The mysterious group had evidently arranged transport, for a car and a small lorry were parked outside, waiting for us. The Priestess and I were seated in the back of the car, along with a masked man, serving as a bodyguard lest I attempt some form of resistance or hostage taking, while one of the clergymen got in the front to drive.

Meanwhile, the wooden crate containing my laboratory was loaded onto the back of the lorry, along with the remaining masked men. Once secured, the second clergyman got into the cab, and signalled to our car. We were to depart.

I stole a long glance back at the beautiful gables of my estate, clean and orderly in their straight and pleasing angles, and at the latticed windows from which I had spent many a lazy and solitary morning, gazing purposelessly down at the rows of pear trees that lined my yard.

As the cars began to move, I thought of the lovely country roads of New England, speckled as they were with quaint pot hole and easy hump and time-worn rut. And I feared I might never see the charming landscapes and pristine woods of my beloved Rhode Island ever again.

We rode in silence for a time, driving steadily into Providence, the driver having decided upon an oblique route through the lesser populated outlying burgs and avenues of the city. Here now, only as we drove gently between the tall overhanging eves of the poor district, whose maligned and bent roofs angled viciously down upon us, did the priestess speak to me.

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She apologized to me for my rough mistreatment at the hands of her servants, and explained that the masked men, whom she called the Dar’a’ah, were known for their enthusiastic defence of the priesthood. She assured me that no further harm would come to me if I cooperated with her people, and offered no resistance, and went along with them passively, without complaint.

I made a mental note that the Priestess addressed me as “Brigand.” I assumed at first she thought me a criminal for my theft of tongues, or for my possession of the Necronomicon. It was only later that I recalled that the late Dr. Eliza Hugo, in her charming eccentricity, would often lengthen my last name of ‘Briggs’ into ‘Brigand’ as a kind of moniker.

But I had no time to contemplate the meaning behind this, for our car abruptly took a sharp turn, and we began a slow lurch downhill, as we proceeded towards the shipyard, and I noted to my dismay, an old shifty quay and a pier of ill renown.

Rumours abounded: that this crumbling old pier had been used, at the turn of the century, as a haven for rum-runners, and smugglers of contraband, and that many notorious figures had made the surrounding slums the base of their criminal operations.

I shuddered involuntarily, and recalled many a loathsome story in the local newspaper concerning the myriad of dead bodies that had been found over the years, swollen and putrefying, along the shoreline, or tangled among the fishermen’s lines, or crushed against the sagging, rotten piles.

Now, dark and loathsome against the pier, floating sinisterly against the ravenous and darkly flowing waves, a tall imposing black galleon stood tethered.