This is merely the first episode. There is a great deal of running around at a seaport, rife with gunplay, exploding baskets of fruit, and the idiot psychopath Willis Pule eager to practise recreational vivisection on all and sundry. The concluding segment is different again. St Ives, whose lady love was shot by Narbondo in the prologue, is apparently going mad from despair and frustration. At this stage everything naturally becomes a trifle complex and re-entrant.
Timelines shift and overwrite one another.
Narbondo is dealt with by means other than the obvious, involving a trip forward to acquire certain materials from Sir Alexander Fleming. There is a happy ending. Blaylock, a professor of English, does pretty well and no doubt has a terrifyingly authoritative justification for Englishmen of the period who judge distances in metres. Lots, but all swallowed up in that final rewrite job on history. Yes indeed, though rather less so than Homunculus , or for that matter Stevenson's New Arabian Nights .