Voyage to the Volcano by Tom Banks

Author:Tom Banks [Tom Banks]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 2013-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

‘I’m not sure,’ said Rasmussen, struggling to control the pile of dresses and wigs in her arms.

‘Perhaps he wants to talk to the Captain?’ mused Stanley.

‘The Captain was at the dance, he could have talked to him at any point. There’s something much more untoward going on.’

They hurried on in silence for a while, stopping to peer round corners, and leaving just enough of a distance between Fassbinder and themselves so as not to make him suspicious. He disappeared down a hatchway, which Stanley knew led to the corridor where the Captain’s cabin was situated.

‘Come,’ said Rasmussen, who knew the ins and outs of the Galloon even better than Stanley, having lived aboard it all her life.

She turned to the left and began to feel around the edges of what seemed to Stanley to be a perfectly ordinary plank, part of the wall panelling that ran along the inside of most of the below-deck spaces on the Galloon.

It turned out it was a perfectly ordinary plank, so Stanley watched patiently as Rasmussen tried another, then another, and finally a third.

‘Maybe …’ he said, but she interrupted immediately.

‘Watch and learn, Mr Furry!’ she said pompously, as the third plank proved to be loose. She pulled it out with a ‘squeak’, and thrust her head into the gap created. Then she squeezed her shoulders in, and the rest of her. Stanley watched as she climbed down the gap between the panelling and the walls proper.

‘Used to be some piping or something in here, but now it’s a handy shortcut. Follow me!’ she said, lowering herself further into the hole, and dragging the ragged selection of dressing-up clothes with her.

Stanley followed, and was surprised to see that, through this hidden gap, they had access to the floor below. He waited for Rasmussen to get through and began to push his own pile of clothes into the hole. He heard them drop to the ground below. Then he squeezed through, and hung by his fingers before dropping himself. Looking about, he realised that they were in the corridor near the Captain’s cabin, and had got there a good deal quicker than Fassbinder.

‘Put these on!’ said Rasmussen. ‘He’s coming!’

Unthinkingly, Stanley threw himself into all the clothes Rasmussen handed him. It was only afterwards that he realised he was wearing an apron dress with a number of pinafores and underskirts, a little lace bonnet, and a handbag.

‘I look like a milkmaid!’ he complained to Rasmussen, but she was nowhere to be seen. In her place was an upstanding young guardsman, clean faced but stern, with a smartly pressed uniform and a steely gaze.

‘Rasmussen?’ he said, looking around in bewilderment.

‘It’s me, you turnip!’ said the guardsman. ‘It’s a disguise. Ten per cent costume, ten per cent luck, and ninety per cent belief. If you believe it, he’ll believe it!’

‘But that makes more than a hundred per cent,’ complained Stanley, still in awe. Now he looked, of course it was obvious that Rasmussen was standing before him, dressed in a long grey coat and a tall shako hat, standing on top, rather than in, a pair of black boots.

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