The Professor Wore Prussian Blue by Shelley Adina

Author:Shelley Adina [Adina, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950854363
Publisher: Moonshell Books, Inc.

Chapter 11

Over Whitby Island

12:20 p.m.

What in the name of heaven are we to do?” Papa glanced over his shoulder, but he could not appeal to his daughters for long. Instead, he was forced to reach over and latch the door to stop its banging in the wind before it was damaged. “He is mad. He must have been killed. Our altitude was at least one hundred feet!”

“You must come about,” William said. “We must attempt a rescue.”

They were sailing over the channel between Whitby and the next island now, which was wild and possessed not so much as a field to set down in.

Daisy was reeling from the shock. Jake could not have meant suicide. But whether or not he had lost his head and in a moment of madness decided to go after Davey, it would come to the same thing. “No one could have survived such a fall, and into such cold water, could they?” she asked through her despair.

“We must at least look.” Papa adjusted the propellers and the conveyance began to come about. And in that moment of its changing direction a couple of degrees, a cannonball screamed past them in exactly the place they had been.

Daisy and Freddie shrieked, both pitches grinding against each other in a spectral fashion that raised goosebumps.

“Steam, Frederica!” Papa shouted. “Now!”

She vanished into the engine compartment and shoveled coal as though her life depended on it. Papa piloted the conveyance at top speed on a southwest heading, putting the entire width of the uninhabited island between them and the unseen cannoneer on the headland at the mouth of the sound.

Another channel. Then a large island, dotted with farms and houses—and the ghostly grey forms of two more airships.

Daisy gasped, half rising from the bench. “Shall I help Freddie? What if they pursue?”

“They are moored,” Papa said. “And we are high enough to be out of range.”

“Thank heavens for Tobin’s improvements to the engine,” William said weakly. “We must get to Victoria with all speed.”

“Victoria?” Daisy yelped. “We cannot go to Victoria.”

“Yes, what about Davey?” Freddie repeated, as though she could not yet apprehend Jake’s fall, nor the near miss by the cannonball, and must grasp for a fact to hold on to. “How could we have lifted and he not be aboard?”

“I saw him climb in myself,” Papa objected, as though this ought to produce Davey, disheveled and smiling, from some cubbyhole Freddie had overlooked.

But Daisy knew the conveyance as well as Freddie did. She had overlooked nothing. Davey was missing, and Jake might be dead, and they were the only ones left who could do something about it.

“He obviously climbed out again,” William said with a groan. “But to what end? What could he have been thinking? Unlike your friend Jake, it is not like Davey to disobey orders.”

“It is not like him to give away our secrets to strangers, either,” came a muffled voice from the rear bench, “and yet it happened.”

“Davey told the pirates of the ingot?” Daisy’s stomach sank as she realized what had driven the boy to abandon ship.

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