Bronagh emerged from unconsciousness amidst such deafening cacaphony and blinding daylight that her first thought upon waking was how she had managed to sleep through it at all. Hissing, splashing, chugging all further served to disorientate her and delay the process of recalling how she had come to find herself in her present situation.
She was wearing faded striped pyjamas, too long in the arms and legs, too tight in the hips and most definitely too tight in the chest, where one button particular was fighting a hopeless battle against the outermost expanses of her firm, round melon breasts. How had she ended up wearing a gentleman's pyjamas? And whose...?
'Aha, Miss Kelly. You are awake. Breakfast?'
Tolliver. The chaotic events of the previous night returned to her, not all necessarily in the correct order. The chase, the shots fired at them. The promotional masturbation contest in the deserted old town. Her breasts escaping the green dress and grabbing hold of Tolliver's erection as though charmed with a life of their own. The endless quantities of seed with which that erection had so copiously festooned her huge bare bosom. The headlong crash into the river. The fact that she had given her maiden name of Kelly, and not her married name of O'Shea. Donald, unconscious on the floor of the O'Shea homestead, having walloped his head against the stove. The pewter wedding band, cast aside in the twilit dust of old Cannon Town.
Bronagh swung her pyjama-clad legs from the sofa and stood, then lost her balance and tumbled to one side. At first she thought that it was dizziness borne of fainting, but it soon became clear to her that the entire room was, in fact, moving. 'What's going on, Doctor Tolliver?' she asked. 'Where are we? And why am I wearing your pyjamas?'
Tolliver, standing in the open doorway in rolled shirt sleeves, with the morning sun blazing behind him above the swaying horizon, grinned and extended a hand to help Bronagh steady herself. Bronagh took his hand with reluctant suspicion.
'Come and take a look,' Tolliver said.
Stepping with trepidation borne partly of caution, partly of being unaccustomed to a moving floor, Bronagh followed Doctor Tolliver out of the door and into the harsh daylight.
Although she hadn't moved from the spot, she was now, it seemed, on a boat. The vast river was retreating at a slow but steady pace, rotating paddles to either side sending two noisy trails in their wake. The forested riverbank passed far away to either side. Where once a couple of steps had led up to the rear door of the cabin, there was now a wooden gangway that led left and right and around the deck.
'Something, isn't it, Miss Kelly,' said Doctor Tolliver with pride.
'You loaded the carriage onto a boat?' Bronagh said in hazy confusion.
'In a sense,' Tolliver said, enjoying the enigmatic situation. He led Bronagh, still in partly-oversized-partly-undersized pyjamas, athwartships around the deck, past one of the powerful paddles, towards the stern. 'The carriage and the boat are two halves of the same whole. That jetty you saw through the periscope was the framing mechanism which allows my transport to be amphibious.'
Bronagh stared at him.
'I can travel on both land and sea,' Tolliver explained patiently. 'We did not drive onto the jetty, nor did we collide with it. We merged with it, the wheels folded and stowed safely beneath us, and now we are being propelled along the good river by means of steam power. You are safely aboard my good little tugboat, the Areola.'
'And the horses?' Bronagh asked.
Doctor Tolliver shrugged. 'Never mine to start with, I am sorry to say. I, eh, I borrowed them.'
Bronagh frowned. 'Well, then I hope they found their way back to their owner, who will have missed them, I am sure. They must have been frightened half to death.'
'As were we,' said Tolliver. 'Your fellow townspeople nearly had themselves a lynching party right there. It was a narrow escape.'
Bronagh nodded.
'Now, Miss Kelly. Breakfast?'
A wooden table was set for a simple morning meal, bacon was sizzling atop the stove which, it seemed, was also powering the paddles that drove the Areola forward, and two chairs were waiting.
'Doctor Tolliver,' Bronagh said. 'Where, if you please, are my clothes?'
Tolliver extended a hand past Bronagh's shoulder. 'Behind you, Miss Kelly,' he said.
Bronagh turned. She hadn't noticed until now, but indeed a washing line had been erected on two poles, and her green dress and underclothes were pegged to them. The sight of her frilly bloomers billowing in the wind sent the colour back into Bronagh's cheeks. 'Well, I...!'
'I took the liberty of laundering your clothing, Miss Kelly. I hope you don't mind.'
'You undressed me!' Bronagh turned again to fix Tolliver with a freckled scowl. 'While I lay unconscious in that scientific cabin of yours! You stripped me fully nude, and no doubt had your foul way with me once more! I suppose when I remove your pyjama top from myself I will find my bosom decorated in yet more of your thick seed?'
Tolliver raised his hands in the hope of quelling Bronagh's rapidly escalating ire. 'Yes, Miss Kelly, I did undress you. You had fainted, and it was my duty to loosen any constrictive garments and relieve you of them. Such is the size and firmness of your - very beautiful - bosom, and the generous curvature of your hips and, uh, posterior, that meant undressing you entirely, head to foot. In any case, your dress was stained with dust, dirt, and my already-spent reproductive fluids.'
Bronagh gasped in wordless anger.
'On the other hand,' Tolliver said,' I assure you that you won't find any trace of thick seed on your chest or anywhere else on your lovely body.'
'Well,' said Bronagh. 'That's something, at least.'
