My Dear Lady Misericordia,

I hope this letter finds you well. I’m sure that it will, since I have had your letter and now know how much fun you and your friend Viscount Fox have had, laughing at my exploits round the tea table. I am so pleased to be so entertaining. I’m sure you deliberately sent the letter under my name to your father’s hotel in the hope of having me discovered in some amusing manner.

Fortunately, since I am acting as a footman, I was able to intercept the letter before anyone else could see it. But I must admit, my Lady, that despite whatever mischief was meant by it and whatever scorn you and your friends pour out on me with your tea, I was grateful to have your letter and, more importantly, to you for having otherwise kept my presence here a secret. 

I will be eternally your servant, my Lady, and I may, perhaps, hope that this indicates the beginning of some affection from you for me.

I, meanwhile, really ought to be very well indeed. I have always understood sea air to be ‘bracing’, whatever that means – it sounds unpleasantly medical to me – and many people, Baronet Oxshott included, have recommended physical work to me as a way of staying healthy.

I, however, am instead sore, sick, wind-chapped, rope burnt and so tired I can barely lift my pen. Is this what being healthy is like? I am glad I have been so unhealthy all my life.

What’s more, from your letter onwards, today has been a constant threat of being unveiled and exploded as an impostor and so having all my plans of adventure snatched from me.

My first fright was meeting the Professor’s new helper. At Ghastington, of course, his daughter is always at hand to help him, but he has refused to bring her along on this expedition given the possible dangers and has instead engaged a young lad called Harry, who has already been about in the port preparing for our party.

The lad seems bright and helpful, but I was immediately struck by the awful feeling that I had met him somewhere before – and that although I could not quite place him, that he knew me immediately. He spent the morning suppressing a smile every time he looked at me, which made me extremely uneasy. He claimed later that he was laughing at my whiskers which at least put my mind at rest, even if it wasn’t entirely flattering.

All this was dismissed from my mind, however, when it came to loading the ship. We were loading not just with the luggage from the coach but also with the mountains of supplies, accoutrements and geegaws that Lord Daunt and Professor Cumulus have been buying up in preparation. Mountains of stuff, and only footmen there to run endlessly back and forth, fetching box and baggage, one after the other, trying to fit them all into the tiny hold.

Oxshott, on the other hand, despite all his claims for hard work being good for you, had spent the morning lounging on the quayside, teaching a seagull he had made friends with to fetch things for him. He learnt quickly, too, swooping down and snatching up whatever Oxshott pointed out to him, much to the delight of the fishermen gathered round.

The Baronet called the seagull Walter, after, I understand, Raleigh, and he certainly had that old seadog’s piratical instincts, although whether the great Elizabethan navigator had a particular mania for stealing people’s hats, I don’t know.

The moment he spotted mine, at least, this Walter the seagull couldn’t resist it. I was just struggling up the gangplank with yet another case of the Professor’s scientific equipment when Walter swooped down on me, seizing hold of my hat in his beak and made off with it.

Which might not have been so bad if, in all the sweat and fuss of loading the ship, my wig and false whiskers hadn’t become more attached to the hat than they were to my face, so that, when Walter took off, so did my beard.

I dropped the case I was carrying with a crash and hopped after him, flailing at him as he struggled to get aloft, the hat and wig thrashing about beneath him like some strange hairy jellyfish. Already the Professor was rushing up at the sound of the crash and Lord Daunt was shouting questions from the bridge of the ship – if either of them saw me without my wig, they’d recognise me for sure! My adventure would be over before it had even begun!

With one last desperate leap I snatched down the hat and seagull all together just as his Lordship and Professor Cumulus arrived on deck to find out what all the fuss was. They stopped and stared at me, my beard askew, my hat streaked with bird droppings and Walter the seagull flapping angrily round my head, still trying to take off.

“You, man,” started Lord Daunt and then stopped, evidently not quite having the words for the occasion, “Stop that and put that down. Up. Wherever it belongs. You, seagull, leave his hat alone. Get on with your work. Both of you. Idiots.” And he turned on his heel and stalked away.

The Professor peered at me, curious and then nodded to himself.

“Herring gull,” he muttered and turned his attention to checking his instruments.

I finally shook Walter free, but I suspect that finding that my beard and hair came with my hat had proved too exciting for him for he never quite gave up, even after I tied everything to my head with a piece of string, much to Oxshott’s amusement.

But the boat is loaded now, my Lady, and Walter has finally left me for the night, as has everyone else. So, as soon as I have finished this letter, I am going to sneak out onto the boat, into a covered lifeboat and there stow away on the great expedition to the North Pole!

Yours

Seagulled but not defeated

Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor