Once the alarms calmed down, and her maid and gentlemen had finished fussing around her, Captain Wyndham drew Lady Sally to one side.
"Your ladyship," he whispered, "it was no accident, the electro-massager was tampered with. There's no doubt our stowaway has broken into your private quarters, seen the device and switched the earth and live wires."
Lady Sally was furious, "Bugger me! When I catch the blackguard, I'll cut his bloody balls off. What are we to do captain?"
"There'll be little sleep for the crew tonight, most of them will have to stay on watch. We've narrowly averted two threats to your life, your ladyship. You're at serious risk until we catch this stowaway. First thing tomorrow morning we start another sweep of the whole airship, and we won't stop until we find him."
"Yes, captain, we must. I'll join the hunt. I will devise such tortures for this miscreant when we capture him."
"Is that all, Lady Sally?"
"Oh, one more thing, captain. Thank you for your decisive actions back there. Victoria is a loyal maid, but a blithering idiot when it comes to a real crisis. Tell me, captain, did you save my life?"
Their eyes met. Captain Wyndham looked into hers with admiration and affection.
"Honestly, madam," he replied, "I don't believe so. Your heart was weak but still beating. I only did what had to be done. I'd have done the same for anybody, though I've got to say I was mightily relieved when you recovered consciousness. We all were. We all... revere you so much, Lady Sally."
"You are too modest, captain. Still, you did get an opportunity to grope a tit; not many men are afforded that privilege," she said, a provocative smile spreading across her red lips.
"No, indeed, madam. I'm a very lucky man."
Lady Sally went back to the dungeon and told her gentlemen to retire for the night. It had been an exciting day. Meanwhile the captain gathered the rigger-men and crew to organise shifts for watching the airship. It was the early hours of the morning before he got back to his quarters for a sleep, but he didn't get much before there was an excited knocking on the door of his cabin.
There had finally been a breakthrough in the hunt for the stowaway. One of the rigger-men posted outside the kitchen spotted a tiny figure creeping out of it and go scuttling along one of the gangways. He followed but the figure mysteriously disappeared into a ventilation shaft before he could catch up with him.
The captain put a guard on entrance to the ventilation shaft.
He reported this news to Lady Sally first thing in the morning, and they met with the rigger-man and Victoria where the culprit had mysteriously disappeared into the tube of galvanised tin.
"Did you see the scoundrel?" asked Lady Sally.
"It were dark, milady, so I couldn't make out any features. It were just a shadowy figure. What were strange is it were so small, like a little animal... and it had short, stubby legs, and kind of shuffled along the passage as it were."
"A little animal, how odd," pondered Lady Sally.
"And look at the ventilation shaft," the captain pointed out, "it's far too narrow for a grown man... or woman to squeeze into."
"Indeed, captain. It's most curious. And where does this shaft lead?"
"It goes back into the fuselage and the hydrogen bags. It draws fresh air into the living quarters. The good news is I've had it guarded overnight, so we know that whatever it is, it's trapped inside the fuselage."
"Excellent. Let the hunt begin. I will not rest until it has been caught."
Lady Sally entered into the spirit of the pursuit by dressing in her red hunting jacket, jodhpurs and riding boots, the lightning blunderbuss slung over her shoulder.
"There we are, Victoria. I'm so pleased I packed my hunting apparel; I knew I'd get the chance to wear it during my adventures."
"Yes, madam. You look incredibly sexy in it."
"Really, Victoria. This is a serious business. This is no time to get aroused."
Captain Wyndham unlocked the padlock on the metal door leading from the gondola into the fuselage. Victoria, the captain and a band of the crew entered.
Lady Sally recalled the day of the maiden flight, her tour of the fuselage and her chief engineer's detailed description of the airship's construction.
She gazed around in awe and wonderment. The duralumin frame of the airship was vast; it was like stepping into another world of gleaming metal. There was a hard, erect girder, rounded like a massive pole, stretching the whole length of the airship's frame. Lady Sally wrapped her hand around it, its girth too thick for her fingers to stretch around it. It felt firm in her grip, but surprisingly light with a certain amount of flex in it. Duralumin was an incredibly light metal; it would have been impossible to construct an airship this size with anything else, but it was its ability to bend with stress or strong winds that provided the airship with its durability.
The pole penetrated a series of holes. These were the joints around which the polygonal frames were centred. There were a whole series of these along the length of the structure, reducing in size at the front to produce the airship's distinctive, bulbous tip. The sensual curves of shining duralumin filled the fuselage. They were supported by both a wheel of girders and a series of wires. This was the sub-structure which gave
The Corseted Domme
its pleasingly, sleek, bullet-like shape.
Between, each of the polygonal structures were a network of walkways and steps. It was like being in a massive puzzle or three-dimensional version of snakes and ladders. Lady Sally was reminded of the work of one of her favourite artists, an Italian engraver named Piranesi, who produced a series of prints called
Le Carceri
which depicted prisons with stairs and walkways that led nowhere. She had a signed set of these engravings on the wall of her dungeon in Rudston Hall to remind her submissive slaves that, once they were in her clutches, there was no escape.
