Professor Talbot puts a stray white rat in its maze, and she briefly hears the rat calling
out to her for help. Then, after the rodent bites her, she finds herself as a sea captain
serving at the pleasure of King George II (and perhaps also at the pleasure of a drowning
rat).
She’s wearing a cocked hat of beaver fur over a red waistcoat. Her boat just arrived at
a northern city on the Baltic, under a sky of zinc marred by sooty clouds.