There was the merest pause. “A Frenchman,” said Hadley-Bright.

“Is he supposed to be there?” asked Strange.

The one Frenchman had been joined by another. Then fifty more appeared. The fifty became two hundred – three hundred – a thousand! The hillside seemed to be breeding Frenchmen as a cheese breeds maggots. The next moment they all began to discharge their muskets upon the Nassauers at the crossroads. The engagement did not last long. The Nassauers fired their cannons. The Frenchmen, who appeared to have no cannons of their own, retreated over the hill.

“Ha!” cried Strange, delighted. “They are beaten! They have run away!”

“Yes, but where did they come from in the first place,” muttered Hadley-Bright. “Can you look over that hill?”

Strange tapped the water and made a sort of twisting gesture above the surface. The crossroads vanished and in its place appeared an excellent view of the French Army – or, if not the whole Army, a very substantial part of it.

Hadley-Bright sat down like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Strange swore in Spanish (a language he naturally associated with warfare). The Allied armies were in entirely the wrong place. Wellington’s divisions were in the west, ready to defend to the death all sorts of places that Buonaparte had no intention of attacking. General Blücher and the Prussian army were too far east. And here was the French Army suddenly popping up in the south. As matters stood at present, these Nassauers (who amounted to perhaps three or four thousand men) were all that lay between Brussels and the French.

“Mr Strange! Do something, I implore you!” cried Hadley-Bright.

Strange took a deep breath and opened wide his arms, as though he were gathering up all the magic he had ever learnt.

“Hurry, Mr Strange! Hurry!”

“I could move the city!” said Strange. “I could move Brussels! I could put it somewhere where the French will not find it.”

“Put it where?” cried Hadley-Bright, grabbing Strange’s hands and forcing them down again. “We are surrounded by armies. Our own armies! If you move Brussels you are liable to crush some of our regiments under the buildings and the paving stones. The Duke will not be pleased. He needs every man.”

Strange thought some more. “I have it!” he cried.

A sort of breeze rushed by. It was not unpleasant – indeed it had the refreshing fragrance of the ocean. Hadley-Bright looked out of the windows. Beyond the houses, churches, palaces and parks were mountain-ridges that had not been there a moment ago. They were black, as if covered with pine trees. The air was much fresher – like air that had never been breathed before.

“Where are we?” asked Hadley-Bright.

“America,” said Strange. And then by way of an explanation he added, “It always looks so empty on the maps.”

“Dear God! But this is no better than before! Have you forgotten that we have only just signed a peace treaty with America? Nothing will excite the Americans’ displeasure so much as the appearance of a European city on their soil!”