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July 29, 1934:  Our Heroes turn back ...

August 1, 1934: Pan American conducts its own flight test of the Sikorsky S-42 before accepting the new plane into its fleet. Pan Am chief pilot Edwin Musick, Pan Am technical advisor Charles Lindbergh, and Sikorsky test pilot Boris Sergievsky fly the S-42 on a 1,242 mile course, carrying the equivalent weight of 32 passengers, a crew of five, and 2,000 Ib. of mail and cargo. The plane averages 157.5 MPH during the test and sets eight world records for speed, payload, and altitude.

August 2, 1934: Adolf Hitler becomes Fuehrer of Germany, when President Hindenburg dies at age 87.

August 5, 1934:  Upon our arrival at Hangkow; Delacy receives a telegram, instructing him to report immediately to the British consulate in Shanghai.

August 8, 1934:  The party arrives in Shanghai. We visit the British authorities, and are taken to see a couple of intelligence officers (Lt. Cmdr. Stevens, and Mr. Smythe). They give Delacy and Davis orders to carry two 'tamper-resistant' secure satchels to London, departing the next day! No information about the contents is made available; Delacy and Davis are not given keys to detach the manacled cases. A couple of tailors/valets are hired, to deal with the difficulty of having to re-sew Davis' and Delacy's shirts twice a day for a month!

edit:  Fury buys a ZB.30 machinegun (pretty much the same as a Bren gun) in 7.92mm caliber for Ivanov to carry.

August 9, 1934:  The SS Ranchi departs from Shanghai, bound for London via Suez. Of course, Delacy, Davis and Fury immediately begin investigating the satchels.

August 11, 1934: the first federal prisoners arrive at the new Alcatraz penitentiary.

August 16, 1934: the Sikorsky S-42 flight-tested by Pan Am two weeks before is put into service on Pan Am’s Latin American routes out of Miami, and two days later the plane is christened Brazilian Clipper in Rio de Janeiro by the wife of Brazilian president Vargas. The new plane cuts the travel time from Miami to Buenos Aires down to just five days, compared to the eight days required by the S-40. The S-42 is used extensively on Pan American’s Latin American routes and becomes a familiar sight at Miami’s Dinner Key terminal.

August 19, 1934: a referendum in Germany confirms Hitler as Fuehrer, with a 95.7% 'yes' vote.

August 20, 1934: the new loyalty oath for the German military is instituted: "I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the leader of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath."

August 26, 1934:  The Ranchi, while traversing the Red Sea, encounters a Cypriot freighter on fire. She sends over boats to render assistance; the boats return with a handful of severely injured lascars. The Ranchi moves off, and the freighter soon explodes -- pieces of aircraft are seen among the debris, with an odd marking -- perhaps a Maltese cross? The lascars are questioned by Our Heroes, and reveal that the vessel was carrying farm equipment to Japan from Germany.

August 29, 1934:  The Ranchi arrives at Port Said, for a stay of about 24 hours. Fury and Lotta take the trolley to Alexandria, where they discover their ship in sadly ruined condition, and most of their crew dead or deserted. The crew's story:

They had taken the ship (renamed the Mare Ursus) out to commit some piracy, in the Mediterranean and Aegean. One day, late in April, the sky grew strangely dark, and "black men" (perhaps demon-men like the ones we saw in Jabal Hadada) flew down and attacked the ship. They killed many of the crew, and wrecked much of the ship. The remaining crew were barely able to limp back to Alexandria; they have not had the money to pay the drydock and repair bills, and little work has been done on the vessel (mostly just enough to keep it afloat). 

Fury and Lotta realize their vessel cannot be easily repaired without a major drydock refit, and begin making plans to move their equipment off the ship. They also realize that the "black men" may have been after places with strong connections to Fury and Lotta -- so Fury builds a booby-trapped hut in the desert, with some of his blood as bait.

Davis and Delacy visit the British naval base, satchels still locked on their arms. There is some discussion of how Lotta's gang may be of use to the British, now that their ship is damaged; the Navy provides information on three possible replacement vessels (a fishing 'smack'; a 900-ton former "B" class destroyer; or the Calgarian, an old mail steamer of 18,000 tons displacement) they could provide immediately, in return for Lotta's assistance in suppressing piracy in the China Sea. The possibility of obtaining Boulle's latest encryption machinery does not seem to excite the Royal Navy.

Lotta and Fury decide they will stay in Port Said a couple of days, to load their equipment aboard another British-bound mail steamer.

September 4 - 10, 1934:  the Annual Nazi Party Congress ( Parteitag ) is held in Nuremberg.

September 6, 1934:  The Ranchi arrives in London (at Tilbury docks, to be specific). Davis and Delacy immediately set off for the Admiralty, and are taken from there to a sub-basement of the Foreign Office, where Delacy's commander and several other men meet them. The satchels are removed from their arms, and carefully opened; they each contain an ancient, wood-bound, book. Both books are filled with animal skin pages covered in Indic script.

The other members of the party are settled in at a very nice, very discreet hotel.

September 8, 1934:  Lotta, Fury and Lotta's remaining gang members arrive in Britain. Lotta has decided to accept the Navy's offer of the liner Calgarian; the Navy provides £1000 for outfitting expenses, and promises to provide armament in Ceylon. Fury and Lotta travel to Dublin to hire more crew.

September 9, 1934:  Lotta and Fury in Dublin, hiring pirates. Davis, Delacy, Nora and Qua Lin begin scouting around Glastonbury with their psychic senses. 

September 13, 1934:  Lotta and Fury, with their enhanced crew, and Ivanov, get to work on the Calgarian. The sheer magnitude of the task becomes apparent.

September 26, 1934: ocean liner Queen Mary launched in Scotland.

September 27, 1934:  The Calgarian departs Plymouth, bound for Suez. All of Our Heroes are aboard. Over the next few days there is some soul-searching by the more sensitive, non-piratical members of the party. "Why are we here, what world is this, who is trying to destroy or alter our history? Why is the Royal Navy outfitting pirates? Is Boulle really all that bad, or different from us?"

October 1, 1934: [historically] Hitler announces expansions of the German military far beyond what's allowed by the Versailles treaties [and of course, even historically, the German military was cheating on the treaties for about a decade already]

October 4, 1934:  While passing along the Portuguese coast, the Calgarian strikes a 'rock'! While the marks on the ship seem odd, fortunately the damage is superficial, but the vessel spends a week in Cadiz making (expensive) repairs (paid for by the British government). Anyone observing the course of the repairs seems long deep scratches in the hull, one 'out of true' propellor shaft, and some sort of dark seaweed-like material wrapped around the propellors. Samples of the material are taken away in a truck bearing a seal and a Latin motto "Quod natura non dat, Salmantica non praestat".

October 16, 1934: the Long March begins in China.

October 18, 1934:  Only a day away from Suez, the Calgarian is attacked by three pirate dhows. Two of the dhows are sunk by Our Heroes, and the last one retreats; but the liner looks even more ratty as a result of the battle damage.

October 19, 1934:  The Calgarian arrives at Suez. Lotta and Fury meet their contact, receive their new decoding machinery, and are directed to proceed to Capetown, and to make their next contact with another of Boulle's agents at the Kalobe Inn. Delacy learns that a Soviet ship (the freighter Djugashvilli) departed from Shanghai on October 5, just after a Soviet agent assassinated Mr. Smythe. Delacy is also instructed to investigate a strange series of attacks by "flying tigers" at Lake Victoria; even some British military units have suffered casualties.

October 20, 1934:  The Calgarian departs from Suez, bound for Mombasa.

October 27, 1934:  The Calgarian arrives in Mombasa, Kenya. The harbor is quite busy:  

• At anchor in the harbors: 

• a British destroyer

• a privately-owned British sailing sloop

• Over 30 cargo vessels, of various sizes, vintages, and nationalities

• the Calgarian (dock fees are expensive); her crew's cover story is that she's being taken to Japan for scrapping (not so unlikely, at that)

• a strange, small ocean-going vessel which seems to be shielding a submerged submarine - possibly Boulle's cargo sub.

• Along the docks:

• the German destroyer Möwe, still in her mottled camoflauge

• the same Boulle-owned freighter Our Heroes had seen before in Tunis (under a new name now)

• the Soviet "merchant" ship Djugashvili - recently reported to have left Shanghai in a hurry.  At 12 knots it takes about 21 days to sail from Shanghai to Mombasa; clearly, the Djugashvili has come straight here.

And, before the day ends, an enormous Soviet amphibious airplane lands in the harbor:  the Kalinan K-7B Nadezhda Krupskaya. The plane taxis over to anchor near the Djugashvili, and begins refuelling. Delacy and Davis report to Navy House and get the latest news:  some sort of auction will be taking place soon, at a resort lodge a few miles inland from Mombasa.

October 28, 1934:  the Italian light cruiser RM Bariolomeo Colleoni, and nine assorted yachts and modern merchant vessels come into port. Five merchant vessels leave the two harbors.

On to the next episode:  A Bid For Power