The wizard's revenge 5/11

Jennifer Jane followed her captor onto the deck. Another man in a blue uniform and peaked cap smothered with braid came to meet them.

“This the kid?” he asked.

“Yes this is the one, drop her off in any world you like but he doesn’t want her hurt.”

“Pity,” replied her new captor, “much easier to drop ‘em overboard then they stay lost.”

“Well I wouldn’t if I were you, don’t forget he’s a wizard and could make things very awkward for you if he wanted.”

The schooner captain went ashore and started walking back the way he’d come. The steamer captain shouted his orders and the gangplank was taken in. The boat cast off from the quayside and began to chuff out of the harbour, clouds of oily black smoke pouring out of the funnel. The captain left Jennifer Jane where she was and ran up onto the bridge as the vessel entered a wishing fog. Then as they emerged, he came back to her and untied her hands.

“Don’t reckon you’ll be going any where now,” he grinned, “you can do what you like until we reach port and then just clear off. I’ve never seen you and I don’t want to know where you’ve gone.”

From that moment on the whole crew ignored her. At first she tried to recognise landmarks to see where she could be, then gave up when she realised that from the sea any feature would look the same in any of the parallel worlds. If the wizard was right and not just trying to frighten her, it sounded as though there could be dozens. Then the steamer turned slightly and headed towards a rather smoky looking coastline.

As they got closer, she could see lots of boats of steamers similar to her own, all smoking heavily from their funnels. The steamboats seemed to be running in two lines, one going into a wide estuary just opening up in front of them and another line coming out. Looking to port she suddenly realised where she was. They were passing the museum a Greenwich, her dad had taken her there once on a trip to London. They’d seen the Cutty Sark and the Tower of London as well and had a wonderful day out. Sure enough as they continued up river she began to recognise more and more of the buildings.

They were soon approaching the Tower of London. Then as the steamer approached Tower Bridge, it slowed down, turned to starboard and passed between some lock gates before mooring up in St. Katherine’s dock. Jennifer Jane recognised the Customs building that dad had pointed out to her on her visit, but something was very wrong. The dock wasn’t clean and tidy for visitors to look at, it was filthy dirty with soot and smoke everywhere. Men were running about pushing large heavily laden barrows. There was lots of noise and shouting. She had a funny feeling that she’d gone back in time to the Victorian era when the docks were in every day use.

“Off you go kid,” bellowed the captain as he came towards her waving a rope’s end suggestively.