Mephistopheles analyses the audience as he appears on stage. The RMS Etruria was both a place to perform, and a way of moving to the new country. After all, no one from the Moonlit Carnival had been to America. The year had turned 1889, and the former gentleman had high hopes for his future as a showman. He was, in all ways, an opportunist.

Part of him wondered if his withered father would die upon hearing the news that his missing son — the 'spare heir' — was now a wayward magician.