Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea by Kage Baker, Kathleen Bartholomew Page A

assailed by the fear that the otherwise-splendid Mrs. Drumm was either duplicitous or a secret tippler.
    “Now, Mrs. Corvey, here you are.” Mrs. Drumm folded her hands in her lap, and looked at her hopefully soon-to-be employer with an anxious expression she clearly did not think Mrs. Corvey could see. “Though I should tell you, Mr. Pickett’s got no great taste in sherries, and this one I wouldn’t use but in a trifle filling, if you see what I mean. So if you wouldn’t take it amiss, ma’am, I’d be pleased to offer you something else. Something of my own, you see.”
    Mrs. Corvey felt a sudden rise of hope and curiosity. “I should be delighted. And what might that be, Mrs. Drumm?”
    “ Rum ,” said Mrs. Drumm forthrightly, and uncapped the case bottle. A rich heady smell rose up, somehow tropical and marine at the same time. “Good Jamaica rum, ma’am. Not that I indulge often—” and here she looked (though she did not know her auditor could see it to judge) severely at the bottle “—but this comes to me from the Indies from an old…friend, see, what runs his own eating establishment out that way.”
    “Why, I should be very pleased indeed,” said Mrs. Corvey, who found this unexpected revelation rather charming. “I am not really all that fond of sherry myself, to tell the truth. You are a woman of broad and discerning tastes, Mrs. Drumm.”
    “Well, ma’am, I’ve seen a bit,” allowed Mrs. Drumm. She poured out two generous tots and put one in Mrs. Corvey’s hand. “And there’s not much as startles me, at my age.”
    “Oh, good,” said Mrs. Corvey, and took a happy sip of her rum.
     

     
    In any proper penny-dreadful, Herbertina thought in irritation, there would be convenient cover right next to an open window. In dreary reality, there was nothing but knee-high gorse closer than 200 feet to the cottages; which was where she currently lurked in the dubious shelter of two wind-bent hawthorn trees.
    Rather than perch there like a phantom horseman on her peculiar steed, she elected to reconnoiter awhile. She laid down the dandy horse and sat comfortably cross-legged beneath a low branch, there to consume sandwiches and lemonade and take measure of the situation.
    Certainly, there was presently no chance of approaching more closely unseen. Such was the frenetic pace displayed that men were hastening in, out and around every side of the cottages. While the lamplight did not extend very far into the surrounding meadows, the very moon whose illumination Herbertina sought to use for her own purposes would show her up immediately were she to venture out of the hawthorn’s comforting shadow. But she had come prepared.
    She drew her spyglass—a very good spyglass; its lenses had been ground by Mr. Felmouth himself—from her pocket and sought to ascertain precisely what was going on.
    There were a great many bundles, barrels and bags stacked by the well, and they were being hustled down the well-shaft as fast as possible. The increase in the well-house’s height was now easily seen as a portable crane, from which depended a rope ladder and with the aid of which larger bundles were lowered down the shaft.
    Deduction therefore indicated that the well was the entrance to the local caves. Herbertina wondered how they bypassed the water she herself had indisputably drawn up? Watching a bag of what appeared to be black powder sent down with no apparent concern for water-proofing, she guessed that the well shaft held a removable tank, to maintain its verisimilitude for the occasional holiday-maker wandering the cliffs on a warm day. Using the pendent rope ladder, men were clambering up and down and in and out with the ease of ants on a pantry shelf.
    It was impossible to identify much of the cargo being hurried down the well, at this distance and in the flickering light. Some things, however, could not be disguised. The coarse nets of coal were obvious—so, she decided, there was something down