enough for us to get clear.”

“Out. Now,” snapped Swashbuckled.

The cabin emptied instantly.

The others were waiting in the shadows between the neighbouring yachts. Heads turned sharply as the boarding party emerged.

“We have to leave now,” said Swashbuckled.

“What happened?” asked EdithStourton.

Hussie glanced down at the canvas bag. “Millions,” she muttered.

There was a brief silence.

Then everybody started moving.

The marina appeared gradually. Rows of neat white yachts, polished rails, expensive canvas covers, and the sort of restrained wealth that smelled faintly of teak oil and divorce settlements.

And in the middle of it all sat The Dreadnork.

Even at distance it loomed above the neighbouring boats with deeply suspicious grandeur while lengths of dark rigging tangled upward against the sky like somebody had attempted to moor an aggressively theatrical century.

A couple carrying coffee had stopped halfway along the quay and were openly staring upward. Three teenagers were making TikToks beside the prow. An elderly man pointed repeatedly at the galleon, saying, “"See that, Martha? Oak. Real oak. Not a single piece of particleboard or cheap plastic.”

“Well,” said AuntieDamsonCrumble, quietly, “it’s become quite a landmark. Happy to board via grappling hook in the rigging if it comes to it.”

Swashbuckled sighed.

“One day we’re going to have to stop calling you AuntieDamsonCrumble.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re obviously DauntlessDamson.”

AuntieDamsonCrumble nodded.

“Yes. It does have a certain ring to it.”

As they moved closer, it became apparent that the gerbils had responded to this development with alarming efficiency. Gunwale and Galliard were supervising what could only be described as a full harbour surveillance operation.

Pairs of scouts moved briskly between pontoons carrying notebooks almost as large as themselves. One tiny figure in a striped sailor jersey was stationed atop a bollard with binoculars. Another appeared to be drawing a detailed chart of pedestrian movement near the marina café.

Gunwale stood atop an overturned bucket beside the berth with a brass telescope tucked beneath one arm and the expression of a gerbil with personal responsibility for coastal security. “No hostile boarding attempts, Captain,” she said, “but two men are approaching from the eastern walkway carrying ice creams.”

“Smugglers?” asked Swashbuckled.

Gunwale considered this carefully. “No,” she said at last. “Tourists.”

“One of them asked whether we do tours,” said Galliard. “I said no. I may also have implied the lower decks are haunted.”

“Excellent work,” said Swashbuckled, “ but we need to get back aboard before somebody attempts to organise a school visit.”

Then she turned and started down the pontoon toward the looming bulk of The Dreadnork while, somewhere behind her, a gerbil could already be heard saying sternly, “No flash photography near the portside bombard mounts.”

As NotAtMyAge, the Scandinavians, DauntlessDamson, Hussie, RandomHypatia and Edith and the dogs followed her aboard, MyrtleLion turned to Chickadee. “Take us to The Bluestocking. We need AngleofRepose’s help.”

As always The Bluestocking is only ever a few metres away from any patron at any one time. As long as they are on dry land.

Chickadee held the door, counting them in like a weary schoolteacher: Gosie, MyrtleLion, ChristmasStars, MagpieComplex, ErroltheDragon, Hedgehog, Octavia, and the rest of The Dreadnork’s increasingly irritable crew, minus the sensible twelve who had already gone back to the galleon. The remaining rabble all smelled faintly of brine and looked desperate for a chair that didn't rock.

“Bargerbil,” said Myrtle, “We’ll have the hot chocolate bowser, the swimming pool of G&T, several fathoms of tea and all of the other fripperies we’ve missed for three weeks, in whichever room AngleofRepose is in!”

Immediately, Gerbera in a miniature high-vis vest blew a tiny plastic whistle. "Library! Now! We've got a Category 5 Hot Chocolate situation in the Map Section, move, move, move!" she yelled into a megaphone, clipboard tucked firmly under one arm. Dozens of gerbils leapt into action, deploying hoses and wheeling out tea-urns.

Angle was hidden behind a tower of folders, notebooks, maps, and other loose papers balanced precariously over several tables.

As the team walked in, Angle looked up and said, “I found it.” The stacks began to lurch sideways. “I found all of it.” For several seconds papers continued sliding in every direction.

“The Plymouth symbol wasn’t local. I started seeing it elsewhere, in freight manifests, routing codes, transfer records, not to mention a highly suspicious turnip farm in Norfolk. Not obvious markings either. Tiny things. Corrections. Printer variations. Repeated irregularities.”

She was already pulling documents apart, supported by a team of research gerbils.

“They look random until you map them. The symbol belongs to Talmere Logistics.”

Silence.

Hedgehog blinked. “Talmere?”

“The Talmere?” Myrtle asked.

Angle nodded vigorously. “Talmere Logistics. International freight. Warehousing. Distribution. Shipping. Massive. Entirely respectable. Entirely legitimate. Thousands of employees. Facilities everywhere.”

“That’s not a smuggling operation,” said Hedgehog.

“No,” said Octavia. “It's worse. It’s middle management.”

Then Gosie quietly reached into her satchel and placed a bundle of recovered manifests onto the table. Everyone leaned forward. In tiny print in the footer of each manifest sat a faint symbol. A circle crossed by three white lines.

For the first time since arriving, Angle stopped talking then immediately started again. “That’s it. That’s the symbol.”

The table exploded into activity.

Gosie dug through transfer schedules and unloading records. Hedgehog started reconstructing timelines.

Across the chaos, Octavia Briefcase quietly imposed order. Customs forms. Warehousing records. Shipping manifests. Transfer authorisations. Distribution paperwork.

Neat piles appeared where disorder had been seconds before. The more they examined, the worse it became. The symbol wasn’t unique. Hidden markings appeared again and again. So did routing identifiers. Transfer codes. Reference numbers. And everywhere, directly or indirectly, the same name surfaced.

Talmere Logistics.

“I’ve got a destination,” said Gosie.

Everyone looked up. She tapped a line on one manifest. “Portland East Distribution Complex.” A second tap. “Dock Four.”

Hedgehog checked the laptop. Her expression darkened. “The cargo was processed this morning.”

Myrtle looked at the immaculate, terrifyingly organized paperwork spreading across the table, then up at the rest of the room.

“We’ve been looking for a secret hideout,” she said. “But they aren’t hiding. They own the whole bloody dock. It’s a massive, legal corporate distribution center right there in Portland.”

She leaned over the table and pointed to the corporate logo on the manifest.

“We are not breaking into a pirate cove, and we are not outrunning a frigate. We are infiltrating a 24/7 distribution operation in plain sight of the harbour. Does anyone happen to have a high-vis jacket, a clipboard, and a foolproof way to lie to a receptionist named Tammy?”

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Completely silent. Completely ordinary. And entirely deserted.

Kitty sat down beside the gangplank. The Highland cow slipper remained firmly in her mouth.

For several moments nobody moved.

Then Swashbuckled drew her sabre. “Right,” she said calmly. “Boarding party. Gerbils, Auntie, Hussie. With me. Scandinavians, guard the pontoon. If anyone rushes out, tackle them. Everyone else, wait here.”

Three gerbils immediately saluted. Nearby, one of the serious Scandinavian rowers cracked her knuckles with quiet enthusiasm.

“Oh goodness,” murmured Octavia Briefcase. “Are we actually doing piracy again?”

“We never really stopped,” said Hedgehog.

The yacht’s deck creaked as softly beneath Swashy’s boots.

AuntieDamsonCrumble crouched beside the companionway hatch. “Recently used,” she said. “No dust on the runners.”

Hussie leaned past her, examined the lock briefly, then produced something slender and metallic from inside her coat.

“Honestly,” said Octavia, “I no longer even wish to know.”

The lock clicked almost immediately. “Very poor cylinder,” Hussie replied with dignity.

The cabin smelled faintly of damp canvas, diesel, coffee.

And Tunnock’s Teacakes.

Everybody stopped.

AuntieDamsonCrumble lowered her lantern slightly. “Well,” she said, “unless the international smuggling ring is being run by a Scottish confectionery company, Boiledbeetle is here.”

The interior was cramped but orderly in the manner of small yachts occupied by competent people for extended periods. Charts remained folded neatly beside the navigation table. Mugs stood drying beside the sink. One bunk still contained a half-rolled thermal blanket.

Swashbuckled scanned the cramped quarters. “Three crew at most,” she said.

Kitty leapt onto the galley counter and purposefully batted a drying mug into the sink with a sharp clatter.

AuntieDamsonCrumble moved to check the noise, and her gaze dropped to the low cupboard directly beneath the draining board. The latch wasn’t fully caught. She pulled the door open.

Stuffed inside, alongside three empty Tunnock’s wrappers and a small, improvised sleeping nest of tea towels and shredded marina brochures, was a single Highland cow slipper. She exhaled. “Well,” she said, “that rather settles the matter.”

The search became substantially more systematic after that.

The gerbils spread through the yacht with terrifying efficiency carrying tiny notebooks and lanterns while Hussie focused on the compartments the smugglers had almost certainly believed were impenetrable.

The deep bins beneath the cabin floorboards revealed nothing but empty space and bilge water. Every cavity had been cleaned out.

From the depths of the starboard pilot berth, a panel swung outward to reveal a cramped hold. Hussie called, “False backing here, and I can see a folder of papers. I think we need Hedgehog and Octavia.”

Hedgehog and Octavia climbed down into the cabin just as Hussie pulled out the weatherproof binder. It was stuffed with paperwork, shipping tags, and customs declarations. Hussie could now clearly see the label on the crate. It read, LOW-GRADE BIRD FEED — NON-PREMIUM.

Hussie prised open the lid and brushed aside a layer of dry wood shavings. Before anybody could stop them, six gerbils launched themselves headfirst into the packing material with tiny screams of delight.

Wood shavings exploded across the cabin.

“Oh splendid!” cried an unseen voice from somewhere beneath the surface. “It’s diggable!”

The crate immediately vanished beneath a frenzy of ecstatic tunnelling, industrious scratching and flying sawdust as tiny bodies disappeared and resurfaced like particularly overexcited otters.

Hussie slowly removed a wood shaving from her sleeve. Bracing herself, she reached down through the swirling chaos of fur and sawdust to pull out one of the heavy blocks beneath.

It was a tightly-packed brick of thick, vacuum-sealed outer foil designed to protect the contents from the salt air. She peeled back the foil to reveal rows of small, pristine packets made of dark green, heavy, textured paper that felt like expensive stationery. Each one bore the same elegant gold leaf lettering, Vesper Gold Monastery Helianthus.

Instantly, every gerbil froze. Tiny noses emerged from the shavings and lifted toward the opened foil brick. For one extraordinary moment the cabin became completely silent.

“...Oh,” whispered Galliard reverently.

Then all remaining operational discipline collapsed.

Gerbils launched themselves bodily at Hussie from multiple directions with tiny shrieks of ecstasy, scrambling up her sleeves, hanging from her coat and attempting frantically to claw their way toward the dark green packets.

“GOOD LORD!” shouted Hussie as three of them reached her shoulder simultaneously.

“VESPER GOLD!” screamed somebody near her elbow.

“MOVE YOUR TAIL!”

“I WAS HERE FIRST!”

The brick itself had apparently become the single most important object on the Eastern seaboard of North America.

Hussie staggered backwards beneath the assault while holding the cargo aloft and watched helplessly as two or three loose packets spilled from the torn foil, and tumbled downward. Gunwale and Galliard immediately dove after them, scrambling to claw at the paper. Hussie tried desperately not to drop the rest of the expensive contraband into the cabin bilge.

“Tariff evasion,” said Octavia immediately, leaning over the chaotic crate.

“Mm,” said Hedgehog, already sorting paperwork into evidential piles. “Deliberate undervaluation through agricultural recategorisation. They’ve logged the entire manifest as low-grade chaff.”

“People commit international fraud over sunflower seeds?” asked MagpieComplex incredulously.

“At two hundred and fifty pounds a packet retail? Yes,” Hedgehog said without looking up. “With forty packets in a brick, fifty bricks in a crate, that’s half a million pounds sitting in this box alone.”

MagpieComplex glanced down the length of the cabin at the five identical wooden crates stacked neatly against the bulkhead. “And there are six of them on board.”

“Give or take whatever the wildlife manages to eat before we scarper,” Octavia murmured, watching a gerbil joyfully shred a piece of dark green paper worth more than a bespoke suit. “I make that three million pounds.”

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Through her telescope she could see the harbour was waking up in the purposefully semi-chaotic manner unique to coastal cities preparing simultaneously for revelry, debauchery and poor decisions.

Market stalls were opening along the waterfront beneath strings of festival bunting while somewhere further inland somebody had begun playing banjo music with alarming enthusiasm.

High above the noise, Chickadee tracked the outer waters through her telescope. Far out beyond the harbour traffic, the Dreadnork was arriving beneath reduced sail.

She folded the brass tubes shut with a definitive click. “Aye,” she muttered. “That’ll be them.”

Out on the water, the weathered black hull moved slowly between lobster boats and festival ferries. Exhausted figures leaned against the rails staring at civilisation with the hollow expressions of people who had crossed an ocean entirely by accident.

At the helm, Swashbuckled narrowed one eye toward the harbour entrance. “Well,” she said, “this appears to be America.”

From the crow’s nest, several gerbils cheered weakly.

One immediately fell asleep in a coil of rope.

By the time the crew reached Becky’s Diner, Portland had become fully operational.

Festival banners snapped overhead along the waterfront streets while tourists, sailors, dockworkers and musicians all attempted to occupy the same pavements. Simultaneously, a brass band was losing a fight with a sea shanty group.

Becky’s itself appeared entirely untroubled by any of this. While half the diner was a teeming warzone of staff and waiting customers, the other half was a vacuum of empty, pushed-together tables, fiercely guarded by Chickadee.

The moment the Dreadnork crew entered, the dam broke.

Coffee arrived almost instantly. So did pancakes. And waffles. And eggs. And something involving maple syrup that caused several gerbils to become briefly emotional.

At the head of the table MyrtleLion sat with effortless composure despite the chaos surrounding her. She had somehow acquired a dark green blanket around her shoulders which gave her the appearance of a queen temporarily tolerating pancakes among commoners.

Errol attempted to roost on the table, aborted, and feigned a sudden interest in the joinery.

Near the window, MagpieComplex caught a sudden flash of bright white. Leaning forward at the prospect of a discarded silver coin, Magpie slumped back on the sight of a harbour cat.

Octavia Briefcase removed her coat and stared thoughtfully into coffee with the distant air of a barrister realising there is a point where an Atlantic pursuit actually affects billable hours.

At the centre of the table, Chickadee was talking rapidly while RandomHypatia took notes.

“Cargo manifests all over the place this week,” Chickadee said. “Crates arriving labelled agricultural supplies then leaving marked marine antiques. Paintings unloaded at three in the morning. Seed shipments nobody can trace properly. Half the dockworkers think customs has given up entirely.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” muttered Hussie around a mouthful of waffle.

“And somebody’s been using partial markings.” Chickadee drew a rough circle on a napkin and crossed it with three lines. “Like that.”

Gosie went still.

MyrtleLion noticed.

“It’s not random smuggling,” Gosie said quietly. “It’s organised movement.”

An hour later, Becky herself appeared carrying a handwritten bill roughly the size of a bedsheet.

Swashbuckled examined it solemnly, reached into her coat, and placed a heavy gold doubloon into Becky’s hand. Becky bit the coin once. “Seems fair,” she said.

Then she tucked it calmly into the till and shouted toward the kitchen, “More chowder for table seven!”

By lunchtime the streets had become almost impossible to navigate.

Festival crowds surged between food stalls and musicians while the Dreadnork crew kept to the water’s edge scanning the pontoons like a particularly dangerous field trip. The target yacht was definitely here, moored somewhere in this chaotic mess, but it was like looking for a stolen bicycle in the bike rack at Oxford station. If the fire had taken the rigging, the ruined mast was likely down, leaving the boat decapitated and utterly hidden beneath a glittering forest of hundreds of pristine, celebratory sails. It was a needle in a haystack, and the haystack was throwing a party.

The serious Scandinavians moved together through crowds which unconsciously parted before them. AuntieDamson Crumble paused more than twice to examine harbour rigging. Hussie disappeared briefly and returned carrying pastries under circumstances nobody investigated too closely. Several gerbils acquired tiny festival ribbons and became extremely proud of themselves.

The joy of the festival eased the sting of the missed yacht slightly. If they couldn't find the boat, they might as well find a drink, leading them, almost inevitably, to a tavern.

Three Dollar Deweys was already deafening.

Music thundered from somewhere near the ceiling while sailors and festival drinkers crowded every available inch of floor space beneath hanging fishing nets and ancient ship lanterns. The arrival of the Dreadnork crew produced a silence lasting almost three entire seconds.

Then the shouting resumed louder than before.

“Oi!” yelled a broad man in a college jersey. “You lot the pirate ship?”

“We are,” said Swashbuckled.

“The Dreadnork!” another man shouted delightedly. “Still can’t believe somebody named a ship after a pair of—”

He stopped.

Three gerbils had drawn cutlasses simultaneously.

Not theatrically. Professionally. Tiny polished blades pointed upward in absolute silence. Gunwale climbed onto the table without breaking eye contact.

The tavern atmosphere altered slightly.

Swashbuckled laid her hand on the hilt of her sabre. “I would respectfully caution against disparagement of the vessel.”

The man blinked. “Right,” he said carefully. “Fair enough.”

Beside him, another drinker lowered his pint very slowly.

The man cleared his throat, eyeing the steel on the table with newfound deference. “A round of the local pale for the … gerbils … on the table, then? And whatever your crew is drinking.”

He looked nervously at Gunwale, then pushed a bowl of complimentary bar snacks forward. Gunwale gave a single, curt nod. The blades were sheathed with identical, metallic clicks, then the gerbils turned on their heels, and lunged into the bowl of peanuts.

Swashbuckled nodded once. “Much appreciated.”

A collective breath was released. The music resumed. Within minutes everyone was drinking together. Nobody acknowledged the cutlasses again.

By afternoon the waterfront had quietened slightly.

The festival still roared elsewhere through the city, but along the marina the noise had softened into distant music, clinking rigging and water against pilings. Long shadows stretched between rows of yachts. Canvas covers shifted gently in the wind. Somewhere nearby a radio was playing yacht rock.

The Dreadnork crew wandered more slowly now, tiredness finally beginning to settle properly into their bones, still aimlessly searching for the yacht.

Ahead of them, a tortoiseshell cat emerged lightly from beneath a parked trailer.

Nobody reacted immediately. Then Magpie frowned. “Hang on.”

The cat was carrying something. A slipper. Small. Fluffy. In the shape of a Highland cow.

The cat stopped beside a bollard and dropped the slipper in front of them.

Edith stared. “Oh,” she said.

The cat watched them steadily.

“Kitty,” whispered Gosie.

The cat blinked once. Then picked up the slipper again and began walking away through the marina.

“Boiledbeetle’s slipper,” said RandomHypatia.

“Kitty must have joined the smugglers on the yacht,” said Gosie.

Swashbuckled’s expression changed instantly. “Follow the cat,” she said.

Kitty trotted ahead between crowded marina berths without once looking back. The crew followed rapidly past endless rows of leisure yachts packed tightly together beneath fluttering festival flags and covered sails.

Portland Marina stretched around them in dense forests of masts. Boat after boat after boat. White hulls. Blue covers. Tourists. Maintenance crews. Shore cables. Normality everywhere.

Then Kitty stopped.

Ahead of them, partly hidden between two much larger yachts, sat the dark blue Rustler 36.

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Not because conditions had improved particularly. The sea remained cold, iron-grey and personally offensive. But after nearly a month on board The Dreadnork, everybody had begun developing the exhausted emotional numbness normally associated with minor hauntings.

The storm damage had been repaired as well as possible. Several of the great square sails still carried alarming-looking reinforcements stitched by teams of determined gerbils working under the supervision of AuntieDamsonCrumble, whose opinions on rope-work had now become sufficiently feared that even Batshit had stopped chewing important rigging.

Errol and Magpie had spent much of the time scouting the surrounding seas for signs of the missing longboat. Unfortunately Magpie possessed the attention span of an unusually acquisitive corvid and had repeatedly become distracted by shiny fragments of maritime debris, while Errol maintained that the Atlantic Ocean was “unfeasibly large.”

On the main deck, Brains sat calmly beside the starboard rail watching albatrosses with the grave concentration of a philosopher considering difficult moral questions.

Batshit, meanwhile, was ricocheting through the rigging barking at absolutely everything.

“BATSHIT!” EdithStourton yelled upward from the quarterdeck. “You cannot declare war on weather!”

Batshit ignored this completely and vanished briefly upward into the mist.

Near the port rail, several damp gerbils were conducting their daily period of collective grievance.

“We used to have extra dry socks,” one said mournfully.

“And pickled herring,” another added.

“We had civilisation.”

“We had standards.”

“We had Scandinavians.”

Octavia Briefcase glanced up from the chart table. “You lost the Scandinavians nearly three weeks ago.”

“Yes,” said the gerbil darkly. “Exactly.”

After so long at sea, everybody had begun seeing things in fog banks and distant waves. MyrtleLion had calmly pointed out the previous evening that one particular patch of mist looked remarkably like a bishop wearing snowshoes, which unfortunately meant everybody else could now see it too.

Suddenly Batshit zoomed down from the rigging and stood stock still at the prow, with nose twitching and staring straight ahead, her eyes on something Edith couldn’t see. It was as if she had finally discovered her pointer skills. Brains stood up and joined her.

Out of the mist, running smoothly alongside them as though it had merely stepped briefly into another room, came the missing longboat.

Several seconds of complete silence followed.

Then half the gerbils screamed simultaneously and launched themselves toward the port rail. “SCANDINAVIANS!”

The longboat slid neatly alongside beneath the fog, seawater hissing softly against its dark hull. The Norsewomen aboard looked cold, windswept and entirely untroubled by the Atlantic Ocean.

NotAtMyAge raised one hand calmly.

“Terribly sorry,” she called upward. “We appear to have taken a slight detour.”

“A slight—” began Octavia.

“Largs,” explained another Norsewoman. “One had to restock properly and Wolef had plenty of knitted underfugs to keep the essentials warm. And some knitted signal flags. Frankly she gave us as much of her yarn stash as the longboat could carry.”

Several gerbils near the rail closed their eyes briefly with the emotional expression of pilgrims hearing sacred scripture.

EdithStourton stared down at them. “You crossed the Atlantic via Scotland?”

“It seemed sensible at the time.”

Batshit was now tangling herself in the signal flags, barking hysterically with joy while Brains wagged politely at the returning longboat as though this sort of thing happened constantly.

For nearly an hour afterwards the mood aboard The Dreadnork improved dramatically.

Then Errol landed heavily next to the starboard rail.

“I found the yacht!” said Errol. “About eight nautical miles ahead — and there’s land! We’ll reach America in the morning!” she said.

The gerbils exploded. A shriek of celebration went up from somewhere near the rigging and spread instantly across the ship like fire through dry grass.

“LAND!”

“AMERICA!”

“COFFEE!”

Within moments several gerbils had begun an extremely loud sea shanty of doubtful tune but enormous commitment while Georgia launched into an energetic stamping sailor-dance across two barrels and part of the capstan. Germany produced a concertina from absolutely nowhere. Ghana attempted to kiss the deck before remembering it was still damp with seawater and reconsidered.

Batshit launched herself vertically into the mist barking with such hysterical excitement that Brains finally lost her composure and started running delighted circles around the mainmast until it was too much for her digestion.

Even AuntieDamsonCrumble appeared briefly to clap in rhythm before noticing she was doing it and regaining her dignity.

Ahead of them, beyond drifting fog banks, faint clusters of lights had begun appearing intermittently along the dark coastline.

Maine.

After nearly three weeks at sea, it looked almost impossibly solid.

“There!” said Gosie suddenly, pointing toward one brighter concentration of distant lights. “That has to be Portland. It’s enormous.”

“I agree. Only Portland would build four different lighthouses just to guide you to a hipster brewery,” said Octavia.

“But we can’t be certain from this distance,” Gosie said. “And if we can’t catch the yacht now it could disappear into any one of dozens of harbours along this coastline.”

The celebrations faltered. Night closed slowly across the Atlantic. Sometimes lights appeared through the fog. Sometimes they vanished again completely. Every so often somebody announced with enormous confidence that they could definitely see Portland.

Nobody else could.

By three in the morning even the gerbils had gone quiet. At four, while the Atlantic was still black around them, Errol suddenly stood up and launched herself upward into the fog.

“Oh dear,” said Octavia.

Ahead of them the scattered lights of the Maine coastline continued drifting in and out of visibility through the mist while The Dreadnork pushed onward beneath full sail.

Then, far ahead across the darkness, a dull orange glow appeared.

For several seconds nobody understood what they were seeing. Then as the flame climbed slowly upward they saw the yacht’s sails.

Burning canvas glowed deep gold against the black sea while smoke streamed low across the wind. Every few moments the fire brightened again as fresh sections of sail caught, turning the distant yacht into a wavering lantern visible for miles across the Atlantic fog.

Now they could finally follow it.

The fire spread higher for several more minutes before figures finally became visible moving frantically across the distant deck. One sail collapsed inward in a shower of sparks while seawater hissed white against the hull beneath it. Then gradually the flames began dying back.

Smoke continued streaming behind the yacht as it powered onward on engine alone, still far ahead of them in the darkness. And gradually, through fog and darkness and smoke, the yacht’s course became unmistakable.

“Portland,” said Gosie at last.

Nobody aboard The Dreadnork cheered this time. They simply watched the smoking yacht continue southward toward the harbour. Only much later, when the first pale hint of dawn began whitening the eastern horizon, did Portland finally emerge properly from the mist ahead: docks, cranes, fishing boats, warehouses and clusters of waterfront lights fading slowly into morning.

Far ahead the yacht was already slipping into the harbour among dozens of other vessels moving across the water.

Gosie stared at it. Then her expression changed. “Oh Errol…,” she said quietly.

She looked at the blackened ruin of the sails. “The symbol,” she said. “How are we supposed to recognise the yacht now… or find the smugglers?”

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The Dreadnork still rolled unpleasantly through the swell, but the screaming gale had dropped away into dripping canvas, exhausted creaking timbers, and an entirely new kind of dread - total silence. The deck smelled strongly of wet rope, salt water, and spilled tea.

Octavia leaned against the rail, rubbing salt from her eyes, thoroughly reassessing her previous, lifelong confidence in the concept of “remaining alive.” High above her in the shrouds, AuntieDamsonCrumble was supervising emergency sail adjustments with the calm authority of someone born disappointed in other people’s knotwork.

“No, tighter than that!” she shouted downward into the gloom. “This is an ocean, not decorative string!”

Near the stern, Hedgehog and RandomHypatia had colonised the chart table beneath a swinging lantern, while several bedraggled gerbils conducted an emergency triage of their navigation equipment.

“The sextant is recoverable,” RandomHypatia muttered. “The chronometer is recoverable.”

One of the gerbils held up a dripping, disintegrated fragment of laminated paper with the careful grief usually associated with small funerals.

“But the constellation reference guide...” RandomHypatia continued, “...is now describing entirely new stars.” She pointed upward into the heavy, clouded darkness. “We need one clear patch of sky. Without it, we are blind.”

At that moment, ChristmasStars emerged from the companionway. She didn’t make a sound. She simply materialised, stepping onto the edge of the table as if she had always been a part of the woodwork. Nobody had realised she was aboard.

ChristmasStars ignored everyone. She walked across the map of the Atlantic Ocean, her dark paws leaving faint watermarks over the shipping lanes. Then she stopped. For several seconds, she studied the ink-lines with a profound, heavy concern for the state of modern navigation.

Then, with slow, deliberate grace, she turned in a tight circle and settled facing north-west, straight towards Maine.

RandomHypatia stopped speaking mid-sentence. Swashbuckled leaned forward, her face lighting up with a sudden, reckless delight.

High above the rigging, the thick underbelly of the storm-clouds shifted. Only briefly. A narrow fracture opened in the dark, and the cold, diamond bite of the northern sky pierced through. RandomHypatia glanced upward automatically, tracking the sudden light.

Then she looked down at the cat.

In the dim, amber light, ChristmasStars’ black fur seemed to swallow the room, and then it began to burn. Tiny, dust-fine points of gold shimmered along her flanks.

RandomHypatia’s breath hitched. Her eyes flicked between the sky and the fur.

There, curved across the cat’s left flank, was the unmistakable W of Cassiopeia. Orion stretched tight along her ribs, his belt gleaming in three perfect, golden pinpricks. And right at the crest of the cat’s shoulder, burning with a steady, quiet ferocity, was Polaris.

The cat examined the wet chart beneath her paws, where the golden point of her shoulder cast a faint, warm shadow.

A long, heavy silence settled over the deck, punctuated only by the creak of the timber.

“…good Lord,” whispered RandomHypatia, “she’s showing us the way!”

ChristmasStars blinked once, a slow, golden-eyed gesture, and tucked her paws neatly beneath her chest, pinning the map in place.

RandomHypatia snapped out of her daze and turned sharply towards the helm. “Turn! Three degrees north!” she barked.

Swashbuckled didn’t ask questions. She threw her weight into the wheel instantly. Above them, the great square sails groaned, shifting softly against the wind as The Dreadnork altered course beneath the stars.

Octavia stared at the cat, her mouth slightly open, the exhaustion forgotten. Nobody said another word. Because unfortunately, nobody appeared entirely certain the cat was wrong.

One cluster of gerbils began drying navigational instruments with napkins while arguing fiercely about whether seawater counted as “marine damp” or “ordinary damp.” Another group appeared to be conducting an emergency census of surviving biscuits beneath an oilcloth near the mainmast. Near the stern, two more were attempting to reheat a teapot using a lantern, a saucepan and what seemed increasingly like theological reasoning.

Then Swashbuckled looked up from the helm towards the starboard rail. Her expression changed instantly. She crossed the deck in three quick strides and leaned out into the darkness beyond the hull.

“Where is the longboat?” Swashbuckled demanded, her voice cutting sharply through the quiet.

Octavia rushed to the rail beside her, her stomach dropping faster than it had during the worst of the storm’s plunges. She strained her eyes, staring out across the shifting, featureless valleys of the Atlantic.

There was nothing. Just empty, rolling black water.

Throughout the entire gruelling night, the longboat had kept pace, rising and falling on the waves just a stone’s throw from The Dreadnork’s hull. Six fiercely capable Scandinavian women had been pulling at the heavy oars, matching the galleon’s erratic rhythm through sheer, stubborn muscle, all under the sharp, unyielding command of NotAtMyAge.

Now, the patch of ocean where they should have been was completely vacant.

“Did they capsize?” Octavia whispered, a cold spike of panic hitting her chest. “Did the storm take them under?”

“Not with NotAtMyAgeat the tiller,” Swashbuckled muttered, her jaw clenched as she scanned the darkness. “She knows how to ride out a swell better than any of us. But if they lost sight of our timbers in the thick of the downpour...”

“Then they could be half a mile away, or five,” RandomHypatia peered out into the gloom. “But the probability of an accidental reunion is mathematically discouraging.”

“NotAtMyAge!” JanesLittleGirl called out, having scrambled halfway down the shrouds. She cupped her hands around her mouth, throwing her voice into the empty night. “Serious Scandinavians! Can anyone hear us?!”

Only the low, heavy slosh of the Atlantic swell answered.

A devastated gerbil let out a low, tragic squeak, abandoning the soggy constellation chart entirely. “They had the pickled herring. And the extra dry socks.”

A heavy, suffocating stillness settled back over The Dreadnork. They were blind and drifting somewhere in the vast expanse of the Atlantic. They had lost their shadow, their muscle, and six of the toughest sailors they had.

They were entirely alone.

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Before anyone could object, AuntieDamsonCrumble swung lightly down from the rigging on a rope while Hussie launched herself directly after her with the expression of someone improving an already excellent day. Within moments crates, barrels, rope bundles and several enormous sacks of Tunnocks Teacakes were being hauled aboard with terrifying efficiency.

The six Norsewomen continued rowing steadily throughout the entire operation. Nobody aboard had yet seen any of them appear remotely tired.

“Mind the lantern oil!” shouted JanesLittleGirl from somewhere overhead.

“Which one?” yelled Hussie cheerfully.

“The labelled barrels!”

There was a pause.

“…they’re labelled?”

Far above them Batshit swung upside down through the rigging screaming, “SERIOUS SCANDINAVIANS!” One of the Norsewomen raised a hand politely in acknowledgement without breaking stroke.

The Atlantic swell had grown heavier. The Dreadnork no longer rolled like a ship in coastal water but moved with the slower, deeper motion of open ocean. Each great rise lifted the galleon high enough for the western horizon to appear briefly endless, before the hull settled once more into the troughs between swells.

Ahead of them the Rustler appeared only intermittently now. Sometimes the yacht vanished completely for several long minutes before re-emerging far ahead as a pale shape against darkening water.

“The yacht can sail far closer to the wind than we can,” said RandomHypatia, adjusting dividers across a chart spread beneath the stern lantern.

Octavia frowned westward into gathering dusk. “So theoretically they should disappear over the horizon forever.”

Swashbuckled glanced upward at the vast square sails shifting softly overhead. “Oh, eventually,” she said. “Provided they avoid the usual difficulties.”

Octavia blinked. “The usual difficulties?”

“Fog. Storms. French privateers. Sea serpents. Navigational despair. Falling off the edge of the world.”

Octavia stared at her. “You cannot genuinely believe ships fall off the edge of the world.”

“Well not frequently,” said Swashbuckled.

“It doesn’t happen at all,” Octavia said, her voice rising an octave. “The world is a sphere! It’s round! This has been proven by science, mathematics, and Magellan!”

Swashbuckled waved a dismissive, leather-gloved hand. “Look, if you want to get all caught up in fancy-pants academic geometry, that’s your business. But I’ve seen the maps, Octavia. There are clearly giant decorative banners at the bottom that say ‘Here be Dragons’ and ‘The Southern Ocean’. If you sail past the letters, what do you think you’re landing on? The vowels?”

“That’s just the border of the parchment!”

“Exactly,” Swashbuckled said triumphantly. “And if you run out of paper, you run out of ocean. It’s just basic seamanship.”

Octavia opened her mouth, appeared to reconsider the value of continuing this conversation, and drank some coffee instead.

Swashbuckled watched her swallow, a sudden grin breaking across her weathered face. “Oh, relax, I’m just pulling your anchor chain! Of course I don’t believe the world is flat. I’m a captain, not an idiot.”

Octavia let out a long relieved sigh and lowered her cup slightly. “Thank goodness. For a moment I thought…”

“Everyone knows the world is a giant hollow cylinder,” Swashbuckled interrupted. “If you fall off the outside, you simply land on the inside. But the inside is where the mole-people pirates live, and their harbour fees are exorbitant. Frankly I’d rather take my chances with the dragons.”

The wind freshened slightly from the south-west. Above them the upper canvas bellied outward with a deep rolling crack like distant thunder.

RandomHypatia steadied the charts with one hand. “If the wind holds there are advantages,” she said. “The yacht may sail closer, but we carry far more sail once properly running west.”

“Provided,” said Octavia, “we are actually capable of navigating west.”

“We have charts,” said Swashbuckled.

“We have seventeenth-century charts,” Octavia corrected.

“We also have RandomHypatia.”

“That is not the same as modern navigation equipment.”

RandomHypatia looked faintly offended. “Dead reckoning remains perfectly viable.”

“That phrase alone is deeply concerning.”

“Latitude from Polaris,” continued RandomHypatia calmly, “solar declination at noon, chronometer permitting we may estimate longitude tolerably well.”

“You can genuinely navigate an Atlantic crossing with a sextant?”

“Certainly,” said RandomHypatia. “People crossed oceans successfully for centuries before inventing satnav.”

“Yes,” said Octavia. “And a surprising number of them vanished permanently.”

“Only the less organised ones,” said Swashbuckled.

Far ahead, barely visible now, the Rustler rose briefly atop a swell before vanishing once more into the deepening Atlantic dusk. By full dark the yacht had disappeared completely. Not vanished behind a wave. Vanished. The horizon no longer contained a ship.

Hedgehog remained seated at the laptop while several gerbils organised manifests around her with the grim efficiency of an expanding maritime intelligence service.

“The manifests repeat the same ports,” Hedgehog said, looking up. “Galway. Iceland. Newfoundland. Maine. Fuel. Supplies. Transfer locations. But instead of heading north-west towards Galway, they've just changed course.”

Octavia frowned. “Why?”

Hedgehog looked back at the screen for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said as she turned to look in the direction they were heading.

The horizon contained weather. Cloud had been building slowly for over an hour. Now it spread steadily across the sky towards them, swallowing the first stars one by one.

RandomHypatia looked upward for the first time with genuine concern. “That,” she said quietly, “is inconvenient.”

Octavia stared at her. “‘Inconvenient’ appears to be doing an extraordinary amount of work there.”

“The weather will clear,” said Swashbuckled calmly. “And if it doesn’t?”

Swashbuckled adjusted the wheel slightly.

“Then we shall have to do it blind.”

“Blind?” asked Octavia.

“Dead reckoning. Lunar distance. Latitude by noon sighting. Judging currents by swell direction. Birds. Clouds. Water temperature. Luck. Mild superstition. Severe superstition.”

“And these work?”

Swashbuckled considered this. “Often enough to continue attempting ocean crossings.”

Octavia sighed, reached into her coat pocket and produced her phone. “Well fortunately,” she said, “civilisation has now invented satellite navigation.”

Swashbuckled glanced at the glowing screen with deep suspicion. “Witchcraft.”

“It’s GPS.”

“Exactly,” said Swashbuckled. “Invisible sky trickery.”

Octavia stared at the screen, her thumb hovering anxiously over the map app. “I’m trying to pull up the satnav,” she said. “Then we can actually see where we’re going instead of guessing with pieces of paper.”

The battery was at three percent.

Swashbuckled kept her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes scanning the dark horizon. “That thing has a lithium heartbeat, Octavia. It’s not going to survive the preamble to a storm.”

As if on cue, the screen died completely.

Swashbuckled glanced over at the black screen, entirely unbothered. “So,” she said. “why don't we put the expensive paperweight away and get back to proper seamanship.”

The first cold drops of rain struck the deck.

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Nobody was entirely certain when the transformation had occurred.

At dawn The Dreadnork had still resembled an improbable rescue expedition held together largely by determination, sea air and Swashbuckled’s complete inability to recognise practical limitations.

By eight o’clock it was beginning to resemble a functioning maritime operation. Barrels had appeared. Nobody knew from where.

Coils of rope now occupied parts of the deck that had definitely been empty the previous evening. Sailcloth was drying neatly across the stern rail. Someone had produced lantern oil, spare charts, medical supplies, waterproofs, smoked fish, three crates of biscuits and what appeared to be a disturbingly comprehensive emergency jam inventory.

JanesLittleGirl had somehow taken command of the aft cargo arrangements less than an hour after boarding.

“This is appalling load distribution,” she announced, staring at a stack of barrels with personal disappointment. “Who secured this?”

Several gerbils looked faintly embarrassed.

Far overhead Batshit swung joyfully through the rigging screaming, “ATLAAAAAAANTIC!”

Octavia Briefcase emerged cautiously from below deck carrying a cup of coffee and the expression of an ocelot slowly realising she had accidentally joined a seventeenth-century naval campaign.

“Why,” she asked carefully, “are there now more barrels?”

“No idea,” said Hussie cheerfully, “but they're bound to come in useful.”

At that moment three capybaras emerged from the forward hatch carrying timber. Nobody questioned this either.

Behind them, unnoticed by almost everybody, several hundred gerbils carrying trays of tea and industrial quantities of Tunnocks Teacakes had somehow already appeared aboard ship.

Tiny voices drifted politely across the deck.

“Tea, madam?”

“Extra marshmallows?”

“Careful, starboard side please.”

“Mind the cannon.”

Octavia stopped walking. She turned slowly.

The gerbils continued flowing around the ship in impossibly organised streams carrying mugs, blankets, clipboards and baked goods with the calm efficiency of a small but highly disciplined naval bureaucracy.

“Where,” asked Octavia, “did all these gerbils come from?”

“The Bluestocking,” said Magpie, as though this explained organised maritime deployment perfectly.

Ahead of them the Rustler remained visible only intermittently now. Sometimes the yacht vanished completely before reappearing briefly as a pale shard against the western horizon. Swashbuckled watched it steadily from the helm.

“We’re losing ground,” said Octavia quietly.

“Mm,” said Swashbuckled. “But not quickly.”

The wind remained steady from the south, filling the great square sails with a deep rolling thunder every time the ship shifted across the swell.

RandomHypatia was already seated beside the mainmast surrounded by charts, books and several increasingly stressed-looking navigational gerbils. “This heading still makes sense for Maine,” she said without looking up. “If they continue north-west once clear of the Channel approaches.”

“Assuming they continue directly,” said Hedgehog.

“They won’t,” said Gosie immediately.

Everybody looked at her.

“The yacht kept stopping,” she said. “Not for repairs. For meetings. Deliveries. Something organised.”

Hedgehog nodded grimly. “The manifests suggest staging points all along the route.”

“That,” said Octavia, “is not reassuring.”

“No,” said Hedgehog. “But it does mean they may remain within reach longer than expected.”

A loud crash sounded from somewhere below deck.

JanesLittleGirl’s voice followed immediately afterwards. “WHO STORED PICKLED ONIONS NEXT TO THE BLACK POWDER?”

Back at the Bluestocking the situation had become both maritime and administrative.

The gerbils were deep in discussion about maps, inventories, rope samples, shipping schedules and increasingly heated theories concerning waterproof biscuit storage.

Nobody appeared entirely certain who was in charge. This did not seem to matter.

Geranium was directing emergency baking operations with the grim focus of someone preparing for a prolonged naval siege. Glandular had somehow acquired three ledger books and was attempting to create a transatlantic supply tracking system despite not fully understanding what a transatlantic crossing actually involved.

Near the fireplace, two guinea pigs were sorting potatoes by emotional resilience.

The gerbils had divided naturally into specialist departments overnight. Hospitality gerbils circulated continuously with tea. Shipping gerbils had occupied the long tables and were now surrounded by manifests, rulers and tiny handwritten labels. Several engineering gerbils were constructing something pulley-related in the corner.

Nobody asked.

AngleofRepose stood beside the bar watching the whole operation with mild astonishment. “It’s becoming rather organised,” she observed.

“That’s usually a warning sign,” said MyrtleLion.

Outside, Errol’s enormous shadow passed slowly across the windows once again as another load of supplies vanished skyward towards The Dreadnork.

Nobody even looked up.

At one table NotAtMyAge narrowed her eyes thoughtfully over the rim of an alarming quantity of coffee. “Well,” she said, “with my Viking ancestry, it does rather seem possible that a longboat may shortly become relevant.”

There was a pause.

MyrtleLion said cautiously, “How many Vikings are we talking about exactly?”

“Difficult to say,” said NotAtMyAge. “Historically we did tend to arrive in batches.”

Maud stopped polishing glasses. MyrtleLion looked wary immediately. Angle closed one eye briefly in the manner of someone recognising danger approaching from a great distance across open water. “Oh no,” she said quietly. “Please tell me you do not actually own a longboat.”

“Oh certainly not,” said NotAtMyAge. “That would be ridiculous.”

Another pause followed.

“…however,” she added, “my cousin Runehild does know a woman in Orkney.”

Several people closed their eyes.

Angle looked up sharply. “Actual Orkney or symbolic Orkney?”

“Actual Orkney,” said NotAtMyAge.

This somehow made matters much worse. “Well,” she continued thoughtfully, “ceremonial longboats are usually much easier to obtain.”

Nobody liked the direction this was taking.

“Why,” asked Angle carefully, “is there a distinction?”

“People become oddly enthusiastic if one mentions festivals,” said NotAtMyAge. “One can generally acquire at least three longboats, six extremely committed Norsewomen and a folk band within about forty-eight hours.”

There was silence.

“And the practical kind?” asked MyrtleLion cautiously.

“Oh,” said NotAtMyAge. “Those belong to the serious Scandinavians.”

From the far side of the room came the sound of hurried whispering among the gerbils. One of them produced a clipboard labelled, POSSIBLE VIKING EVENTUALITIES.

“Absolutely not,” said MyrtleLion immediately.

Nobody had actually suggested using a Viking longboat yet, but the mood in the room had already shifted from “surely not” to “well, if one must acquire Vikings, best do it properly.”

A low shape appeared alongside The Dreadnork shortly before dusk.

At first Octavia assumed it was another basking shark moving slowly across the Atlantic swell. Then the shape lifted cleanly on the water and she realised with horror that it possessed oars.

A longboat slid across the darkening sea with unnerving speed and complete steadiness. Six extremely solid-looking women were rowing with the calm concentration of people who considered the North Atlantic a personal acquaintance.

NotAtMyAge arrived alongside The Dreadnork as though pulling up beside a moving seventeenth-century galleon in open water were an entirely ordinary social call.

“Ahoy!” she called out. “We brought supplies.”

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Not comfortably visible. Not reassuringly visible. But visible enough that AuntieDamsonCrumble could still see the pale shape of the yacht’s sails against the haze with her binoculars, while Batshit swung ecstatically through the ropes like an escaped maniac.

The Dreadnork was making better speed than anyone had expected. The steady southerly wind filled the square sails cleanly from astern while the long swell rolled beneath the hull.

Even so, the yacht remained faster. Every hour it edged a little further west.

“They are still following the same heading,” said Octavia from the quarterdeck. “No sign of turning towards France.”

Swashbuckled nodded once without looking round from the helm.

By late afternoon the Devon coastline had become soft and blue beneath the heat haze. Nobody had meant to remain on board this long.

At first it had still felt temporary. Follow the yacht for a while. Keep sight of it. Work out where it was heading. Now the Channel itself seemed to be slowly unfolding westward around them.

Hedgehog finally closed the chart she had been pretending not to study. “I need to return to the Bluestocking,” she said.

Gosie looked alarmed. “You’re not making Swashbuckled turn back.”

“I am absolutely not making Swashbuckled turn back.”

Far ahead, almost lost now in the bright western light, the Rustler continued west. Nobody liked how far away it had become.

“We need a way ashore without stopping the ship,” said Hedgehog.

Nobody spoke. Then Magpie stood up quietly. Several people looked at her.

“Oh,” said Angle. “Yes.”

A moment later Magpie was circling once above the mast and heading back towards the coast.

At the Bluestocking no-one had heard anything since news of Gosie’s kidnap the previous day. By early evening the gerbils were on the verge of panic. Emergency baking operations were fully underway and the swimming pool of gin and tonic was almost half empty.

“You’d think they’d have called,” said JanesLittleGirl for at least the fifth time.

“Why haven’t they called?” demanded Geranium.

“Why haven’t we called?” asked Glandular.

Marie de Gournay pointed out that a seventeenth-century galleon was somewhat limited in charging facilities. This did not improve matters.

At that moment a blur of black-and-white wings swept through the doorway and landed neatly on the back of a chair. Her coat glittered with mirrors and sequins so brightly she commanded a localised eclipse. Everyone reached for their sunglasses.

“Magpie!” shouted several voices at once.

Magpie folded her wings calmly. “Gosie’s safe,” she announced.

The relief that moved through the pub was immediate.

“She’s aboard The Dreadnork,” Magpie continued. “They’re following a yacht west through the Channel.”

“Of course they are,” said MyrtleLion.

“The yacht is ahead of them,” said Magpie. “It's fast.”

That somehow made the whole thing worse.

“Where are they heading?” asked Maud.

“West. That's all we know,” said Magpie. “They need help to work out where exactly. Supplies. Information. Swashbuckled isn’t stopping.”

Outside, something vast passed slowly across the windows. The ceiling beams creaked gently.

A few moments later Errol ducked her enormous head politely through the doorway. She smelled faintly of hot metal and sulphur.

“Oh good,” said Maud. “Transport.”

Errol departed almost immediately.

When she returned some time later she carried Angle, the Box of Distractions, and Hedgehog clutching several large bundles of damp manifests tied together with rope.

The mood of the pub shifted the moment the documents appeared.

Tables were cleared. Lamps were lit. Several shipping gerbils emerged from somewhere downstairs carrying notebooks, rulers, tiny spectacles and expressions of intense professional concentration.

Gazette immediately climbed onto three stacked books in order to reach the table properly. Gunwale produced a ruler, two pencils and a small brass compass from somewhere inside her waistcoat. Galliard peered severely over her spectacles and began sorting damp manifests into neat piles with terrifying speed.

Within minutes papers covered nearly every available surface. Hedgehog was already cross-referencing shipment dates against a harbour chart while Angle held pages flat beneath the lamps as sea damp tried to curl them shut again.

“These markings repeat,” said Gazette, flattening a page beside the fire.

“Not destinations,” muttered Gunwale. “Routes. Numbers. Dates. Weather marks. Coordinates.”

“Time zones,” said Hedgehog suddenly. “They’re crossing the Atlantic Ocean.”

Angle looked up sharply. “To where?”

The analysis continued well into the evening. Then Galliard looked up very slowly. “Oh,” she said.

The room fell quiet.

“What?” asked Angle.

Galliard adjusted her spectacles. “I think,” she said carefully, “they’re sailing to Maine.”

By the time Errol returned to The Dreadnork the western sky had deepened into gold. The yacht was still visible. Barely. Sometimes the Rustler vanished completely as the long rolling sea swelled before reappearing as a pale sliver against the horizon.

Swashbuckled had not left the helm once.

Octavia looked up as Errol’s shadow crossed the deck.

“Well?” she asked.

Hedgehog and JanesLittleGirl climbed carefully down from the dragon’s back. Jane was carrying a toolbox almost as large as herself and wore the expression of somebody entirely prepared to reverse a forklift onto a moving pirate ship if circumstances required. Hedgehog carried charts.

“The Bluestocking’s been through the manifests,” she said. “The routes match transatlantic shipping. They're heading for Maine.”

There was a stunned silence until Octavia said, “You cannot seriously intend to pursue them across the Atlantic.”

Swashbuckled looked genuinely surprised. “That is historically how most Atlantic pursuits began.”

“The Rustler 36 is specifically designed for offshore endurance,” said Octavia patiently. “That yacht was built to cross oceans efficiently. On the other hand, this… this… vessel was built to threaten Spanish treasure fleets while everyone aboard contracted scurvy.”

“And yet this ship has safely crossed the Atlantic many times,” said Swashbuckled.

“Modern yachts are safer, faster and dramatically more manoeuvrable.”

“But can they fire cannons?” asked Swashbuckled.

“No.”

“Then I fail to see the advantage.”

“We will also need supplies,” said Octavia. “A great many supplies.”

Hedgehog scoffed. “The Bluestocking has never yet failed to produce impossible quantities of food at very short notice.”

“This,” said Octavia, “is a deeply irresponsible plan.”

“Good,” said Swashbuckled. “I was worried we were becoming respectable.

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On deck, Gosie sat wrapped in blankets near the stern rail with Brains pressed firmly against her legs. She still looked pale but was considerably more furious than frightened, which everybody took as encouraging.

The Box of Distractions sat beside the mast with the lid tied firmly shut using considerably more rope than seemed strictly necessary.

Hedgehog crouched nearby with a stack of damp manifests spread across an overturned crate while Octavia cross-checked details on the police laptop.

“These were in the calamari room,” said Hedgehog, flattening damp pages against the crate. “Nobody was paying much attention to paperwork once the gerbils seized the radios.”

Gosie leaned forward suddenly, one paw still gripping her mug. “That symbol,” she said.

Hedgehog shifted the page towards her. Alongside a block of shipping codes sat a small circle, crossed by three fine lines, stamped repeatedly beside several consignments.

“I kept hearing them talk about timing windows,” said Gosie. “Not dates. Windows. Everything had to move together. They were bringing shipments into Millbay, taking them to Sutton Harbour for relabelling, then returning them to the docks by road before departure. The Bank Holiday’s perfect for it. So many other yachts and cruisers moving. Nobody notices patterns.”

“What kind of shipments?” said Edith.

Gosie gave a tired shrug. “Seeds. Documents. Paintings once, I think. Maybe musical manuscripts. Half the time I couldn’t tell if the labels were real.”

“You heard all this from a cell?”

“They forgot the ventilation shafts carried sound.” Gosie took another sip of tea. “Also there was a cat.”

Everybody paused.

“A cat?” asked Angle.

“Yes. Kitty. Lived down there apparently.” Gosie pointed vaguely back towards the island. “Very helpful.”

“How exactly was the cat helpful?”

“She kept stealing things and then staring at them until I noticed.”

There was a brief silence.

“That is,” said Hedgehog, “extremely cat-like behaviour.”

“That,” said Angle, “is extremely EmpressaurusKitty’s Kitty-like behaviour.”

Gosie reached across the manifests and tapped another consignment mark. “This one matters,” she said quietly. “Kitty brought it to me yesterday.”

Ahead of them, Sutton Harbour looked entirely normal. Which, Gosie now realised, was probably the point.

“There!” Hedgehog suddenly pointed towards the quayside. Three small white delivery vans were pulling away from the warehouses beside Sutton Harbour. They looked identical to dozens of others until they turned out of the marina. On the rear doors, half-obscured by salt and grime, was the same circle crossed by three fine white lines.

“Millbay,” said Gosie immediately.

Octavia shut the police laptop. “If the vans are moving cargo back to the docks, they’ll already be loading.”

Swashbuckled was already turning the wheel.

The galleon swung ponderously away towards the Hoe as harbour traffic crowded the water.

Everything suddenly seemed to be in the way.

A fuel barge blocked the marina exit. Two rental cruisers drifted uncertainly across the channel while somebody shouted contradictory instructions about ropes. Beyond the breakwater, paddleboarders bobbed gently in the tide with complete disregard for organised smuggling operations.

“Move,” muttered Swashbuckled.

The galleon cleared the Barbican at last and began the long curve around the Hoe into open Sound.

Above them, Plymouth was fully waking now. Fishing boats crossed the harbour mouth trailing gulls behind them. Traffic moved along the waterfront roads. Café shutters rattled upward in the growing light.

By the time Millbay came fully into view, one of the vans was already pulling away from the quay.

“Look!” shouted Edith.

Beyond the warehouses, a dark blue Rustler 36 was motoring slowly out from the docks while figures moved briskly across the deck preparing sail.

“No,” said Gosie softly.

Swashbuckled hauled hard on the wheel. For one brief impossible moment it looked as though the galleon might still cut across the smaller yacht before it reached the outer channel.

Then an inbound trawler crossed directly between them, dragging a wash of white water through the narrowing gap.

By the time the wake cleared, the yacht had slipped west beyond the breakwater. Rigging snapped sharply in the morning wind as cream sails climbed upward.

Stretched across the canvas, bright in the dawn light, was a circle crossed by three fine white lines.

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Swashbuckled brought the galleon in far closer to the cliffs than anybody except the capybaras wanted. Ahead, barely visible in the dark, old algae-covered stairs ascended from the sea.

“Too exposed,” said Octavia.

How exactly are we getting ashore then?” said Angle. “Because those steps look fatal.”

Hussie peered upward. “There’ll be another access point. But we'll need ropes.”

From just above the crow's nest, a grappling hook suddenly whipped through the darkness and caught neatly around an upper section of ruined parapet.

Everybody looked up.

Barely visible against the stars, a figure in a waxed coat and riding breeches was sitting comfortably in the rigging with a longbow across her knees while Batshit quivered beside her with excitement.

Hedgehog stared upwards. “Oh for heaven’s sake.”

The archer adjusted the rope slightly. “Hussie, we’re going in above the embrasures.”

Batshit barked ecstatically into the darkness below.

“You brought a toxophilist?” said Octavia.

“I brought AuntieDamsonCrumble,” said Swashbuckled. “The toxophily was included at no extra charge.”

Nobody asked how long AuntieDamsonCrumble had been aboard. Nobody genuinely wanted the answer.

“The Kettlewell incident,” murmured Hedgehog darkly.

Nobody elaborated. Somewhere below deck the Box of Distractions gave another ominous thump.

AuntieDamsonCrumble swung lightly out from the rigging and caught the rope with both hands. For one alarming moment she was hanging completely over black water between ship and cliff. Then she hooked one leg over the line and began pulling herself across it through the darkness.

“Well,” said Angle faintly. “That’s one way in.”

Hussie shoved the leather roll of lock picks through her belt, seized the rope and followed after her.

Above the sea, the two figures moved steadily towards the ruined parapet hand over hand, boots and knees gripping the taut line whenever it shifted beneath them.

Batshit was beside herself.

Minutes passed. Then, high above the water, a torch flashed twice and vanished.

A short time later Octavia and Edith pulled the boat alongside the narrow landing beneath the stone arch, while Brains jumped ashore and began staring suspiciously into the darkness.

“I must admit,” said Hedgehog as Octavia looped the line once around the iron ring, took a second turn to absorb the strain, then finished it with two quick half hitches pulled tight, “I had assumed you merely owned shipping.”

“I may once have worked as a deckhand out of Rio,” said Octavia.

Angle clutched the Box of Distractions and stepped out of the boat.

AuntieDamsonCrumble and Hussie were waiting above the waterline beside a narrow opening in the rock.

“We’ve got a way in,” said Hussie and she squeezed through the gap.

Suddenly wide tunnels opened out beneath the island. Inside, boxes were stacked everywhere.

Fuel drums.
Coils of rope.
Temporary worktables scattered with shipping labels and paperwork.

“This is not abandoned,” murmured Hedgehog.

Brains surged ahead of them, claws skittering sharply across the concrete floor, then stopped dead beside a heavy steel door. Hussie grabbed the handle.

The room beyond was brightly lit and stacked almost to the ceiling with packing crates. Packing ice was melting slowly across the concrete floor. The smell hit them instantly.

Calamari.

“Kevin,” said Angle faintly.

A handful of sunflower seeds lay scattered in the doorway. Beneath one crate, part of a torn seed packet showed traces of gold leaf lettering:

Vesp—

G—

Mon—

Hel—

“Vesper Gold Monastery Helianthus,” said Hedgehog, “the most expensive black sunflower seeds known to gerbils…”

The Box of Distractions shifted violently in Angle’s arms.

Brains barked sharply and spun away from the calamari store entirely, disappearing into a side corridor that led deeper under the island.

The corridor narrowed sharply as it descended. At the end of the passage stood another steel door. This one had a bolt across the outside.

Brains was already scratching furiously at the bottom of it.

From behind the door came Gosie’s unmistakable voice, “Brains?”

“Oh thank goodness,” said Edith.

“Stand back,” said Hussie. The bolt screeched loudly as she dragged it sideways. Too loudly. Somewhere deeper inside the tunnels a door slammed and heavy footsteps could be heard running towards them.

Everybody froze.

Another shout echoed through the corridors. The footsteps sounded closer.

Angle looked down at the violently trembling Box of Distractions. “I think the time is now,” she said, and she opened the lid, stepping backwards very quickly.

For one terrible moment nothing happened. Then dozens of half-awake gerbils exploded out into the tunnels like champagne corks.

One gerbil vanished immediately into the darkness carrying a radio twice her own size. Another disappeared up a cable duct. Still another hurled sunflower seeds directly into the air.

They heard crashing, swearing, running feet, and industrial machinery starting unexpectedly. A siren began rotating uselessly somewhere underground.

Somewhere nearby a man yelled, “WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF THEM?”

Tiny voices shrieked through the darkness.

“THIS WAY!”

“NO, THIS WAY!”

“VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION!”

Then a gerbil triumphantly screamed, “I FOUND A LEVER!”

Everything went black.

The steel door burst open.

Gosie stared at all of them for one completely stunned second.

Then at the chaos behind them.

Then at the gerbils stampeding through the tunnels carrying string, cutlery, sunflower seeds and at least one clipboard.

Octavia seized Gosie’s paw.

“Run.”

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At the helm, Swashbuckled stood calmly beneath the stars with one hand resting lightly on the wheel. This was, she felt, probably unnecessary. Hedgehog and Octavia Briefcase were both exceptionally competent. The situation would almost certainly be resolved before they reached Plymouth.

On the other hand, Gosie appeared to have been arrested and one never liked to miss the start of an adventure if one could reasonably help it.

Besides, it had been high tide.

No sensible sailor would wait another twelve hours.

Somewhere overhead Batshit barked ecstatically from the rigging, “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Swashbuckled closed her eyes briefly.

Ahead of them, faint against the darkness, the lights of Plymouth shimmered along the horizon.

Meanwhile, outside Café Roma, Kevin and Steve had finally fallen silent.

The lobster had achieved what neither legal authority nor emotional appeals had managed. Both gulls were now standing possessively over the demolished remains of the enormous Maine parcel, cracking shells and occasionally slapping one another with fragments of lobster claw.

For the first time all evening, nobody was screaming about calamari.

Across the road, Charles Cross police station still glowed in the warm Bank Holiday darkness.

Hedgehog and Octavia Briefcase were sitting at the next table studying the harbour CCTV while AngleofRepose drank coffee quietly beside them.

“How on earth,” Angle asked, “did you get hold of a police laptop?”

“You’d be surprised at exactly how cooperative people become when properly cross-examined,” said Octavia.

Angle shut up immediately.

The sergeant emerged from the police station carrying several sheets of paper. “We still haven’t found a trace of Gosie,” she said. “We’re widening the search to the islands and marine structures in the Sound. Mount Edgcumbe, the Breakwater, Drake’s—”

“CALAMARI.”

Kevin said it so loudly that everybody stopped. Steve froze with half a lobster claw in his beak.

“Calamari,” Kevin repeated darkly. Then both gulls immediately returned to dismantling the lobster with renewed concentration.

Nobody spoke for a moment. The sergeant frowned slightly. “Drake’s Island,” she repeated.

“CALAMARI.”

This time Kevin almost screamed it.

Octavia was watching the gulls. “The calamari matters,” she said quietly. Then she stood up. “We’re coming with you to Drake’s Island.”

“No,” said the sergeant at once. “Absolutely not. We’ll send a launch once we’ve got the harbour team together.”

“How long?”

“It’s a Bank Holiday Sunday,” said the sergeant. “I need authorisation, marine support, somebody to physically locate half the launch crew and—”

Octavia closed the laptop.

Out beyond the harbour lights, a galleon was turning into Plymouth Sound.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m going to see a pirate about a rescue.”

The galleon swung neatly alongside the harbour wall. Lanterns glowed warmly along the stern. Ropes creaked overhead. High up in the rigging Batshit ricocheted briefly off something nautical.

“That,” said Hedgehog, “does not sound under control.”

“It rarely is,” said Angle.

Swashbuckled stepped ashore first.

Behind her came Edith Stourton looking delighted and Brains looking concerned. Hussie carried a small leather roll of lock picks, accompanied by a resigned Hunter. RandomHypatia clutched several sheets of calculations for reasons nobody entirely understood, and MagpieComplex wore enough reflective material to constitute a minor navigational hazard.

Another heavy thump echoed from somewhere below deck.

“The Box of Distractions?” asked Angle cautiously.

“No idea,” said Swashy.

Octavia was already striding towards them.

“Gosie wasn’t arrested,” she said without preamble. “The uniforms were fake. There’s no custody record. Kevin reacted to Drake’s Island and the police are still trying to organise a launch team.”

She glanced towards the dark water beyond the harbour. “This is now a rescue.”

Swashbuckled was already moving.

“Hussie,” she said briskly, “bring the lock picks. Hunter, you’re with me. Somebody retrieve Batshit before she achieves powered flight. RandomHypatia, if any of your calculations involve tides or walls, now would be an excellent time.”

“Already done,” said RandomHypatia.

“Excellent.”

Below deck, something inside the Box of Distractions thumped ominously.

Nobody acknowledged it.

The capybaras were already moving around the deck with the air of engineers who had quietly accepted several hours earlier that this had become a marine extraction exercise.

Brains climbed back aboard with deep moral reluctance. High overhead, Batshit was delighted that she had somehow become tangled in the mainsail.

Hedgehog hauled herself aboard still carrying the police laptop.

Angle disappeared below deck to retrieve the Box of Distractions.

Octavia Briefcase stepped aboard with the assurance of an ocelot who probably owns a ship somewhere.

The capybaras cast off the final rope.

Timbers groaned softly beneath the shifting tide. Lantern light slid gold across the black water as the galleon eased away from the harbour wall.

Behind them, Plymouth glittered across the waterfront beneath the Bank Holiday night.

Kevin and Steve abandoned the lobster entirely and took flight, landing heavily in the crow’s nest.

Swashbuckled took the helm. Ahead lay only darkness and Drake’s Island.

“Let’s go get Gosie.”

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The broad-faced polecat sergeant had disappeared through a side door carrying the copy of the Daily Gerbil. Radios crackled somewhere deeper in the building. Another officer was already taking notes from Hedgehog while a second typed rapidly at a terminal without looking up.

Nobody was humouring anybody anymore.

Octavia Briefcase stood beside the custody desk, very still, watching the station’s Bank Holiday indifference vanish. She turned sharply to Hedgehog. “Call the Bluestocking,” she said. “Now.”

In the Bluestocking, Maud snatched up the phone. “Hedgehog? Have you got Gosie?”

“No.”

The single word changed the atmosphere of the pub at once.

“What’s happened?”

“Maud,” Hedgehog said, “there’s no arrest record.”

At the Bluestocking, the pub fell silent. Even the Choirbils had stopped singing. Maud froze. “What do you mean,” she said, “there’s no arrest record?”

Hedgehog’s voice crackled faintly down the line beneath the distant sound of radios and traffic. “I mean Gosie was taken by people pretending to be police.”

For one long moment nobody in the Bluestocking moved at all. Then Gubbins whispered, “The sea has got her.”

Instant pandemonium.

“I KNEW IT WOULD BE THE SEA.”

“WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE TRUSTED WATER.”

“GOSIE’S BEEN TAKEN BY SMUGGLERS.”

One Choirbil burst into tears so dramatically that two others had to support her onto a bar stool while continuing to cry themselves.

“IS IT PIRATES?”

“IT IS NOT PIRATES,” Maud snapped. Nobody listened.

“THEY’VE DEFINITELY TAKEN HER TO INTERNATIONAL WATERS.”

“THAT’S HOW JURISDICTION WORKS.”

“THEY’VE DEFINITELY WEIGHTED HER DOWN.”

“WITH CHAINS.”

“AND ANCHORS.”

“THE SEA IS FULL OF MURDER.”

“IT IS NOT MURDER,” shouted Maud, even though she was not entirely certain herself.

“Hedgehog,” Maud said, “what happens now?”

“Well,” said Hedgehog, “we start a search. But on a hot Bank Holiday Saturday with half the South West wandering about eating ice cream, where exactly do you begin?”

A shriek sounded faintly down the line. Maud frowned. “I can hardly hear you. What’s all that noise?”

“Screeching gulls,” she said. “They’ve been bothering us since we arrived.”

From a windowsill near the Bluestocking front door, chickadeeinme listened with increasing concern. She suddenly sat bolt upright. No. The answer was obvious.

She flew out of the Bluestocking to the waterfront in Portland, muttering darkly about time zones and the regrettable limitations of tiny wings. Calling in at Free Range Fish and Lobster, hard by Becky’s Diner on Commercial Street, she ordered one extremely large Maine lobster to be mailed express delivery to Kevin and Steve in Plymouth.

“It’ll take them so long to work out how to get the meat off that bugger,” she chortled, “that it will totally shut them up for a few hours.”

As chickadeeinme arrived back at the Bluestocking, Maud ended the call and looked around the pub. “All right,” she said. “I was wrong.”

That got their attention.

“I said earlier that we did not need an international rescue operation.”

Several gerbils nodded tearfully.

“We now need an international rescue operation.”

Three gerbils began applauding.

“I TOLD YOU WE NEEDED THE ROPE.”

“THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SEMAPHORE FLAGS WERE FOR.”

“THIS IS WHY I LEARNT KNOTS.”

One Choirbil cried even harder with vindication.

“All right,” said Maud suddenly. “Lanterns. Rope. Medical supplies. Get everything down to the dock. Move. NOW. If Gosie’s out there somewhere, we are not sitting here waiting for the tide.”

The Bluestocking erupted into motion.

Gerbils sprinted in all directions carrying entirely disproportionate quantities of rope. A capybara thundered past with three lifejackets and what appeared to be a harpoon. Somebody began packing emergency Tunnocks. Two Choirbils attempted to carry a crate significantly larger than either of them while continuing to cry. Near the stairs, a badger was arguing passionately for the inclusion of soup.

Then Maud stopped speaking.

Beyond the open doors, the dock lay empty beneath the harbour lights.

The galleon had gone.

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Maud was attempting to calm the increasingly theatrical panic by pointing out that Gosie had merely been arrested and that Hedgehog and Octavia Briefcase would sort everything out shortly.

Nobody appeared to be listening. In fact, this seemed to have enthused everyone further.

One of the gerbils had started painting tiny semaphore flags. A capybara arrived carrying more rope. Somebody else was attempting to teach the Choirbils a sea shanty in canon form.

Down by the harbour, Swashbuckled continued preparing for maritime extraction anyway.

Additional volunteers had begun arriving at alarming speed.

Edith Stourton announced that she could tie a bowline, knew what a jam cleat was, could use a winch, and had some limited experience steering largish vessels under sail.

Swashy nodded once. “You’re aboard.”

RandomHypatia declared that if the rescue operation involved conic sections or long division, she was the fourth-century woman for the job.

MagpieComplex offered “anything sparkly.”

Marie de Gournay announced that she would remain in the Bluestocking and think deeply about the Gosie situation in French. Nobody objected. It sounded extremely intellectual.

Meanwhile, Brains had become distracted by a dropped sausage roll and was reconsidering whether maritime rescue aligned with her broader personal goals.

Then AngleofRepose walked back into the Bluestocking carrying a golden box. Everyone looked at it.

“What’s the box for?” asked Maud.

“It’s a Box of Distractions,” said Angle, sitting down carefully with it beside her.

“A box for distractions?”

“No,” said Angle patiently. “A Box of Distractions.”

This clarified absolutely nothing.

“What does it do?” asked a gerbil.

Angle shrugged. “Carmela the Camel gave it to me. Because Reasons.”

Swashbuckled accepted the box immediately. “Excellent,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Plymouth, the Bank Holiday evening was glowing gold across the Hoe. Café Roma was still busy beneath the trees opposite the courts. Hedgehog and Octavia Briefcase had already secured a table outside. Several nearby tourists were pretending not to stare at Octavia while very obviously staring at Octavia. Hedgehog appeared not to notice. Octavia appeared entirely accustomed to it.

AngleofRepose arrived carrying coffee, flapjack and a paper copy of the Daily Gerbil folded beneath one arm. She set the tray and the newspaper down on the table. On the front page was the photograph of Gosie in the back of the police car looking terrified while Kevin screamed through the window beside her.

Octavia glanced at the tray. “That flapjack,” she observed, “is emotionally manipulative.”

Kevin and Steve were already nearby. Kevin landed heavily beside the table. “CALAMARI,” he announced darkly.

Steve stole half of Hedgehog’s flapjack.

Octavia watched them carefully. “I don’t think those are normal seagulls.”

“No,” said Angle. “Those are Kevin and Steve.”

Across the road, Charles Cross police station shimmered quietly in the evening heat.

Hedgehog stood up. “Let’s go and retrieve our gerbil.”

At the custody desk, the sergeant, a broad-faced polecat with silvering whiskers, studied the newspaper photograph. “Name?”

“Gosie,” said Hedgehog.

Typing. Pause. More typing.

The sergeant frowned slightly. “Surname?”

“Bluestocking,” said Hedgehog automatically.

The sergeant raised an eyebrow, then checked a second screen. Then a third. “No arrest record,” she said.

“That’s impossible,” said Hedgehog.

“We’ve checked twice.”

Octavia Briefcase reached for the newspaper and carefully studied the photograph for several long seconds. Then she pointed at one of the police officers in the photo. “The uniform buttons,” she said. “They’re too shiny.”

The sergeant leaned forward to look. Another silence. Then she said quietly, “…those aren’t police uniforms.”

Hedgehog went cold. “Gosie’s been kidnapped.”

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