Finding Philomena

Schöneluft Log, 1900.07.05 (continued)
Ulrik Manfred Adler, acting Captain

I ran to the nearest speaking tube. “Up!” I roared in English. “Lift! Ascend! Ascend! Ascend!” I don’t know if Chef responded or the boiler crew, but up we rose. From the still-open hatch I heard cheering, and hoped it was from the Legation.

The broken buildings disappeared in a chilling grey mist as the ship ascended quickly through the storm clouds. A brilliant shaft of light burst through the open hatch, blinding me. Dawn, then. I’d been too busy to notice.

“Steady on!” I shouted, then scrambled back to the Great Room. Chef was at the helm, staring down at the clouds and pulling on his mustache. I glared at him. He is always doing that, reminding me how young I am, a mere beardless youth.

“I didn’t tell you to flee!”

He glared back. “You say up, up I go.”

“We’re going back down.”

He stepped aside and gestured an extravagant invitation to the wheel. First I opened the tall, thin side windows on either side of the bay of windows, so I could hear the fight below. I heard a desultory popping, but nothing of the great guns. I eased her down below the clouds, back into the storm. Rain splashed onto the wooden deck, and Chef muttered his disapproval. Since he did so in his own language, I could ignore him.

We hovered just below the cloud cover, out of range of the guns, I hoped, and maneuvered for a better view. With the rain blew in the smell of soot and gunpowder. The fight seemed to be over for now. Dawn had reached the ground at last, and in the pale light I saw a new flag dripping from the contested bastion, red and white. Ours? The French? The wind picked up, lashing rain into the great room where it rolled and puddled around out feet. The flag flapped out showing many stripes. American, then.

I searched the ground and found the sentries outside the German Legation building. I lit a signal lantern and flashed the identity of the Schöneluft, offering to render further assistance. I took up my spyglass and watched men run out of the building and over to the barricade. Some moments later a signaler came out. At last he was jointed by a man I recognized from our visit last year, Captain von Strauss.

We exchanged greetings, and he thanked Herr von Hedwig for his help in taking the Chinese bastion. I explained that it was I, and that Mein Herr was elsewhere. I asked for Miss Philomena. I expected that to cause more scurrying on the ground, but there was nothing. The signaler responded. Fraulein von Hedwig was not there.

Panic tore at my gut, like a trapped beast fighting to get out. I signaled back.

“She was to take the Trans-Manchurian railway, arriving 2nd July.”

“She could not have made it,” came the reply. “The Boxers tore up the tracks between here and Tianjin.”

“Boxers?”

“The rebels, man, where have you been?” The signaler looked embarrassed.

“Nepal,” I answered.

I would have gone then, to trace the broken rail to Tianjin and beyond, wherever I had to go to find her. To the end of the earth. But von Strauss signaled again.

to be continued!

Painting of seige of Beijing Castle by Torajirō Kasai (Library of Congress[1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons