The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts Read Online Free

and at the back, under a cloth, was the bellows used for focussing the inverted image. The man carefully explained the magic of photography and the alchemy of the enchanted plate, while Georgina patiently nodded and examined the ingenious way the silver–coated, copper daguerreotype plate was inserted. She’d read about it and seen figures from ‘a’ to ‘g’, but it was fascinating to see one in reality.
    The man came to his conclusion: “…and I hide beneath this cloth to perform the conjuring trick.”
    “I see you are still using the collodion wet plate process,” Georgina said sweetly. “I would have thought that the gelatine dry plate would be preferable.”
    “This is an excellent apparatus and works perfectly satisfactorily.”
    “But aren’t silver halides more sensitive and thus reduce the required exposure time?”
    “I have magnesium powder,” he said.
    The explosive powder of magnesium and potassium chlorate was ready loaded in a metal flash lamp, the dry cells ready to deliver the galvanic ignition charge.
    “Gina!”
    It was Earnestine, standing between Captain Caruthers and Lieutenant McKendry, and jerking her hand to call her over. Her place was on the lower step between Uncle Jeremiah and Charlotte, so when she joined them, Georgina felt comforted, surrounded as she was. Perhaps, she thought, she should leave a gap to her right, a space for Arthur. She felt like moving away from Uncle Jeremiah to do so.
    Charlotte nudged her.
    “Lottie, don’t crowd so,” Georgina said.
    Charlotte answered back: “The man says we should move together.”
    The photographer seemed like a headless monster as he bent down and buried his head under the cloth hood. His arms stuck out and he waved the group together.
    They bunched up.
    With a shock, Georgina realised that her mourning veil was still raised. She should move it down, but it was too late: the man held the flash upright and lit the magnesium: it burned, crackling loudly and was painfully bright.
    “Don’t move!” Earnestine commanded in a voice that had clearly been forced between stiff lips.
    Georgina gripped Charlotte’s hand to avoid any fidgets.
    As she felt the others come to attention, she stood erect and proper too, but in the moment of stillness she shivered. It was as if they were all being watched; she fought the impulse to glance around. As the moment stretched, she had a premonition that everything was passing over, disappearing as if the camera wasn’t saving the moment, but stealing it away. She held on tight, hoping she could preserve something.
    A man walked behind them, but she knew that he would be smeared away by the long exposure.
    She thought about the letter in her bag.
    The light died away and the man slotted the covering plates into the camera. They could move again.
    It was done, the image fixed forever. Or so it seemed to Georgina then.
    Miss Charlotte
    “Ow!”
    Charlotte pulled her hand away from Georgina’s clutches, clenched and opened a fist to restore her circulation. Georgina, honestly, she was becoming far too controlling. It used to be Gina and Lottie against Earnestine, but now Georgina was that tiny bit older, it was Earnestine and Georgina ganging up on ‘little Lottie’. So unfair.
    Earnestine came over, looking all stern and adult.
    “Charlotte.”
    “Yes, Ness.”
    “Come along here,” said Earnestine, “where the others can’t hear us.”
    They moved away, off the steps along the theatre front, until they were a good few yards away.
    “Is it a secret?” Charlotte asked, excited.
    “You are going to have to get married.”
    “What!” – this was all too sudden – “But I’m only fifteen, barely fifteen.”
    “Yes, clearly you have been slacking these last few years. We need to choose someone eligible, not too old, and with a dependable income, something from land.”
    “I don’t want to get married.”
    “Nonsense. And you are far too young to know what you want. Women have a