Sorry for the delay. Tropical storms will do that to you. Also, the next post will be on the 27th (two weeks from now). Just a little warning.

This interlude isactually a combination of three short narratives, which lead us up to the arrival at the Island. I really do like Carl and Robert, and I wanted to do something from their perspectives. So, here ya go.

Interlude Six: Part One: No Anodyne for Pain

"Only the Lord can understand
When those first pangs begin,
How much is reflex action and
How much is really sin."
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Comforters"

October 5, 1934
Hong Kong

Robert Ashfield stood on the deck of the Venture and watched the bustling activity of the Hong Kong harbor. After a day in port – long enough to restock the store room and sell off Englehorn's three tigers – the boat was leaving the way she came, heading southwest along the coast.

Kendrie and a select few men had been the only ones to disembark. Beaufort himself hadn't left the steamer, though he'd stood on deck and pointed out some of the finer landmarks to Miss Elmund.

And despite Robert's and Denham's requests, the six prisoners in the hold remained there. Neither Kendrie nor Beaufort had shown any interest in letting them go.

Denham had brought it up first, immediately after the mutiny. He'd taken it for granted that the captives would be released in Hong Kong.

"What do we need them for?" he'd asked Beaufort. "Best to let them go than have to worry about them."

Robert had been relieved that he hadn't had to bring up the topic. Bad enough that Beaufort had used Laura as a bargaining chip – if that was part of the original plan, he had not mentioned it to Robert. He, like Denham, saw no reason to keep Englehorn and the rest on board, not when they could cause trouble.

Beaufort had laughed that off. "This isn't Englehorn's crew anymore – it's mine. They'll go where I tell them to go."

He had not, Robert noted, said this in front of Kendrie, with whom he maintained a somewhat deferential air. The Venture's new captain thus believed that he had complete control of the situation, which Robert knew better than to believe himself. Only one man was in charge here, and it certainly wasn't Kendrie.

Robert had added his pleas to Denham's in vain.

"We'll need them on the Island," Beaufort had said, grimacing in a way that suggested he didn't like the idea any more than Robert did, albeit for different reasons.

"But, I – "

"You," Beaufort interrupted, "will do as I say and nothing else. Your family may know nothing of your life in Berlin, but I am not so ignorant. I may well have saved your life, Robert. You know well enough what the Nazis do with men like you."

Robert had left the galley at that point, retreating as he usually did in the face of conflict. In his own twisted way, Beaufort was right. If not for him, Robert might have been in Berlin on the night of June 29th – the night that was now being called the Night of Long Knives.

He'd avoided Beaufort after that little discussion, out of shame more than fear. Beaufort had not included him in his plans for the Island beyond his manipulation of the other Ashfields, which Robert had gone along with only because he'd believed John and Laura wouldn't be harmed. Now that his part was done, Beaufort ignored him, leaving him to wallow in his regrets.

Turning away from the lights of Hong Kong, he went below decks, to the passenger quarters, where he met a guard bringing Laura up from the privy. Beaufort had at least allowed the prisoners use of the washing facilities, though Robert guessed he did this because Bridget requested it on Laura's behalf. He'd also agreed to let her change clothes: Laura now wore an oversized blue shirt tucked into an altered pair of dungarees. Ridiculous as she looked, she'd made the point that blouses and skirts could not be considered appropriate attire for her current situation. Bridget had altered the clothing for her; none of the prisoners could go back to their old quarters for any reason.

Laura avoided looking at him as he pressed against the wall to let her pass. He opened his mouth, trying to find some way to let her know how sorry he was for all of this.

"Don't speak to me," she said, before he could say anything. "You're a coward, Robert; I don't want anything to do with you."

She hadn't even slowed as she spoke, and she was gone before he could reply – not that he knew what to say to her, because she was right.

What could he have told them about his time in Berlin? That he'd spent eight months in a Nazi prison for attending a drag show? That his nationality made no difference to his captors? That nearly all his friends in Berlin were held in high suspicion by the Nazis for being either "social degenerates" or political enemies? That only scant days before he left, he had been put on a list of known homosexuals in Berlin?

He suspected that Laura could guess at the truth, because she already knew of his lifestyle. And he had only himself to blame for that – if he hadn't gotten greedy and asked Nicklo for more money, she would never have known. She wouldn't have had to pay his debts for him, a gesture she made not out of generosity but to keep the truth from their parents. She'd handed over the check and told him to get the hell out of New York before they found out about it. It was enough that the Ashfields had no money and that their heir had thrown away any decency he had left by marrying an Indian servant girl – they certainly didn't need it known that their younger son was involved in a sex scandal that could make grown men blush with shame.

She'd meant well, for both him and the family. The shock of it would have quite possibly killed poor Margaret, and Sir Walter's health had already started to fail. Of course, Laura knew those kinds of people too, but they were "Hollywood," and a person couldn't expect them to be respectable. Besides, Laura didn't follow the lifestyle the way he did, and she had the added bonus of a husband who came from "good people," even if she didn't love him.

So he'd gone to Paris and shilled himself off as an English tutor, though he mostly just kept company with wealthy widows and the lonely wives of rich men. No one thought him odd or out of place. At a club called Coeur d'Or, he met Claud Fleishner, better known on the cabaret circuit as Fraulein Krüppel A club foot earned Claud his stage name, but it was his silvery, high-pitched voice that made him a success. With him, Robert felt, for the first time in his life, comfortable with himself. They'd gone to Berlin to capitalize on the cabaret business there, and for a while, they'd had no concerns beyond how to cure their latest hangovers.

And then, while at a bar with another friend, Robert had discovered just how dangerous Berlin had become.

How had he repaid Claud for three years of companionship? How had he demonstrated his love for that brilliant, beautiful man?

The Nazis had reduced his sentence for information about the cabaret chanteuse who called herself Fraulein Krüppel. When they released him, they'd laughed and slapped him and told him to give kisses to all the pretties so he could come back and be with Fraulein Krüppel and live happily ever after. Four days later, Carl's telegram arrived, and Robert left Berlin. He hadn't even said goodbye to Claud, hadn't even tried to warn him.

Laura was right; he was nothing but a coward. No matter how much she despised him, she could not rival the hatred that he carried for himself.

Interlude Six: Part Two: Earned Peace Is All He Asks

"All the lore of No-Man's Land
Steels his soul and arms his hand."
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Expert"

October 14, 1934

The horn woke Englehorn – the deep, solemn horn that rumbled through the ship. He felt it in his bones, and a chill dread followed it. The blasting of the horn meant only one thing.

Across the aisle, his three loyal sailors gazed at each other with dead, empty eyes. They had all stepped foot on that verdammt rock – was that why they stood by me? he wondered – and he knew that, like him, they had no wish to return.

Ashfield continued his game of solitaire, tilting his head just a bit at the sound of the horn. Miss Elmund did her best to fulfill the needs of Beaufort's prisoners, and when Ashfield had asked for a deck of cards, she'd brought him one. She also brought him books from his personal collection; she explained that she had removed his things from his bunk in the crew's quarters and taken them to her room to prevent the other men from stealing them. Englehorn admired her foresight if not her sense of loyalty.

Laura Ashfield leaned against the cage's bars, her forehead banging against the metal as she swayed with the ship's movement. He thought at first that she was asleep, and then he saw that her eyes were open; she stared at a spot on the floor. If she thought of anything, Englehorn guessed that she thought of her father.

She slept little, neither did she speak much in her waking hours. Her attention to Englehorn's wound continued with diligence, but even that she did in silence. Infection had been thwarted, no doubt as a result of her rigorous use of the carbolic solution. The memory of that pain still made his eyes water, but it had been a small price to pay. She'd taken as much care as she could with it, suggesting that she knew the sensation herself, and he wondered where a lady like her had picked up a wound that required deep antiseptic treatment.

He'd known a fair number of British ladies – some he'd known on more intimate terms than others – and if he'd learned one thing from the lot of them, it was that a man couldn't assume they had anything in common. He supposed this was true of women in general, but Laura Ashfield's case was made more interesting by the fact that she had been a War nurse.

It had been obvious at their first meeting on the docks of Bombay and not because of her hands. The War was written into the little lines of her face, and he heard it in the harshness of her laugh, saw it in the way her smile never reached her eyes. All of it told him that she had watched men die, some of them despite what she had done to save them. Because she still carried that bitterness with her, he doubted that she had come out of the War with anything that could give her hope for humanity.

He recognized that in her because it was what had happened to him.

The horn sounded again.

"Why don't anyone tell him?" Gutson, the Swede, asked. "He won't find what he's looking for."

"Yes, he will," Miss Ashfield said without lifting her head. "Because death is what he seeks."

"Listen!" Ashfield said, straightening. He cocked his head. "Do you hear that?"

They quieted, straining to hear. Water slapped against the hull, and the ship creaked as it broke against the waves. Englehorn held his breath, listening until all he heard was the thumping of his heart.

And then it came, distant but clear: a second, answering horn.

"Verdammt noch mal," Englehorn said through his teeth.

"I thought Beaufort was the only one crazy enough to come to the Island," said John.

"No," Englehorn replied. "Thrill-seekers some, but mostly scientific expeditions, wanting to catalogue and explore. I've lost count of the number of offers I've turned down."

They fell back into silence as they considered this, and they listened to the two boats talk to each other. The other's horn became louder and clearer, but never so much to suggest that suggest that the Venture purposefully approached it. Englehorn doubted that Beaufort had any intention of exchanging pleasantries with the other ship.

He settled back against the crate, and when he looked up, he saw that Miss Ashfield was staring at him. No – not at him; her eyes focused on nothing, and he realized that her attention was solely on the horns. Her face was shadowy and blank, but he thought he saw something there that he hadn't expected to see: hope.

Interlude Six: Part Three: The Edge of Cultivation

"Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?"
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Explorer"

October 15, 1934
Skull Island

He shouldn't think of it as his island, but now that he was back – now that it was right here in front of him in all its terrifying glory – Carl Denham knew he'd always think of it that way. His island.

Maybe he hadn't been the first to discover it, but he'd put it on the map, so to speak. Because of him, Skull Island was no longer a mere rumor or just a whisper between superstitious sailors. Now it was a real and terrible thing that no one could ignore. He'd created the hype of Skull Island, just as he had created the wonder of Kong. Didn't that make him a god of sorts? Creation and destruction – that's what gods do, right?

These were his daydreams; he spoke of them to no one. He just liked to indulge in the fantasy, especially on those rare days when he wasn't feeling so sure of himself.

For instance, right now, he was feeling a bit possessive about the Island. He had wanted to make a triumphant return to the Island, as brave adventurer, as conquering hero, but the Delphi had beaten them. The sleek white vessel sat prim as a debutante in the water, looking none the worse for wear despite being at sea for at least two months. The Venture was an old maid compared to her, worn from her travels and weary of her load. They chugged past her, following the curve of the south end of the Island.

"There's the best that money can buy," said Beaufort, standing at the rail next to Carl. "If I was a shipping man, I'd be jealous."

"But how'd she get here so fast?" Carl asked. "The telegram said she wouldn't be leaving San Francisco until the tenth."

"Blackstone's scientific curiosity waits for nothing. I wouldn't be surprised that he left port well ahead of schedule. He's a damned efficient man."

"Or maybe your contact lied to you."

Beaufort frowned and gripped his cigar so tightly that Carl thought it might actually break. "I hope that's not the case, for his sake."

Kendrie came up from the lower deck, a set of field glasses in his hand. "Shall we hail her, Mr. Beaufort?" he asked.

"No."

"What if she hails us?"

"Tell her to mind her own damn business."

"Not very neighborly of you, is it?" said Kendrie.

Beaufort turned to face him with a hard look. "Are you worried about propriety now, Mr. Kendrie? After you just led a mutiny on this ship?"

To his credit, the Venture's new captain held his ground under the stern eye of the tycoon. "I'm just making an observation." As an afterthought, he added, "Sir."

"I'll ask for your opinion when I want it," Beaufort snapped. "Don't push me, Kendrie. You have this ship because of me. Don't forget that."

Touching the brim of his cap, Kendrie said, "I assure you, I won't." Then he stomped off the deck and up into the wheelhouse.

"You think it's wise to talk to him like that?" Carl asked.

"It's the only way to deal with men like him, Carl. You've got to show them who's boss. Otherwise, they start thinking they're better off without you, and then, who will do your dirty work?"

All Carl could do was shrug.

"Maybe you like getting your hands dirty, but Beauforts have always been too good for that kind of thing. It's what the little people are for.

Carl wondered if Beaufort thought he was one of the "little people" too. He knew that Beaufort thought of him as little more than a tool, a means to an end and nothing more. This bothered him less than he thought it might, if only because Beaufort treated all people in such a fashion. If anything, Carl considered himself fortunate that Beaufort still had use for him – otherwise he'd end up wandering the ship aimlessly like Robert or stuck down in the hold with Englehorn.

For what it was worth, he'd lobbied against the idea of a mutiny. True, he'd be glad to step foot on the Island with Englehorn and the Ashfields in tow, but he thought the cost of doing so was a bit much. Beaufort had shown his usual lack of respect for the law and went ahead with it. Wealth and power made him an impatient man; he wanted to get to the Island sooner rather than later, German captains be damned. Carl had dropped any signs of dissent for fear of losing Beaufort's interest.

Of course he regretted it, but what could he do? He'd make it up to them later, and he was sure Beaufort would do the same. The man wasn't all bad, not really.

"This is my destiny, Carl," Beaufort was saying. "I can feel it. By the end of this trip, I will have conquered the most dangerous game in the world. This Island will be mine."

A smug smile spread across his face, and he left the deck, disappearing down the stairs leading to the cabins. Denham remained at the rail, the wind ruffling his hair and the setting sun warming his back. He was alone with the Island.

"My island," he whispered.