Brutal hands gripped my shoulders and thrust me hard against the tunnel wall. I cried out as my head struck the stones; light exploded before my eyes, and I slid downwards to rest on the tunnel floor.

“Oi!” Jeb Hawkins shouted in rage towards the passage mouth. “Oi! You there!” He broke into pursuit, his stumbling gait that of an old, bent man in a darkened place; but in a moment, I was alone. Gingerly, I felt with my fingers at the back of my skull. No blood — no broken skin — just a slight lump, to pair with the one I had earned on horseback. I pushed myself upright, and found that a slight dizziness passed quickly away. With care, I might make my way towards the tunnel mouth.

But what should await me there? The menacing figure, and brave Mr. Hawkins insensible at his feet?

Ought I to turn, instead, to the trapdoor set into the Abbey floor, and the freedom of the ruins above?

But what if the cloaked man — mon seigneur — had just quitted the place, and his conspirators remained?

Stiff with uncertainty, I could move neither forward nor back. And then a voice shouted from the passage mouth. “Miss Austen?”

“Jeb!” I cried. “Are you unharmed?”

“Naught to do with me — but the skiff’s gone! The damned blackguard scarpered in ’er!”

The outrage in Mr. Hawkins’s words must have been comical, had our situation been less unhappy. I descended to the shingle. “Do you mean to say that your boat has been stolen?”

The Bosun’s Mate did not reply; he was employed in cursing with a fluency that attested to fortyodd years in His Majesty’s service. My ears burned with every ejaculation, though I am sure my brother Frank should have heard them unmoved.

I waited until his fury was spent, and then said briskly, “We must walk along the shingle until we reach the landing area below Netley Lodge, and take the path that leads past the ruins. It is three miles from the Abbey to Southampton — a trifling walk. I have often achieved it.”

The old seaman stared. “Do you not know that I’ve the gout in my leg? I can never walk all of three mile!”

It was true that our dealings with one another were generally afloat; I had formed no notion of his general spryness.

“Shall I go in search of aid?” I enquired. “Your friend, perhaps — Ned Bastable — who lives in

Hound? Might he possess a cart... or... a conveyance of some kind?”

By way of answer, Mr. Hawkins lifted his bosun’s whistle from the chain where it rested around his neck, and commenced to blow.

“There’s vessels enough on the Water,” he gasped between exertions, “to carry us safe home. It’s not marooning what troubles me, miss! It’s the loss of my boat! Mark my words — someone’ll have to pay!”

He said this with such awful purpose that I understood, of a sudden, that my meagre purse should presently be petitioned to supply the want of Jeb Hawkins’s livelihood; and I wished all the more devoutly that I had heeded Lord Harold’s advice, and left Orlando to fend for himself. Perhaps the valet had simply tired of labouring in his lordship’s service, and had seized his chance to take swift passage elsewhere in the world—

“Ahoy there!” Jeb Hawkins cried, and waved his arms frantically. The whistle dropped to his chest.

“It’s the Portsmouth hoy, miss — travels each day up the Water, bearing folk from one town to the other. Ahoy there! On the water! We’ve need of aid!”

As I watched, the smart sailing vessel far out in the middle of the Solent seemed to hesitate, and then — as I joined Mr. Hawkins in waving my arms — slowly came about and turned towards us.

“The draught’s too great to permit it to come in close,” Mr. Hawkins told me regretfully. “You’ll have to kilt yer skirts, miss, about yer knees.”

I gathered the black cloth in my hands without argument, and consigned my poor boots to the deep. The shock of cold was as nothing to the tug of the current, and for an instant, I was terrified of being borne under, and of drowning in three feet of water from the weight of my clothes. But Mr. Hawkins reached a steadying hand to my elbow, and urged me forward. I bit my lip to avoid crying out, and kept my gaze trained on the hoy as it steadily approached. A sailor, red-faced and bearded, leaned forward from the bow.

“Ye blow a fair whistle,” he said. “That’s a navy man’s tune.”

“Aye, and I’ve the right to play it,” Mr. Hawkins returned testily. “I’m Jeb Hawkins, as once tanned yer backside on the Queen Anne, Davy Thomas — and how you can forget it—”

“Jeb Hawkins!” the sailor cried, and held out his hand. “How came you to be run aground?”

“My skiff was stolen, and the lady here incommoded.”

The cold seawater surging about my knees was so frigid at that moment, my teeth were clattering in my head, and I could barely acknowledge the sailor’s look of appraisal.

“Stolen?” he repeated. “And you marooned an’ all?”

“Davy Thomas!” shouted the captain from the cockpit, “stop yer palaverin’ and say what’s to-do!”

“A lady and the Bosun’s Mate as have had their boat stolen, Cap’n, sir,” Thomas replied with alacrity.

“They be marooned!”

“A lady?” enquired a third — and far more cultured voice. “Then for God’s sake, man — swing her aboard!”

I raised my eyes to the centre of the vessel, where a quartet of passengers was seated. A young woman with round blue eyes that stared at me in horrified astonishment, a nursemaid in a dowdy cap, a child of less than two — and a man in the dress uniform of the Royal Navy.

“Fly? ” I cried in astonishment — and dropped my skirts in the water.

Chapter 19

The Greased Monkey

1 November 1808, cont.

“Whatever are we to tell Mamma, Jane?” my brother exclaimed as Mr. Hawkins and I settled ourselves amidships, snug in a pair of blankets afforded us by the hoy’s captain. Frank’s wife, Mary, was divided between wringing my gown of seawater, and murmuring vague phrases of sympathy. “She shall be forced to lock you in your bedchamber, if you do not display more sense.”

“What has sense to do with it, Fly? We did not in- tend to be marooned!”

“Nor did you intend to fall off your horse — but the injury was as severe.”

“I cannot think your decision to land in so lonely a place was wise,” Mary ventured doubtfully. “What possessed you to choose that isolated stretch of shingle?”

A glance at Mr. Hawkins confirmed that he had no intention of rescuing me from my predicament; the old seaman was sunk in black anger at the loss of his skiff.

“I have lately acquired a taste for sketching,” I told them lamely. “I thought to capture the prospect of. . of Hythe, just opposite, by setting up my easel in that exact spot.”

As there was nothing very extraordinary in the stretch of shore across the Water, my brother should well look perplexed.

“Mr. Hawkins was so kind as to oblige me, by putting me off at the desired point; but once we had landed, and walked a little way to determine the most advantageous position — we returned to find that the boat, along with my nuncheon, paintbox, and sketching things, had been seized by an unknown!”

“That is worrisome in the extreme,” Frank said heavily.

I stared at him. “What can you mean? It is decidedly vexing — and I regret the loss of Mr. Hawkins’s boat, not to mention Cassandra’s paintbox—”

“Jane, have you heard nothing of the news out of Portsmouth?”

“I have not.”

He glanced at his wife, whose eyes filled with tears.

“We suffered an extraordinary attack in the early hours of morning. All of Portsmouth is in disarray.”

“The naval yard?” I demanded. “Was another ship fired?”

“Much worse, I fear,” he said glumly. “The prison hulks, moored off Spithead, were liberated by a means no one may comprehend. With my own eyes, Jane, I saw the riot of French ranks — hundreds of the inmates, swarming over the decks. The crews of two hulks at least were murdered as they stood. Captain Blackstone is believed dead, though his body has not yet been recovered — it is thought that it was heaved overboard when the hulks were fired—”