Here the humble chronicler presents the cast and the means and frame of expedition. Each chapter of the adventure will have three parts, each with its own perspective: the Captain, The Crew and the Kit. This is done so that young lads wondering at what gadgetry and industry might do in the service to Queen and Country, as well as boys in service to their betters, and also men of good character and sterling daring, might all equally find a view of Our Gaslight Knight. The last Tory Barrett to stridently knock upon the slurry doors of insidious mystery, “Young Master Rich,” as his most loyal boy calls him, will be illuminated along with his kit and crew in an order appropriate to the narrative need of his overburdened biographer.
-Sincerely, Chester B. Pullman, Baltimore Daily Raven, 14, Durst Street, Thursday, October 3, 2024
…
The Yarn
Of A Gaslight Night: Chapter 1
-1. In A Theographic Way: Captain
-2. Out Of The Way!: Crew
-3. Upon the Highway: Kit
…
Nigh Gaslight: Chapter 2
-1. The Bit: Crew
-2. The Grift: Captain
-3. The Trick: Kit
…
Turns of Flight: Chapter 3
-1. The Ether Trail: Captain
-2. A Gawd Awful Tail: Crew
-3. Right Honorable Optical: Kit
…
A Patagonian Night: Chapter 4
-1. Hunishment: Captain
-2. Cutting the Rug: Crew
-3. Ole Right Colmarge: Kit
…
An Antarctic Bight: Chapter 5
-1. Over the Wrack: Crew
-2. Into the Maw: Captain
-3. Yer Gawd Awful Crank: Kit
…
A Saurian Blight: Chapter 6
-1. Fawking Hell, Boss!: Captain
-2. Hunting Hell: Crew
-3. A Bit of 1066: Kit
…
Of Ageless Kites: Chapter 7
-1. A Wondrous Find: Captain
-2. A Mutinous Kind: Crew
-3. A Muscular Mind: Kit
Captain
Richard stood in the long, high, narrow hall to his chamber—not his bed chamber, but that ancestral berth that contained the banner-draped and medal-festooned bed wherein not one of his ancestors had perished—all of them having died with their boots on—except, good old Grandpa Blake Barrett, who maintained but one boot upon his single foot after saving those fool revenuers from the terrible hillbilly moonshiners up in West Virginia…
‘Never mind, Richard, you are it, the last of the line, yet to marry for love like you pledged Mum… the best old hands all gone to dust.’
Doubt was tugging at his soul as he regarded himself dutifully in the mirror, of the dark door to the never before used Barrett Bier, the long, high, narrow hall of mahogany yawning behind him, exaggerating his already short height and broad shoulders. This hallway had been constructed by their Tory American Sire, that Loyal Knight of “Good” King George what had shackled Traitor Revolutionary George Washington himself in 1776, Grant “Wolf-hound” Barrett, the only one of their line to be exceptionally tall. Having accepted the Captaincy of Baltimore, Maryland, and having directed the building of this grand house, known as Dark Hall, their grandest of sires had, against the un-Christian threat of hubris, in 1800, hired the best German carpenters to construct this miracle of optical diminishment, by which the Lord Barrett, who readied himself beyond his bier door, in cognition of his duty to perish in service and not in bed, might appreciate how the evils of the world soared and loomed and yawned—the end of the hall even toothed with bison horns as gargoyle teeth—above, behind and beyond his tiny person.
‘I wonder, Mighty Grant, did you assign we your scions to short stature through this fey reminder of design?’
Richard did not mind the square-jawed face he saw under that black mink derby. The shoulders did cause the black cape to flare out over the white service jacket.
‘Thank got I did not loose the shoulder! I should look crooked and malformed.’
The hushed cough, the preemptive clearing of the NCO throat back in the Great Hall, reminded Richard that his kit and crew awaited. His high, red sable boots, braced within, supporting the twice broken ankles earned of leaping into the breach at Mogadishu—his one major action having ruined his entire frame—supported soft soles for exploratory tasks. The black, rhino horn buttons, offset the pearly linen jacket and opaque cape nicely, even as the blue crew trousers tucked in the boots helped distract from both the shortness and thickness of leg—a legacy of the adventurous Barrett men acquiring stout peasant women as battle brides. Dear Mum had hauled her own dresser once up those stairs, where she hid now weeping, when the Hindoo domestics had fagged out on the task…
His nose was still maddeningly straight, neither O’Neal or LaFano, his personal sparring partners, ever consenting to break it for him. How he envied their bent beaks! Darned lucky rustics!
‘I will not disgrace you, Mighty Wolf-Hound Grant Barrett!’ Yet the moisture in his eyes betrayed him.
‘Will the “Blunt Barrett” way do in service to such as are in the Theographical way?’
Another chill played up, rather than down, his spine. The members of the Royal Theographic Society had no head quarters, did not meet in secret chambers—for these sort of conspiratorial fellows held this impossible—cryptic-minded men one in all, many of them American, which did raise the old, “revolting!”, anti-revolutionary shade in his Barrett soul.
Richard’s mother insisted that he rise to full duty and inheritance on the vanishing of his father at the tender age of 16, publishing his first treatise on The Great War at 18. He had done quite well running the household since his untimely retirement, and had contemplated writing the complete Barrett history. A brother in the Queen’s Service in India, a darling sister of 16 and the Lads, Jake 10 and Donald 6, the increase in all their knowledge and the upkeep of Dark Hall Manor, upon the Rock of Loch Raven where his very men assured the quality of the municipal water supply against some Russian sabotage… this would have been enough to occupy a maimed life.
He had reluctantly agreed to wearing the chain mail vest under his service jacket and was conscious of a slight bagginess about his middle, plucking at the lower buttons.
Echoing around the Great Room and down the dark hall sounded, “Ahem, ah, Captain, Sir.”
‘Darn, my hideous, mutton-chopped nanny has found me out again!’
“Yes, Color Sergeant Major?”
The rest of the house was ghostly silent as he knew the servants, Hindoo and Christian alike, were with closed eyes saying prayers for Mum Barrett, his siblings out by the Coach, dear Mum at prayer in her bedstead sepulcher within the bay window that faced on the setting sun—poor Mum and her widow walk!
“Sir, do you require assistance concealing the mail that so affronts your Norman Honor? It were good enough for King William, Sir!”
“No, Color Sergeant Major,” Richard barked, clicking his heels, turning and marching down that hard, echoing harrow-hall that had failed to receive every one of his ancestors, in their own bleak turn. As the Great Room echoed and he marched past—as well as under—the towering Sergeant, to the twin hickory doors, oft pocked with musket ball and pitch fork in the days of Restoration, he wanted to turn and shout to Mother, that he would return, that he would marry for love. But all that would have ruined the mystique that kept the serving staff rather spellbound concerning he and His Kind.
