The chief’s whole face was red with the pressure in his capillaries and his boisterousness had become a little frenetic. Under his gruesome exhilaration he looked very tired. He flourished something at Will. It was an accounting ledger with a faded maroon cover and a newspaper cut-out of a dog Sellotaped to the front. ‘The Beagle Logbook,’ announced the chief, standing up again and holding it aloft to make sure everyone noticed. ‘The Beagle Logbook, boys and girls, volume twenty-eight.’

The others cheered. Only a few of the older ones knew what he was talking about, but for the moment their spirits were so high they would cheer anything. The chief flourished it again and thudded down the steep stairs to the bus’s toilet, to leave it there.

Will asked Jeremy, ‘Is it something for this place we’re going to?’

Jeremy, feeling very amused and comfortable, said: ‘No, it’s the Legal Bogbook. All the complaints and cases against the paper. It was always in a toilet on the sixth floor and everyone used to say that just looking at it would get you sacked and sued at the same time. I didn’t know it still existed.’

The chief re-ascended, breathing heavily, and let himself plonk back into the seat next to Jez. Some of the older subs were already sending an overexcited junior down the stairs to fetch it. Jeremy asked, ‘Is it alright for us to have that out?’

‘Look around, Jezmerelda, we’re in emergency measures. None of the normal rules apply.’

‘I didn’t know it was even still being kept up.’

With the back of his hairy wrist, the chief dabbed sweat from his temples. He said, ‘I’ve been doing it.’

‘But where’s it been – not in that same toilet?’

‘It’s been kept at a secret location so none of those wide-eyed little Johnny-come-latelies from BeastOnline can start blabbing about it.’

‘Do you mean it’s been in your house?’

A burst of laughter interrupted them. The subs had started to read the Beagle. The chief had actually imagined they would descend into the bus’s tiny interior cave to consult it, but he was satisfied nevertheless. To Will he said, ‘Half the Beast’s soiled old knickers are in that book, along with the names of who soiled them. You’re usually not even allowed to know it exists until you’ve done your first decade before the mast. So make sure you study it before this kind of quality journalism dies out for good.’

At that, his tiredness seemed to overwhelm him and he slumped back fatly in his seat, letting the noise of the subs ricochet around him.