The South-Eastern Railway Company’s London Bridge Terminus was a vast drafty hall of iron and soot-blown glass. Quakers moved among the avenues of benches, offering pamphlets to the seated travelers. Red-coated Irish soldiers, red-eyed from the night’s gin, glowered at the close-shaven missionaries as they passed. The French passengers all seemed to be returning home with pineapples, sweet exotic bounty from the docks of London. Even the plump little actress who sat opposite Sybil had her pineapple, its green spikes protruding from a covered basket at her feet.
The train flew through Bermondsey and out into little streets of new brick, red tile. Dust-heaps, market-gardens, waste-ground. A tunnel. The darkness about her stank of burnt gunpowder. Sybil closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw crows flapping above a barren down, and the wires of the electric telegraph all alive, blurring, moving up and down in the intervals between poles, dancing in the wind of her passage toward France.
This image, surreptitiously daguerreotyped by a member of the Public Morals Section of the Surete Generale, January 30, 1855, presents a young woman seated at a table on the terrace of the Cafe Madeleine, No. 4 Boulevard Malesherbes. The woman, seated alone, has a china teapot and cup before her. Justification of the image reveals certain details of costume: ribbons, frills, her cashmere shawl, her gloves, her earrings, her elaborate bonnet. The woman’s clothing is of French origin, and new, and of high quality. Her face, slightly blurred by long camera exposure, seems pensive, lost in thought. Justification of background detail reveals No. 3 Boulevard Malesherbes, the offices of the Compagnie Sud Atlantique Transport Maritimes. The office window contains a large model steamboat with three funnels, a French-designed craft for the trans-Atlantic colonial trade. A faceless elderly man, evidently an accidental subject, seems lost in contemplation of the ship; his lone figure emerges therefore from the swiftly moving blurs of the Parisian street-crowd. His head is bare, his shoulders slump, and he leans heavily on a cane, apparently of cheap rattan. He is as unaware of the young woman’s proximity as she is of his. She is Sybil Gerard. He is Samuel Houston. Their paths diverge forever.
SECOND ITERATION Derby Day
He is frozen in mid-stride as he edges diagonally into the depths of the holiday crowd. The angle of aperture has captured a fraction of his face: high cheekbone, thick dark beard trimmed close, right ear, stray lock of hair visible between corduroy coat-collar and striped cap. The cuffs of his dark trousers, buttoned tight in leather spats above hobnailed walking-boots, are speckled to the shins with the chalky mud of Surrey. The left epaulet of his worn, waterproof coat buttons sturdily over the strap of a military-issue binocular case; the lapels flap open in the heat, showing stout gleaming toggles of brass. His hands are jammed deep in the long coat’s pockets. His name is Edward Mallory. He tramped through a lacquered gleam of carriages, blindered horses cropping noisily at the turf, amid childhood smells of harness, sweat, and grassy dung. His hands inventoried the contents of his various pockets. Keys, cigar-case, billfold, card-case. The thick staghorn handle of his multi-bladed Sheffield knife. Field notebook — most precious item of all. A handkerchief, a pencil-stub, a few loose shillings. A practical man. Dr. Mallory knew that every sporting-crowd has its thieves, none of them dressed to match their station. Anyone here might be a thief. It is a fact; it is a risk. A woman blundered into Mallory’s path, and his hobnails tore the flounce of her skirt. Turning, wincing, she tugged herself loose with a squeak of crinoline as Mallory touched his cap, and marched quickly on. Some farmer’s wife, a clumsy, great red-cheeked creature, civilized and English as a dairy-cow. Mallory’s eye was still accustomed to a wilder breed, the small brown wolf-women of the Cheyenne, with their greased black braids and beaded leather leggings. The hoop-skirts in the crowd around him seemed some aberrant stunt of evolution; the daughters of Albion had got a regular scaffolding under there now, all steel and whalebone. Bison; that was it. American bison, just that very hoopskirt silhouette, when the big rifle took them down; they had a way of falling, in the tall grass, suddenly legless, a furry hillock of meat. The great Wyoming herds would stand quite still for death, merely twitching their ears in puzzlement at the distant report of the rifle. Now Mallory threaded his way among this other herd, astonished that mere fashion could carry its mysterious impetus so far. The men, among their ladies, seemed a different species, nothing so extreme — save, perhaps, their shiny toppers, though his inner eye refused to find any hat exotic. He knew too much about hats, knew too many of the utterly mundane secrets of their manufacture. He could see at a glance that most of the hats around him were dead cheap, Engine-made, pre-cut in a factory, though looking very nearly as fine as a craftsman-hatter’s work, and at half the price or less. He had helped his father in the little haberdashery in Lewes: punching, stitching, blocking, sewing. His father, dipping felt in the mercury bath, had seemed not to mind the stench . . . Mallory was not sentimental about the eventual death of his father’s trade. He put it from his mind, seeing that drink was being sold from a striped canvas tent, men crowding the counter, wiping foam from their mouths. A thirst struck him at the sight of it. Veering around a trio of sporting-gents, crops under their arms, who argued the day’s odds, he reached the counter and tapped it with a shilling. “Pleasure, sar?” asked the barman. “A huckle-buff.” “Sussex man, sar?” “I am. Why?” “Can’t make you a proper huckle-buff, sar, as I haven’t barley-water,” the fellow explained, looking briskly sad. “Not much call for it outside Sussex.” “Very nearly two years since I’ve tasted huckle-buff,” Mallory said. “Mix you a lovely bumbo, sar. Much like a huckle-buff. No? A good cigar, then. Only tuppence! Fine Virginia weed.” The barman presented a crooked cheroot from a wooden box. Mallory shook his head. “When I’ve the taste for something, I’m a stubborn man. A huckle-buff or nothing.” The barman smiled. “Won’t be drove? A Sussex man, sure! I’m a county-man meself. Take this fine cigar gratis, sir, with my complimums.” “Very decent of you,” Mallory said, surprised. He strolled off, shaking a lucifer from his cigar-case. Firing the match on his boot, he puffed the cheroot into life and tucked his thumbs jauntily in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. The cigar tasted like damp gunpowder. He yanked it from his mouth. A cheap paper band girdled the foul, greenish-black leaf, a little foreign flag with stars and bars and the motto VICTORY BRAND. Yankee war-rubbish; he flung it away, so that it bounced sparking from the side of a gypsy-wagon, where a dark-headed child in rags snatched it quickly up. To Mallory’s left, a spanking new steam-gurney chugged into the crowd, the driver erect at his station. As the man drew his brake-lever, a bronze bell clanged in the gurney’s maroon prow, people scattering sulkily before the vehicle’s advance. Above them, passengers lounged in velvet coach-seats, the folding spark-shield accordioned back to admit the sun. A grinning old swell in kid gloves sipped champagne with a pair of young misses, either daughters or mistresses. The gurney’s door gleamed with a coat-of-arms, cog-wheel azure and crossed hammers argent. Some Rad’s emblem unknown to Mallory, who knew the arms of every savant Lord — though he was weak on the capitalists. The machine was headed east, toward the Derby garages; he fell in behind it, letting it clear his path, easily keeping pace and smiling as draymen struggled with frightened horses. Pulling his notebook from his Docket, stumbling a little in the gouged turf-tracks of the brougham’s thick wheels, he thumbed through the colorful pages of his spotter’s guide. It was last year’s edition; he could not find the coat-of-arms. Pity, but it meant little, when new Lords were ennobled weekly. As a class, the Lordships dearly loved their steam-chariots. The machine set its course for the gouts of greyish vapor rising behind the pillared grandstands of Epsom. It humped slowly up the curb of a paved access-road. Mallory could see the garages now, a long rambling structure in the modern style, girdered in skeletal iron and roofed with bolted sheets of tin-plate, its hard lines broken here and there by bright pennants and tin-capped ventilators. He followed the huffing land-craft until it eased into a stall. The driver popped valves with a steaming gush. Stable-monkeys set to work with greasing-gear as the passengers decamped down a folding gangway, the Lord and his two women passing Mallory on their way toward the grandstand. Britain’s self-made elite, they trusted he was watching and ignored him serenely. The driver lugged a massive hamper in their wake. Mallory touched his own striped cap, identical with the driver’s, and winked, but the man made no response. Strolling the length of the garages, spotting steamers from his guidebook. Mallory marked each new sighting with his pencil-stub and a small thrill of satisfaction. Here was Faraday, great savant-physicist of the Royal Society, there Colgate the soap magnate, and here a catch indeed, the visionary builder Brunei. A very few machines bore old family arms; landowners, whose fathers had been dukes and earls, when such titles had existed. Some of the fallen old nobility could afford steam; some had more initiative than others, and did what they could to keep up. Arriving at the southern wing. Mallory found it surrounded by a barricade of clean new saw-horses, smelling of pitch. This section, reserved for the racing-steamers, was patrolled by a squad of uniformed foot-police. One of them carried a spring-wind Cutts-Maudslay of a model familiar to Mallory, the Wyoming expedition having been provided with six of them. Though the Cheyenne had regarded the stubby Birmingham-made machine-carbine with a useful awe. Mallory knew that it was temperamental to the point of unreliability. Inaccurate to the point of uselessness as well, unless one were popping off the entire thirty rounds into a pack of pursuers — something Mallory himself had once done from the aft firing-position of the expedition’s steam-fortress. Mallory doubted that the fresh-faced young copper had any notion what a Cutts-Maudslay might do if fired into an English crowd. He shook off the dark thought with an effort. Beyond the barricade, each separate stall was carefully shielded from spies and odds-makers by tall baffles of tarpaulin, tautly braced by criss-crossed cables threaded through flagpoles. Mallory worked his way through an eager crowd of gawkers and steam-hobbyists. Two coppers stopped him brusquely at the gate. He displayed his citizen’s number-card and his engraved invitation from the Brotherhood of Vapor Mechanics. Making careful note of his number, the policemen checked it against a thick notebook crammed with fan-fold. At length they pointed out the location of his hosts, cautioning him not to wander. As a further precaution, the Brotherhood had appointed their own look-out. The man squatted on a folding-stool outside the tarpaulin, squinting villainously and clutching a long iron spanner. Mallory proffered his invitation. The guard stuck his head past a narrow flap in the tarpaulin, shouted, “Your brother’s here, Tom,” and ushered Mallory through. Daylight vanished in the stink of grease, metal-shavings, and coal-dust. Four Vapor Mechanics, in striped hats and leather aprons, were checking a blueprint by the harsh glare of a carbide lamp; beyond them, a queer shape threw off highlights from curves of enameled tin. He took the thing for a boat, in the first instant of his surprise, its scarlet hull absurdly suspended between a pair of great wheels. Driving-wheels, he saw, stepping closer; the burnished piston-brasses vanished into smoothly flared openings in the insubstantial-looking shell or hull. Not a boat: it resembled a teardrop, rather, or a great tadpole. A third wheel, quite small and vaguely comical, was swivel-mounted at end of the long tapered tail. He made out the name painted in black and gilt across the bulbous prow, beneath a curved expanse of delicately leaded glass: Zephyr. “Come, Ned, join us!” his brother sang out, beckoning. “Don’t be shy!” The others chuckled at Tom’s sauciness as Mallory strode forward, his hobnails scraping the floor. His little brother Tom, nineteen years old, had grown his first mustache; it looked as though a cat could lick it off. Mallory offered his hand to his friend, Tom’s master. “Mr. Michael Godwin, sir!” he said. “Dr. Mallory, sir!” said Godwin, a fair-haired engineer of forty years, with mutton-chop whiskers over cheeks pitted by smallpox. Small and stout, with shrewd, hooded eyes, Godwin began a bow, thought better of it, clapped Mallory gently across the back, and introduced his fellows. They were Elijah Douglas, a journeyman, and Henry Chesterton, a master of the second degree. “A privilege, sirs,” Mallory declared. “I expected fine things from you, but this is a revelation.” “What do you think of her. Dr. Mallory?” “A far cry from our steam-fortress, I should say!” “She was never made for your Wyoming,” Godwin said, “and that accounts for a certain lack of guns and armor. Form emerges from function, as you so often told us.” “Small for a racing-gurney, isn’t she?” Mallory ventured, somewhat at a loss. “Peculiarly shaped.” “Built upon principles, sir, newly discovered principles indeed. And a fine tale behind her invention, having to do with a colleague of yours. You recall the late Professor Rudwick. I’m sure.” “Ah, yes, Rudwick,” Mallory muttered, then hesitated. “Hardly your new-principle man, Rudwick . . .” Douglas and Chesterton were watching him with open curiosity. “We were both paleontologists,” Mallory said, suddenly uncomfortable, “but the fellow fancied himself gentry of a sort. Put on fine airs and entertained outmoded theories. Rather muddy in his thinking, in my opinion.” The two mechanics looked doubtful. “I’m not one to speak ill of the dead,” Mallory assured them. “Rudwick had his friends, I’ve mine, and there’s an end to it.” “You do remember,” Godwin persisted, “Professor Rudwick’s great flying reptile?” “Quetzalcoatlus,” Mallory said. “Indeed, that was a coup; one can’t deny it.” “They’ve studied its remains in Cambridge,” Godwin said, “at the Institute of Engine Analytics.” “I plan to do a bit of work there myself, on the Brontosaurus,” Mallory said, unhappy with the direction the conversation seemed to be taking. “You see,” Godwin continued, “the cleverest mathematicians in Britain were snug there, spinning their great brass, while you and I froze in the mud of Wyoming. Pecking holes in their cards to puzzle out how a creature of such a size could fly.” “I know about the project,” Mallory said. “Rudwick published on the topic. But ‘pneumo-dynamics’ isn’t my field. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s much to it, scientifically. It seems a bit . . . well . . . airy, if you follow me.” He smiled. “Great practical applications, possibly,” Godwin said. “Lord Babbage himself took a hand in the analysis.” Mallory thought about it. “I’ll concede there’s likely something to pneumatics, then, if it’s caught the eye of the great Babbage! To improve the art of ballooning, perhaps? Balloon-flight, that’s a military field. There’s always ample funding for the sciences of war.” “No, sir; I mean in the practical design of machinery.” “A flying machine, you mean?” Mallory paused. “You’re not trying to tell me this vehicle of yours can fly, are you?” The mechanics laughed politely. “No,” Godwin said, “and I can’t say that all that airy Engine-spinning has come to much, directly. But we now understand certain matters having to do with the behavior of air in motion, the principles of atmospheric resistance. New principles, little-known as yet.” “But we mechanics,” said Mr. Chesterton proudly, ” ‘ave put ’em to practical use, sir, in the shaping of our Zephyr.” ” ‘Line-streaming,’ we call it,” Tom said. “So you’ve ‘line-streamed’ this gurney of yours, eh? That’s why it looks so much like, er . . .” “Like a fish,” Tom said. “Exactly,” said Godwin. “A fish! It’s all to do with the action of fluids, you see. Water. Air. Chaos and turbulence! It’s all in the calculations.” “Remarkable,” Mallory said. “So I take it that these principles of turbulence –” A sudden blistering racket erupted from a neighboring stall. The walls shook and a fine sifting of soot fell from the ceiling. “That’ll be the Italians,” Godwin shouted. “They’ve brought in a monster this year!” “Makes a mortal hogo of a stink!” Tom complained. Godwin cocked his head. “Hear them try-rods clacking on the down-stroke? Bad tolerances. Slovenly foreign work!” He doffed his cap and dusted soot against his knee. Mallory’s head was ringing. “Let me buy you a drink!” he shouted. Godwin cupped his ear blankly. “What?” Mallory pantomimed; lifted a fist to his mouth, with his thumb cocked. Godwin grinned. He had a quick, bellowed word with Chesterton, over the blueprints. Then Godwin and Mallory ducked out into the sunshine. “Bad try-rods,” the guard outside said smugly. Godwin nodded, and handed the man his leather apron. He took a plain black coat, instead, and traded his engineer’s cap for a straw wide-awake. They left the racing-enclosure. “I can only spare a few minutes,” Godwin apologized. ” ‘The Master’s eye melts the metal,’ as they say.” He hooked a pair of smoked spectacles over his ears. “Some of these hobbyists know me, and might try to follow us . . . But never mind that. It’s good to see you again, Ned. Welcome back to England.” “I won’t keep you long,” Mallory said. “I wanted a private word or two. About the boy, and such.” “Oh, Tom’s a fine lad,” said Godwin. “He’s learning. He means well.” “I hope he’ll prosper.” “We do our best,” Godwin said. “I was sorry to hear from Tom about your father. Him taking so ill, and all.” ” ‘Ould Mallory, he won’t a-go till he’s guv away his last bride,’ ” Mallory quoted, in his broadest Sussex drawl. “That’s what Father always tells us. He wants to see all his girls married. He’s a game sort, my poor old dad.” “He must take great comfort in a son like yourself,” Godwin said. “So, how does London suit you? Did you take the holiday train?” “I’ve not been in London. I’ve been in Lewes, with the family. Rode the morning train from there to Leatherhead; then I tramped it.” “You walked to the Derby from Leatherhead? That’s ten miles or more!” Mallory smiled. “You’ve seen me tramp twenty, cross-country in the badlands of Wyoming, hunting fossils. I’d a taste to see good English countryside again. I’m only just back from Toronto, with all our crates of plastered bones, while you’ve been here for months, getting your fill of this.” He waved his arm. Godwin nodded. “What do you make of the place, then — now you’re home again?” “London Basin anticline,” Mallory said. “Tertiary and Eocene chalk-beds, bit of modern flinty clay.” Godwin laughed. “We’re all of us modern flinty clay . . . Here we go, then; these lads sell a decent brew.” They walked down a gentle slope to a crowded dray laden with ale-kegs. The proprietors had no huckle-buff. Mallory bought a pair of pints. “It was good of you to accept our invitation,” Godwin said. “I know that you’re a busy man, sir, what with your famous geologic controversies and such.” “No busier than yourself,” Mallory said. “Solid engineering work. Directly practical and useful. I envy that, truly.” “No, no,” said Godwin. “That brother of yours, he thinks the world of you. So do we all! You’re the coming man, Ned. Your star is rising.” “We had excellent luck in Wyoming, certainly,” Mallory said. “We made a great discovery. But without you and your steam-fortress, those red-skins would have made short work of us.” “They weren’t so bad, once they cozied up and had a taste of whiskey.” “Your savage respects British steel,” Mallory said. “Theories of old bones don’t much impress him.” “Well,” Godwin said, “I’m a good Party man, and I’m with Lord Babbage. ‘Theory and practice must be as bone and sinew.’ ” “That worthy sentiment calls for another pint,” said Mallory. Godwin wanted to pay. “Pray allow me,” Mallory said. “I’m still spending my bonus, from the expedition.” Godwin, pint in hand, led Mallory out of ear-shot of the other drinkers. He gazed about carefully, then doffed his specs and looked Mallory in the eye. “Do you trust in your good fortune, Ned?” Mallory stroked his beard. “Say on.” “The touts are quoting odds of ten-to-one against our Zephyr. ” Mallory chuckled. “I’m no gambler, Mr. Godwin! Give me solid facts and evidence, and there I’ll take my stand. But I’m no flash fool, to hope for unearned riches.” “You took the risk of Wyoming. You risked your very life.” “But that depended on my own abilities, and those of my colleagues.” “Exactly!” Godwin said. “That’s my own position, to the very letter! Listen a moment. Let me tell you about our Brotherhood of Vapor Mechanics.” Godwin lowered his voice. “The head of our trades-union, Lord Scowcroft . . . He was simple Jim Scowcroft in the bad old days, one of your popular agitators, but he made his peace with the Rads. Now he’s rich, and been to Parliament and such; a very clever man. When I went to Lord Scowcroft with my plans for the Zephyr, he spoke to me just as you did now: facts and evidence. ‘Master first-degree Godwin,’ he says, ‘I can’t fund you with the hard-earned dues of our Brothers unless you can show me, in black and white, how it shall profit us.’ “So I told him: ‘Your Lordship, the construction of steam-gurneys is one of the nicest luxury trades in the country. When we go to Epsom Downs, and this machine of ours leaves the competitors eating her dust, the gentry will stand in queues for the famous work of the Vapor Mechanics.’ And that’s how it will be, Ned.” “If you win the race,” Mallory said. Godwin nodded somberly. “I make no cast-iron promises. I’m an engineer; I know full well how iron can bend, and break, and rust, and burst. You surely know it too, Ned, for you saw me work repair on that blasted steam-fortress till I thought I should go mad . . . But I know my facts and figures. I know pressure differentials, and engine duty, and crank-shaft torque, and wheel diameters. With disaster barred, our little Zephyr will breeze past her rivals as if they were stock-still.” “It sounds splendid. I’m glad for you.” Mallory sipped his ale. “Now tell me what should happen if disaster strikes?” Godwin smiled. “Then I lose, and am left penniless. Lord Scowcroft was liberal, by his own lights, but there are always extra costs in such a project. I’ve put everything in my machine: my expedition bonus from the Royal Society, even a small bequest I had of a maiden aunt, God rest her.” Mallory was shocked. “Everything?” Godwin chuckled dryly. “Well, they can’t take what I know, can they? I shall still have my skills; mayhap I’d undertake another Royal Society expedition. They pay well enough. But I’m risking all I have in England. It’s fame or famine, Ned, and naught between.” Mallory stroked his beard. “You startle me, Mr. Godwin. You always seemed such a practical man.” “Dr. Mallory, my audience today is the very cream of Britain. The Prime Minister is here today. The Prince Consort is in attendance. Lady Ada Byron is here, and betting lavishly, if rumor’s true. When will I have another such chance?” “I do follow your logic,” Mallory said, “though I can’t say I approve. But then, your station in life allows such a risk. You’re not a married man, are you?” Godwin sipped his ale. “Neither are you, Ned.” “No, but I have eight younger brothers and sisters, my old dad mortal ill, my mother eaten-up with the rheumatics. I can’t gamble my family’s livelihood.” “The odds are ten-to-one, Ned. Fool’s odds! They should be five-to-three in Zephyr’s favor.” Mallory said nothing. Godwin sighed. “It’s a pity. I dearly wanted to see some good friend win that bet. A big win, a flash win! And I myself can’t do it, you see? I wanted to, but I’ve spent my last pound on Zephyr. ” “Perhaps a modest wager,” Mallory ventured. “For friendship’s sake.” “Bet ten pounds for me,” Godwin said suddenly. “Ten pounds, as a loan. If you lose, I’ll pay you back somehow, in days to come. If you win, we’ll split a hundred pounds tonight, half-and-half. What do you say? Will you do that for me?” “Ten pounds! A heavy sum . . .” “I’m good for it.” “I trust that you are . . . ” Mallory now saw no easy way to refuse. The man had given Tom a place in life, and Mallory felt the debt. “Very well, Mr. Godwin. To please you.” “You shan’t regret it,” Godwin said. He brushed ruefully at the frayed sleeves of his frock-coat. “Fifty pounds. I can use it. A triumphant inventor, on the rise in life and such, shouldn’t have to dress like a parson.” “I shouldn’t think you’d waste good money on vanities.” “It’s not vanity to dress as befits one’s station.” Godwin looked him over, sharp-eyed. “That’s your old Wyoming tramping-coat, isn’t it?” “A practical garment,” Mallory said. “Not for London. Not for giving fancy lectures to fine London ladies with a modish taste in natural-history.” “I’m not ashamed of what I am,” Mallory said stoutly. “Simple Ned Mallory,” Godwin nodded, “come to Epsom in an engineer’s cap, so the lads won’t feel anxious at meeting a famous savant. I know why you did that, Ned, and I admire it. But mark my word, you’ll be Lord Mallory some day, as surely as we stand here drinking. You’ll have a fine silk coat, and a ribbon on your pocket, and stars and medals from all the learned schools. For you’re the man dug up the great Land Leviathan, and made wondrous sense from a tangle of rocky bones. That’s what you are now, Ned, and you might as well face up to it.” “It’s not so simple as you think,” Mallory protested. “You don’t know the politics of the Royal Society. I’m a Catastrophist. The Uniformitarians hold sway, when it comes to the granting of tenures and honors. Men like Lyell, and that damned fool Rudwick.” “Charles Darwin’s a Lordship. Gideon Mantell’s a Lordship, and his Iguanodon’s a shrimp, ranked next to your Brontosaur.” “Don’t you speak ill of Gideon Mantell! He’s the finest man of science Sussex ever had, and he was very kind to me.” Godwin looked down into his empty mug. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I spoke a bit too frankly, I can see that. We’re far from wild Wyoming, where we sat about a campfire as simple brother Englishmen, scratching wherever it itched.” He put his smoked spectacles on. “But I remember those theory-talks you’d give us, explaining what those bones were all about. ‘Form follows function.’ ‘The fittest survive.’ New forms lead the way. They may look queer at first, but Nature tests them fair and square against the old, and if they’re sound in principle, then the world is theirs.” Godwin looked up. “If you can’t see that your theory is bone to my sinew, then you’re not the man I take you for.” Mallory removed his cap. “It’s I who should beg your pardon, sir. Forgive my foolish temper. I hope you’ll always speak to me frankly, Mr. Godwin, ribbons on my chest or no. May I never be so unscientific as to close my eyes to honest truth.” He offered his hand. Godwin shook it. A fanfare rang from across the course, the crowd responding with a rustle and a roar. All around them, people began to move, migrating toward the stands like a vast herd of ruminants. “I’m off to make that wager we discussed,” Mallory said. “I must get back to my lads. Join us after the run? To split the winnings?” “Certainly,” Mallory said. “Let me take that empty pint,” Godwin offered. Mallory gave it to him, and walked away.