"'"I'd a partner," said he, "a rare good man, as true as a stock to abarrel. He's got the dibbs, he has, and where do you think he is at thismoment? Why, he's the chaplain of this ship--the chaplain, no less! Hecame aboard with a black coat, and his papers right, and money enough inhis box to buy the thing right up from keel to main-truck. The creware his, body and soul. He could buy 'em at so much a gross with a cashdiscount, and he did it before ever they signed on. He's got two of thewarders and Mereer, the second mate, and he'd get the captain himself,if he thought him worth it."
"'"What are we to do, then?" I asked.
"'"What do you think?" said he. "We'll make the coats of some of thesesoldiers redder than ever the tailor did."
"'"But they are armed," said I.
"'"And so shall we be, my boy. There's a brace of pistols for everymother's son of us, and if we can't carry this ship, with the crew atour back, it's time we were all sent to a young misses' boarding-school.You speak to your mate upon the left to-night, and see if he is to betrusted."
"'I did so, and found my other neighbor to be a young fellow in muchthe same position as myself, whose crime had been forgery. His name wasEvans, but he afterwards changed it, like myself, and he is now a richand prosperous man in the south of England. He was ready enough to jointhe conspiracy, as the only means of saving ourselves, and before we hadcrossed the Bay there were only two of the prisoners who were not in thesecret. One of these was of weak mind, and we did not dare to trust him,and the other was suffering from jaundice, and could not be of any useto us.
"'From the beginning there was really nothing to prevent us from takingpossession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians, speciallypicked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort us,carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often didhe come that by the third day we had each stowed away at the foot of ourbeds a file, a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, and twenty slugs.Two of the warders were agents of Prendergast, and the second mate washis right-hand man. The captain, the two mates, two warders, LieutenantMartin, his eighteen soldiers, and the doctor were all that we hadagainst us. Yet, safe as it was, we determined to neglect no precaution,and to make our attack suddenly by night. It came, however, more quicklythan we expected, and in this way.
"'One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor had comedown to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and putting his hand downon the bottom of his bunk he felt the outline of the pistols. If he hadbeen silent he might have blown the whole thing, but he was a nervouslittle chap, so he gave a cry of surprise and turned so pale that theman knew what was up in an instant and seized him. He was gagged beforehe could give the alarm, and tied down upon the bed. He had unlockedthe door that led to the deck, and we were through it in a rush. The twosentries were shot down, and so was a corporal who came running to seewhat was the matter. There were two more soldiers at the door of thestate-room, and their muskets seemed not to be loaded, for they neverfired upon us, and they were shot while trying to fix their bayonets.Then we rushed on into the captain's cabin, but as we pushed open thedoor there was an explosion from within, and there he lay with hisbrains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon thetable, while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand athis elbow. The two mates had both been seized by the crew, and the wholebusiness seemed to be settled.
"'The state-room was next the cabin, and we flocked in there and floppeddown on the settees, all speaking together, for we were just mad withthe feeling that we were free once more. There were lockers all round,and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of them in, and pulled out adozen of brown sherry. We cracked off the necks of the bottles, pouredthe stuff out into tumblers, and were just tossing them off, when in aninstant without warning there came the roar of muskets in our ears, andthe saloon was so full of smoke that we could not see across the table.When it cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and eight otherswere wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood andthe brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it. Wewere so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given the job upif it had not been for Prendergast. He bellowed like a bull and rushedfor the door with all that were left alive at his heels. Out we ran,and there on the poop were the l
ieutenant and ten of his men. The swingskylights above the saloon table had been a bit open, and they had firedon us through the slit. We got on them before they could load, and theystood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in fiveminutes it was all over. My God! Was there ever a slaughter-houselike that ship! Prendergast was like a raging devil, and he picked thesoldiers up as if they had been children and threw them overboard aliveor dead. There was one sergeant that was horribly wounded and yet kepton swimming for a surprising time, until some one in mercy blew out hisbrains. When the fighting was over there was no one left of our enemiesexcept just the warders, the mates, and the doctor.
"'It was over them that the great quarrel arose. There were many of uswho were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wishto have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers overwith their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by whilemen were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts andthree sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was nomoving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance ofsafety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leavea tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to oursharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wishedwe might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were alreadysick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there would be worsebefore it was done. We were given a suit of sailor togs each, a barrelof water, two casks, one of junk and one of biscuits, and a compass.Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwreckedmariners whose ship had foundered in Lat. 15 degrees and Long 25 degreeswest, and then cut the painter and let us go.
"'And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear son.The seamen had hauled the fore-yard aback during the rising, but now aswe left them they brought it square again, and as there was a light windfrom the north and east the bark began to draw slowly away from us. Ourboat lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evansand I, who were the most educated of the party, were sitting in thesheets working out our position and planning what coast we should makefor. It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verdes were about fivehundred miles to the north of us, and the African coast about sevenhundred to the east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round to thenorth, we thought that Sierra Leone might be best, and turned our headin that direction, the bark being at that time nearly hull down on ourstarboard quarter. Suddenly as we looked at her we saw a dense blackcloud of smoke shoot up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree uponthe sky line. A few seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon ourears, and as the smoke thinned away there was no sign left of the_Gloria Scott_. In an instant we swept the boat's head round again andpulled with all our strength for the place where the haze still trailingover the water marked the scene of this catastrophe.
"'It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared thatwe had come too late to save any one. A splintered boat and a number ofcrates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves showed uswhere the vessel had foundered; but there was no sign of life, and wehad turned away in despair when we heard a cry for help, and saw at somedistance a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across it. Whenwe pulled him aboard the boat he proved to be a young seaman of thename of Hudson, who was so burned and exhausted that he could give us noaccount of what had happened until the following morning.
"'It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang hadproceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners. The two wardershad been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate.Prendergast then descended into the 'tween-decks and with his own handscut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon. There only remained the firstmate, who was a bold and active man. When he saw the convict approachinghim with the bloody knife in his hand he kicked off his bonds, which hehad somehow contrived to loosen, and rushing down the deck he plungedinto the after-hold. A dozen convicts, who descended with their pistolsin search of him, found him with a match-box in his hand seated besidean open powder-barrel, which was one of a hundred carried on board, andswearing that he would blow all hands up if he were in any way molested.An instant later the explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it wascaused by the misdirected bullet of one of the convicts rather than themate's match. Be the cause what it may, it was the end of the _GloriaScott_ and of the rabble who held command of her.
"'Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of this terriblebusiness in which I was involved. Next day we were picked up by the brig_Hotspur_, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty inbelieving that we were the survivors of a passenger ship which hadfoundered. The transport ship Gloria Scott was set down by the Admiraltyas being lost at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her truefate. After an excellent voyage the _Hotspur_ landed us at Sydney, whereEvans and I changed our names and made our way to the diggings,where, among the crowds who were gathered from all nations, we had nodifficulty in losing our former identities. The rest I need not relate.We prospered, we traveled, we came back as rich colonials to England,and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we haveled peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was foreverburied. Imagine, then, my feelings when in the seaman who came to us Irecognized instantly the man who had been picked off the wreck. He hadtracked us down somehow, and had set himself to live upon our fears. Youwill understand now how it was that I strove to keep the peace with him,and you will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears which fillme, now that he has gone from me to his other victim with threats uponhis tongue.'
"Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly legible,'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet Lord, have mercyon our souls!'
"That was the narrative which I read that night to young Trevor, and Ithink, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a dramatic one.The good fellow was heart-broken at it, and went out to the Terai teaplanting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor andBeddoes, neither of them was ever heard of again after that day on whichthe letter of warning was written. They both disappeared utterly andcompletely. No complaint had been lodged with the police, so thatBeddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen lurkingabout, and it was believed by the police that he had done away withBeddoes and had fled. For myself I believe that the truth was exactlythe opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed todesperation and believing himself to have been already betrayed, hadrevenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as muchmoney as he could lay his hands on. Those are the facts of the case,Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure thatthey are very heartily at your service."
Adventure V. The Musgrave Ritual
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend SherlockHolmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatestand most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certainquiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits oneof the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. Therough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a naturalBohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits amedical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man whokeeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end ofa Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by ajack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I beginto give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistolpractice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, inone of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-triggerand a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the oppositewall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly thatneither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved byit.
Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics whichhad a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up inthe butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers weremy great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially thosewhich were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once inevery year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrangethem; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs,the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkablefeats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions oflethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books,hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after monthhis papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked withbundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and whichcould not be put away save by their owner. One winter's night, as wesat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he hadfinished pasting extracts into his common-place book, he might employthe next two hours in making our room a little more habitable. He couldnot deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he wentoff to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling a large tinbox behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and, squattingdown upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid. I could seethat it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with redtape into separate packages.
"There are cases enough here, Watson," said he, looking at me withmischievous eyes. "I think that if you knew all that I had in this boxyou would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in."
"These are the records of your early work, then?" I asked. "I have oftenwished that I had notes of those cases."
"Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographerhad come to glorify me." He lifted bundle after bundle in a tender,caressing sort of way. "They are not all successes, Watson," said he."But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the recordof the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant,and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affairof the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of theclub-foot, and his abominable wife. And here--ah, now, this really issomething a little recherche."
He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest, and brought up a smallwooden box with a sliding lid, such as children's toys are kept in. Fromwithin he produced a crumpled piece of paper, an old-fashioned brasskey, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rustyold disks of metal.
"Well, my boy, what do you make of this lot?" he asked, smiling at myexpression.
"It is a curious collection."
"Very curious, and the story that hangs round it will strike you asbeing more curious still."
"These relics have a history then?"
"So much so that they are history."
"What do you mean by that?"