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whole Australia business can get under way.”
     
     
        “Another month-“
     
     
        “One week. That’s her final word. If I were you, I’d get it done and dusted before the Masque this Saturday. And please understand she’s being generous. You’ve had a year already. God knows, if you hadn’t once been her favourite, she’d have carted you off to the Tower months ago, and gone ahead regardless.”
     
     
        Triumff’s shoulders sagged, and he looked at the floorboards, a dismal expression on his face.
     
     
        “I’ll see you at Court then,” said Clarence, heading for the door. “Don’t disappoint her. It’s your head. And remember, this was a friendly warning. She could have sent a detachment of huscarls.”
     
     
        Clarence paused in the doorway. He took a small fold of paper out of his tunic pocket. It was sealed with a ribbon. He tossed it to Triumff.
     
     
        “By the way,” he said, “that was on your doorstep.”
     
     
        Triumff caught the slip neatly.
     
     
    “What is it?” he asked.
     
        “Far be it from me to read another man’s personal correspondence,” smiled Clarence, “but it appears to be an invitation from a man asking you to meet him at the Dolphin Baths at four-thirty. There’s a whole side to you I don’t know about, isn’t there? Vivat Regina!”
     
     
        Triumff leapt to his feet, but Clarence had gone, taking his pike-men with him, and leaving nothing but a stench of cologne and a ragged hole in the plaster of the staircase ceiling.
     
     
        “Clarence! What man? What man? Come back here!”
     
     
        Triumff looked back from the stairhead. Agnew and Uptil were staring at him.
     
     
        “Things,” Triumff said to them dolefully, “are turning so pear-shaped, they wouldn’t look out of place up a tree with a partridge.”
     
     
    1 With a rag-tag, badly victualled squadron (seven pinnace, three sprightly Hawkins, two luggers, half-a-dozen ketch and a galleasse) led by his own flagship, a hundred-gun galleon called the Blameless, Triumff had engaged and annihilated a flota of Portuguese Privateers off Finisterre in the summer of 2002. The pirate fleet, forty-strong, had been harrying Spanish treasure ships from the New World. The Admiralty later referred to Triumff’s tactics as “The instinctive genius of a man in whose veins runs salt-water, not blood.” The Times described it as “Typical and extremely jammy.” Triumff’s famous line at the hour of victory (“Oh, Spain! Sleep easy in thy bed, for England hath set thy foe to flight!”) is now reckoned to be a product of dramatic licence on the part of the battle correspondent. It is likely that what Triumff really said was “Suck on it, you gob-shites!” 2 “Australia”, the terra incognito, is only the working name the Unity has given to the vast southern continent Rupert discovered. Many other names vie for popularity: “Lucach”, “Maletur”, “New Virginia” and “The Vast Southern Continent” are all contenders. “Beach” is a literal translation of the name Uptil’s people have for their land and, as such, is the best choice. As with all these things however, it doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of being accepted formally .
     
     
     

 
     

     
     
THE THIRD CHAPTER.
     
     
    Which doth contain a Mo st Engaging
     
     
    discourse upon modern issues of Discovery,
     
    & also a visit to the bath-house.
     
     
    Almost every day, a ship of the Royal Unified Navy leaves one of Britain’s harbours bearing Letters of Passage that grant it the majestic right to discover, explore and, frankly, pillage less fortunate or well-known parts of the globe. On that St Dunstan’s Day alone, Sir Walter de File sailed out of Portsmouth on the Peacespite to see if there was anything of merit between Florida and Argentina, Lord Archimboldo cast off from Southampton aboard the Golden Shot in search of