The passage aboard the American smuggler’s sloop was not as convivial and productive as his passage aboard the Indiaman John Knox in 1842 that took him to John Company’s service in his youth, nor was it as hellish as the passage aboard the paddle steamer Blackbird in 1862 to his Crown post at Fernando Po off the coast of West Africa; Hell itself. He had, despite the infirmities of middle-age, quite enjoyed this voyage, full of irony as it was.

He had particularly enjoyed Mister Bracken’s war against the rats. Richard had played chaplain to the ill-fated enemy hordes, and had presided over the burial at sea—with full military honors—of each and every one of Mister Bracken’s four-legged foes. This had actually become a point of comic relief for the hardworking crewmen, and Richard was happy to be a part of such a low-brow parody of life at sea.

They said their farewells to Captain and crew at a rather tidy wharf stacked with ice-covered barrels of pitch and other industrial commodities—precisely the place where a Yankee pirate would unload his cargo of dried Argentine beef —and walked over to the street to enjoy a smoke on his pipe a safe distance from the quayside combustibles. Mister Bracken was of course, by his side, as Mister Stevenson remained on board commiserating with the captain, to whom the enigmatic American seemed indebted.

An odd sort the man is; harder to plumb than the professional barbarian by my side. He professes to be a traditional, even stodgy, intellectual for his time, yet he seems almost a theatergoer to Life. Is it true, that by his time seeing has truly surpassed taking in the mind of Civilized Man?

Within minutes, Richard’s smoke barely done, Mister Stevenson had joined them for a stroll through town. This very town was the hereditary home of the man and he had mid-voyage expressed a desire to visit at least one of the publishing houses that would apparently be set ablaze in a great fire in 1904. His curiosity, of course got the best of him, “Mister Stevenson to what publishing house are we bound?”

“I thought we’d stop by the Iron Sun Building on our way over to the Carrollton Hotel. When I was growing up newspapers were still a notable form of literature. By Randy’s time the city had lost four of its five papers and the surviving paper, The Sun, had just become a liberal mouthpiece. I still read it and see the image from the building façade every day. So I just wanted to see it in person once before the fire. This is a huge opportunity for a native Baltimorean, and will give us a chance to catch up on the news.”

Oh yes, the news of the world; of greed, injustice, war and gossip. What would we do without it? How weary I am of burrowing through such a mass of meaningless life for the gnosis beneath.

Indulge the man, this is his history.

“Why of course Jan, let us see what the great men of the world have wrought today—another railroad to be sure.”

The American’s voice of a sudden adopted a tone of worry, “Richard, will your likeness be known among newspapermen in America?”

“Possibly if they have followed the unpleasantness between poor Speke and myself over the Nile question. I should, I think, remain outside on the street with Mister Bracken enjoying a smoke and a view of the bustle. It is looking to be a good day for business, the weather being mild as it is.”

“Yeah, and a Monday to boot, three weeks before Christmas. Sounds like a plan. Are you dressed warm enough?”

“Yes, thank you Sir. I suspect I’ll be used to the land beneath my feet by the time you are done interrogating the editor and his pressmen.”

Jan smiled back at him as he led them west across the harbor front to the odd jangle of Mister Bracken’s spurs…

The unlikely trio had a nice late autumn stroll across the harbor front. Mister Bracken had hired the young man whose toe he had removed to carry Richard’s luggage. Mister Bracken himself bore the large leather case that contained his three six guns as well as Richard’s own Colt .45.

It was noon and the tidy well-drained young city was bustling with business activity and carriage and pedestrian traffic as they made their way to the hotel Carrollton at Baltimore and Light Street. Just before they turned the corner onto Light so that Mister Stevenson could satisfy a point of interest concerning some entrance or another into this pretentious concrete hotel with arched facades in the Roman style, a servile chirp caught their ear. The men turned to look behind them to see a small well-dressed Negro boy with tin bucket in hand, addressing them as if they were royalty being beseeched for alms, “Good day gentlemen. Might you good men be interested in making a grant on behalf of the School for Negro Children?”

Jan stopped as if physically struck, and turned on his heels, addressing the boy in a rather tense tone, “The school on Saratoga and Courtland Street? Is that the school?”

The boy smiled wide. “Yes Sir it is. I am attending the first class and am hoping to graduate when I’m sixteen—I’m only twelve and I can read and write Sir.”

Randy muttered something about ‘mookes’ under his breath as Richard fished through his coat pocket for some coin and Jan approached the boy, depositing some coin in the bucket while he asked, “What is your name?”

“My name is Timothy Clay Sir. Thank you Sir! Our schoolmaster will be pleased.”

Richard approached and donated a few pounds. “Do not forgo Gibbon, my boy. Make certain you read the Decline and Fall.”

Richard did not dally as Jan seemed want to do. Feeling now more comfortable with his high social status he followed Mister Bracken around the corner with Jan in his wake. When the American caught up and ascertained for himself that there was indeed a fittingly pillared entrance on Light Street, Richard mused out loud, “So my friend, are you satisfied with this entrance? Should we take it or return by way of your fine city’s namesake street?”

Jan began to answer, and then they heard a tin bucket hit the paving stones of the sidewalk and the pleading voice of Timothy Clay, “But Sir, the gentleman said it was permitted.”

One could hear a small brown face being slapped by a man’s hand and Richard’s American companion bolted back around the corner in a rage with his death-dealing manservant close behind.

Do follow Richard. This may well be of interest; an American squabble of the first order!

Richard rounded the corner to see a police officer regarding Mister Stevenson with some concern as he held little Timothy in his left hand and rested his right hand on his bully club. Randy already had his hand on one of the derringers he kept pocketed in his highwayman’s coat, as he looked this way and that for any additional trouble, confident that his boss could handle the policeman. For Mister Stevenson’s part his voice fairly thundered, “What is the meaning of this?”

Before the policeman could stammer a reply he thundered on, “Put my donation back in the pot or I’ll knockout your teeth and place them on your commander’s desk before I have you fired!”

The policeman, tiny beneath the much larger and very well-dressed man, emptied his pockets into the bucket as he stammered in a nervous Irish brogue, “Beggin’ your pardon Sir, I thought the boy a bothersome beggar is all.”

With that Randy stepped forward to separate the boy from the policeman and his boss from both. He patted the boy on the head and pushed him along. “Get the hell home kid, there are Micks about.”

If he had hoped to raise the policeman’s ire he had fallen short of the mark. So he goaded him, obviously holding some sort of animosity for officers of the law. “I only see one beggar on this street and I’m looking at him.”

The policeman continued to shake in fear as Mister Stevenson finally cooled down enough to step away. “Let’s go Randy.”

Randy, however, was not done with his sport, even resorting to a slight against his own ancestors in hopes of eliciting an aggressive act that might justify the bodily harm he obviously wished to inflict upon this travesty in uniform. “With all of the freed slaves we have crawling all over the place I can’t understand why we let you people into the country. We ought to make you each swim back to Ireland with a darkie on your back.”

The officer simply bowed and walked off, shaken by the encounter, even as Randy laughed like a cackling fiend out of Hell as he followed his fuming boss, who followed giddy little Timothy Clay, who was in turn followed by a bemused Burton, who was in turn followed by his porter, the young sailor Bobby Shine.

Oh my. At some point in the future it seems there must have been a reckoning of the races in this land of avarice. These men both harbor deep passions concerning misdeeds among the lower orders. I wonder if Englishmen of my class in this future time I am headed to would truly care if an Irish brute in uniform were to pilfer the beggings of a freed slave taught to read by some litigious Negro schoolmaster?

Apparently Dick, it shall be your fate to discover the truth behind such dubious questions.

As Randy ceased his cackling and they crossed the cobblestones of the street on the paving stones of the crosswalk behind the righteously marching figure of Mister Stevenson shadowing the small shaken form of Timothy Clay, he could not resist a quip for the benefit of the man who he was beginning to equate with his own dark half. “Mister Bracken, if an Englishman taxes the Turk, who beat the Egyptian, who extorted the Jew, who cheated the Bedawi, who thieved a horse from the Arab, who robbed the Abyssinian, who enslaved the Somali, who murdered the Englishman, who dispossessed the Hindoo, who persecuted the Sikh…who is then to blame?”

Answer that my sinister friend, if you can.

“That’s easy Rick, it’s either the Irishman or the Negro. So you kill them both and let their long-haired bleeding-heart God decide who gets the blame when they try to get into his cloudbank country club.”

He did not laugh or smile.

Yes, that is frightening. Now I know how poor Blunt felt.

Save face. It won’t due to appear weak.

“But of course Mister Bracken, right you are again.”