The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (135 page)

“Spit it out, Watson! Spit it out!” Holmes was slapping me on the back, having dashed the cup to the deck. “Poison!” he said. “The tea has been poisoned! Are you all right?”

Shaking, my mouth already feeling a kind of dry numbness though I had obeyed Holmes's command instantly, I turned to my friend. “Where is that mate?” I mumbled.

But the deck was filled with uniformed men, all indistinguishable from a distance. My legs seemed to be getting weaker, and it was becoming harder to focus, to recognize any of the men. Even Holmes appeared wavy and indistinct, as
though I were looking at him from under water. Then all went dark.

I could feel strong fingers digging into my shoulder, pressing against the Jezail bullet that had lodged there when I had been wounded in Afghanistan. I opened my eyes, and an unfamiliar room swam before me.

There was a hoarse whisper. “Watson?” The fingers gripped harder. “Watson? Can you hear me?”

I tried to bring the towering figure into focus in the darkened room. “Holmes? Where am I?”

“You're alive. That's what's important. You very nearly weren't.”

It began to come back to me—the mate, the tea, my last memories before losing consciousness. What a fool I had been to doubt Holmes! Once again he'd been right. Moriarty's agents, it appeared, were with us even aboard this ship.

“Where are we now?” I asked. “What day is it?” The questions kept coming. “Why us, Holmes? Why poison us? Does he think we can make a difference, when the entire Navy is out to get him?”

Holmes chuckled. “I rather fancy he thinks just that. Flattering, eh?”

Groggily I sat up. “I wish I could take some pleasure in it. Just now I'm too confused.”

“Come, can you get up?”

Holmes took me by the arm and walked me about the small cabin. Outside, it appeared to be closing on dusk. After a few turns from wall to wall, I regained my sea legs and my mind cleared. “What did I take? What was it?”

“One of the cyanamids, I presume. You were extremely lucky, Watson. Even trace amounts can kill. You mustn't have swallowed any at all.”

The reason for that did not for a moment escape me. Once again Sherlock Holmes had saved my life.

“As to how long you've been under, thirty hours is a reasonable estimate. And as you can see, night descends.” He reached into his pockets and pulled forth most of a loaf of bread, some dried meat and an orange. “You must be hungry, and you'll need all your strength. I packed this food myself as a precaution against just this sort of thing.”

Twenty minutes later we were again on the deck. I had naturally brought my revolver along, and now I gratefully felt its cold weight in my pocket. Shadow figures scattered here and there, swabbing, stowing, making the vessel shipshape for the night. Even armed, I was not without trepidation, knowing that one of these men had tried to kill us only the day before. It could easily happen again.

Captain John Wagner approached. Gingerhaired and bearded, he was a sturdy sailor of the old school—hale, hearty, and profane. In spite of my accident, I felt I was safe within his domain. He ran the tightest of ships.

“Good evening, Mr. Holmes. Ah, Dr. Watson,” he blustered, “that such a thing should happen on my ship! I swear to you we'll find the blackguard, and I'll personally keelhaul him. My best men are on it.” His voice then softened. “You had us all right worried there, sir. Good to see you back up and about.”

I thanked him for his good wishes and struck up a conversation about our quarry. “Tomorrow looks to be the day, doesn't it, captain?”

He laughed. “That's your friend's estimate, doctor. But it's a big ocean. Hard to pinpoint a meeting date. Could happen any time.”

“Could we miss him entirely?”

His face hardened. “We won't miss him. And once we encounter the blighter, we'll bring him to. I'll stake my reputation on that.”

“Who's at the wheel now, captain?” Holmes asked blandly, walking up to us. Throughout our discussion, he had stood at the ship's rail, peering into the darkness.

“That'd be my first mate, Jeffers.”

“And the lookout?”

Justifiably, I thought, the captain's eyes narrowed. “What's all this about, Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes turned and pointed out over the bow. “Unless I'm very much mistaken, captain, there's a ship running dark just off to starboard.”

Wagner and I ran to the railing, squinting to make out a shape where Holmes had indicated. Before I had seen anything, the captain had turned, uttering a foul oath. As he rushed back to the bridge, his voice bellowing “Battle stations!” shook the very timbers of the ship.

We were the wedge of the armada, and within minutes flares had alerted the rest of the fleet that something had been spotted. We had no way to be sure it was Colonel Moran, but the fact that the ship had its running lights covered was more than enough to convince me.

Holmes stood beside me at the bow rail, his face a study in determination. “Now remember, Watson,” he said. “No one from that ship must be allowed aboard. All its crew will have been inoculated against the plague, but there's no telling if any of them are infested with the fleas or lice that carry the disease.”

“Are we to kill them all, then?” The men were fiends, but it was not like Holmes to be so cold-blooded.

“No, no, we'll shepherd them and their cargo of death to Gorée, a small island in Dakar's harbor which used to hold slaves waiting for transport. Captain Wagner knows the drill.”

“And then…?”

“And then Moran and his men can swim for it while we blow their ship out of the water. The salt water will leach away any vermin, and the men are all sailors—they'll have no trouble finding work….”

He was about to continue when we heard a shot from somewhere behind us. I reached for my revolver and raced toward the sound, Holmes at my heels.

“Here! Up here!”

It was Jeffers, the first mate, staggering to his feet on the bridge, his hands to his bleeding head. At his feet lay a prostrate Captain Wagner.

“The captain…” Jeffers began.

I was there beside him, but there was nothing I could do. Captain Wagner had a bullet hole in the back of his head. The gallant sailor had completed his last command.

“What happened?” I demanded.

The mate appeared to be in shock. “I don't know. I was hit from behind, and then…”

At that moment, the lookout shouted from above. “Enemy ship preparing to engage!”

We looked over our shoulders and there, its running lights suddenly lit, a ship was bearing down on us on a collision course. Our crew, at battle stations, waited for the orders, but Jeffers seemed incapable of movement, watching horrified as the vessel approached.

“We can't let them engage.” Holmes spoke calmly to Jeffers, but his voice cut like a knife. “Think of your orders, man.”

On the deck of the enemy ship, we could see the crew manning their battle stations, with small arms and grappling hooks at the ready. These were the same men who had captured the deadly Boer pirates only two weeks before. Jeffers looked about in panic, like a caged rat, and then suddenly screamed to his own waiting crew: “Fire! Fire! Fire all guns!”

“No!”
Holmes yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the simultaneous roar of fourteen cannons. Moran must have kept a magazine below decks, for no sooner had we recovered from the shock of the first sally than the night turned into day as the enemy ship, less than fifty yards from us now, exploded in a huge fireball.

The force of the explosion knocked us off our feet, and we lay dazed for a moment in a shocking, deathly silence. And then, as though the brutality of what we'd just witnessed were not enough, a ghastly rain of burning timber and flesh began to fall and litter our deck.

The falling debris started several small fires, and Jeffers forced himself up to direct the crew. Holmes and I sat by Wagner's body and watched the floating remains of Moran's ship flare, then smoke, as they slowly sank into the ocean.

Holmes's eyes were glazed over. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands limp between them. Glancing first at me, then at the fallen captain, he sighed aloud. “Wrong,” he muttered
half to himself in a tone of pure anguish. “Where could it have gone so wrong?”

There was no chance of sleeping. Eight bells in the third watch came and went, and still the crew kept at its cleanup duties. Jeffers had convened an officer's tribunal and ordered that every man account for his whereabouts at the time the captain had been murdered. One by one, the men filed wearily into the captain's stateroom, resentful and edgy. Holmes stood silent at the railing, smoking. His hunched shoulders left no doubt that he carried the burden of the deaths of Moran's crewmen as though they were his own.

I went to him. “It could not be helped,” I said.

He looked coldly at me.

“Holmes,” I insisted. “It was not your fault.”

He shook his head. “It was not supposed to be that way. No one had to die. And we never got the proof.”

“But surely the fact that they intended to engage…?”

“It doesn't prove…Halloa,” he exclaimed. “What's that?”

I looked out at the black ocean. A glint of phosphorous showed above something moving in the dark water. “What could that be?” I asked.

Holmes's dark eyes glinted in the light from his pipe. A kind of smile began to play at the corners of his mouth, and I recognized that look: He was on a scent, when he thought it had eluded him. Then, at once, the half smile faded, replaced by a grimness I had never before witnessed in him. “The monster,” he said under his breath. “The unspeakable monster.”

“Holmes,” I began, “what—”

“Follow me,” he said, “and keep your gun handy.” He headed toward the bridge.

“Mate Jeffers,” he yelled up from the deck, “there is a boat in the water.”

The first mate, more haggard than ever, was struggling with the onus of command. He glared at Holmes as another interruption in an already impossible night. “What's that you say, sir?” he yelled down.

“There's a boat in the water.” Holmes pointed. “There, at forty-five degrees off port.”

The small boat could just barely be seen coming into the circle of light thrown by our ship. “My God,” said Jeffers. He seemed instantly rejuvenated, taking the steps down from the bridge in bounding leaps. “Could it be that someone survived?”

“It would appear so,” my friend answered. I glanced then at Sherlock Holmes, and he had in his eye a look so dangerous that even I, who knew him so well, shuddered. Yet I could not for the life of me see what had so aroused him. Questions formed in my mind, but the fierceness of his countenance forced me to hold my tongue.

Jeffers called for some men and had them begin preparing for the rescue. Out in the night, I could just make out the lifeboat. On board was a single man, standing and waving. His “Ahoy,” small yet haunting, carried across the water. In the boat with him appeared to be a large box of some sort—probably, I thought, some possessions he'd managed to escape with before the ship exploded.

As the boat approached, Jeffers leaned farther over the water to direct the crewmen's operations. Just at that moment, Holmes lurched forward, grabbed the mate from behind and lifted him up and over the railing. With flailing arms and an anguished cry, Jeffers hit the water with a tremendous splash.

“Holmes!” I cried.

“There's no time to explain! Quick, Watson, your weapon!”

In a flash I had drawn my revolver and leveled it at the crew members gathered around us. Holmes remained calm. “I apologize for this inconvenience, gentlemen,” he said to them, “and after a moment it won't be necessary, but for now I think it better that no one try to save Mr. Jeffers.”

The mate rose to the surface, spluttering. “Holmes!” he called. “What's the meaning of this? It's mutiny! Watson, I'll have you both hanged!”

“I think the pleasure will be the other way round!” Holmes countered. “If you don't drown first.”

“Why should I hang?”

“First for murdering Captain Wagner, then for blowing up Moran's ship, and not least for trying to poison Watson and me.”

“You're mad. They were going to ram us!”

“No,” Holmes replied. “But for a moment it certainly did look that way, so that your disobedience of orders seemed logical.”

“What are you saying?”

“The convoy was to herd the ship to Gorée, not destroy it. And no one—no one at all, even a survivor—was to come aboard.”

Jeffers treaded water awkwardly. Fully dressed as he was, the weight of his clothes would pull him down within minutes. The lifeboat, all but forgotten by us, was drifting steadily away from him.

Jeffers went under briefly and came up gagging. Looking at the lifeboat, he tried a few halfhearted breaststrokes in its direction, but the effort was too great for him. He turned back to us, breathing heavily. “Help me, Watson, and I'll see that you're pardoned!”

“If my friend hangs,” I called down, “I will gladly hang beside him.” Then, to Holmes, I said softly, “You're not going to let him drown, are you?”

“I rather think he'll be saved.”

But as we watched, Jeffers went under again. I thought the mate was gone, but once again he broke the surface. This time the panic in his voice was not feigned. He looked up at Holmes, then across to the lifeboat and came to his fateful decision. “Moran!” he yelled. “Help me! I'm drowning!”

“You fool, Jeffers! Shut up!”

Sherlock Holmes addressed me, finally allowing himself a smile. “As I suspected, they know each other by name. It is all the proof we need.” He called overboard. “You'd better see to Jeffers, Moran! The game is up.”