Jaggles took him to the boy. The boy wasn't there.

"He's not here," Nick said, looking around the empty cellar.

Jaggles kicked over a fishing rod. The line caught on his shoe, and he danced around to free it, swearing all the while. "He's in here somewhere. I know it." He opened the wardrobe door and a can of beans tumbled out, landing on his toe. He swore again.

"Where is he?" Nick said.

"How in blue blazes should I know?" Jaggles said to his toe. "He's bloody vanished, hasn't he?" He straightened up and kicked the can of beans away with his other foot. It rolled under the wardrobe.

"It would seem so," Nick said, giving the other man a meaningful look.

Jaggles smouldered. Such a tremendous amount of heat and pressure had built up inside him that he seemed to be curling in upon himself. His chin had retracted into his chest, his shoulders had risen to his earlobes, and his hands had balled up into red fists. He spun about the cellar in sudden wrenching movements, his back hunched over like a beetle's carapace. Things didn't just disappear. Especially not large things, like boys. It was a bloody outrage, that's what it was.

"It's a bloody outrage," he said, his voice strangely muffled, for he was peering into a gumboot as he spoke, as if he thought Ward might be curled up inside.

"You have one hour to find the boy," Nick said. "If I have to leave without him -"

"Yeh yeh," Jaggles said, tossing the gumboot aside. "We'd better go look for the blighter then."

They circumnavigated the island. With each minute Jaggles grew hotter and more pressurised.

Nick found some boy-sized footprints in the sand of a neighbouring cove, which led them to the boat hidden in the tall grass.

"Has to be round here somewhere," Jaggles said.

He wasn't.

"Buggered if I know how he got out," Jaggles said, for the sixth or seventh time, as they trudged back to the storeroom for a final look. "He never could before."

"Perhaps it was magic," Nick said, with a smile.

"And perhaps Hatto himself whisked him away to the Land of Albion," Jaggles snarled. "He's here. Has to be."

"Then here he will stay," Nick said, stopping outside the storehouse door. He had been deep in thought throughout their search, and had grown certain of one thing at least: Jaggles wasn't lying. Jaggles was a good liar, true, but Nick was a better one, and had spent his life around liars. If Jaggles had been lying he would have known it. He was either putting on the performance of a lifetime, or else he was telling the truth.

Nick was not a superstitious man. He had suffered too much to believe some benign entity was at work in the world. Nor was he convinced of the pessimistic view of the Hattoists – that Nature tended towards corruption and sin. He thought little of things larger than himself. He considered matters of the spirit, and those who traded in them, cowardly and conceited. But he had long ago learned to trust his instincts, wherever they might come from, and he chose to trust them again now. He would leave the boy to his fate.

"Consider the deal off," he said to Jaggles. "I've got nothing to gain by seeing you swing at the Derricks, and despite everything you're still family to me – perhaps the only family I have left."

Jaggles seemed about to respond with something acidic, but settled with a grimace. He remained silent and thoughtful as Nick returned to the boat alone.

So you've reached the end of Chapter One. Bloody outrageous.