Snake Bite (3 page)

‘All right!’ Sherlock shouted, and followed Wu down the hatchway ladder and into the interior of the ship.

The corridors were a flickering mass of shadows, as the pitching and tossing of the
Gloria Scott
caused the lanterns, which were attached to hooks along the walls, to roll back and forth.
The light from the candles inside them made everything look yellow and sick. Without the sight of the horizon to keep his sense of balance intact, Sherlock was beginning to feel the same. The smell
down there was the usual combination of unwashed humans and candle tallow. Water sloshed across the decks as the ship moved. Usually it was only in the black depths of the hold that water
penetrated, but it seemed to be present everywhere.

Sherlock followed Wu to the galley, which was a narrow room at the end of one of the corridors. The stove had already been doused, Sherlock noted, otherwise sparks might spill out and set fire
to something. The copper pans which Wu used were supposed to be hanging from hooks on the ceiling, but most of them had fallen off and were rolling around the floor. The few remaining ones were
swinging dangerously. A blow from one of them could knock a man out cold. Cupboards and drawers were built into every available nook and cranny, and as the ship lurched from side to side the doors
were swinging open and then shut again, and the drawers were sliding out and back. It was as if a malevolent poltergeist was trying to cause chaos. The sound was deafening.

Wu shoved a hand towards Sherlock. ‘Take!’ he said. Sherlock raised his cupped hands up, and Wu dropped ten or more thin wooden wedges into them. ‘Make drawers and doors
fast,’ he said. ‘Do it now!’

Sherlock got the idea. Quickly, avoiding the obstacle course of swinging pans, he wedged all the cupboard doors and drawers shut by thrusting the wooden triangles into any gap he could see and
hammering them home with the heel of his hand. Wu, meanwhile, did his best to get the rest of the pans down without them bashing his brains out and shove them into the biggest cupboard.

All around them, Sherlock could hear the wooden beams of the ship creaking, thanks to the stress under which they were being put. Once, in London, he had seen a wooden cart come apart as it
tried to take a corner too fast, toppled over and hit the ground. Now here he was, inside a glorified wooden box held together with nothing but nails and tar, too far from the coast to swim for
safety if the ship came apart.

Was this what the Paradol Chamber had in mind for him? Was this their punishment?

When all the drawers and doors were secured, he turned to Wu. The creaking and groaning of the ship’s beams were too great for him to make himself understood, so he gestured around and
raised his shoulders in a shrug as he yelled, ‘I want to be on deck!’ Actually, he didn’t – he just didn’t want to be trapped inside the ship if the storm capsized
them, but Wu wasn’t a sailor. Wu nodded. His pox-scarred, moon-shaped face was serious. He half pushed Sherlock towards the door, steering him left, away from the hatch that led up to the
deck. Sherlock resisted. When Wu tried to push him again, Sherlock grabbed at his wrist and shook his head violently.

Wu obviously wanted to be as far from the storm as possible, and if that meant being deep inside the bowels of the ship then that was fine with him.

Wu tried to push Sherlock again, but Sherlock shook his head. ‘No!’ he yelled. Wu seemed to lip-read what he was saying, because he let go of Sherlock’s shoulder and then
patted it sadly. It was a goodbye, of sorts. Wu obviously wasn’t expecting to see Sherlock again.

Sherlock slid past the Chinese cook and half ran, half stumbled towards the ladder which led up to the hatch.

He turned as he put his foot on the bottom rung, and saw the cook’s broad back vanish around a corner. He scuttled up the ladder, hoping that Wu was wrong, and that they would both
survive. That they would
all
survive.

Three sailors were attaching the wooden hatch cover when he popped his head over the edge. They were soaked from head to foot, and their faces were haggard with strain and fear. One of them
pulled him up while the others fastened the cover down and nailed it on.

Things were worse than before, up on deck. The sky was now a uniform purple from horizon to horizon – or at least, it would have been if the horizon had been visible. As it was, visibility
dropped to zero a few hundred yards from the ship. Sherlock spent a second or two taking it all in – the waves, taller than the ship, the spume that covered everything, the sharp tang of salt
in the air – and then ran for the nearest rigging where he could wind his arms through the ropes and hang on for dear life. As he was halfway to his goal the ship suddenly lurched to one side
and the horizontal deck became a wooden slide down which he skidded, splinters catching in his clothes. He slammed into the railing around the edge of the ship, nearly breaking his legs, and would
have gone through one of the gaps and vanished into the churning waters below if he hadn’t managed to grab hold of a brass knob that was bolted securely to the wooden rail. He’d often
wondered what the knob was for – none of the sailors ever seemed to tie anything to it – but whatever use it had he was thankful that it had been there when he needed it. Carefully he
pulled himself back on to the deck and wound first one arm and then the other around the rail, closely followed by his legs.

His heart was hammering in his chest, and he could feel his throat closing up with terror. The storm had overtaken them with frightening speed.

Other sailors were scattered around the deck, each one with his arms wound into the rigging so that a wave wouldn’t carry him off the deck and into the heaving sea.

A flash of light suddenly blinded him. Automatically he counted seconds – one . . . two . . . and then a tremendously loud
crash
echoed all around. Sherlock could feel it through
the wood of the deck and railings as much as hear it. Two miles. The storm was still two miles away. He knew that because Mycroft had once told him that each second’s gap between thunder and
lightning meant that the storm was another mile away.

And if this was two miles from the centre of the storm then what was it like in its centre?

Through the rain and the spray, he could see Mr Larchmont standing at the wheelhouse. His legs were braced against the deck and his hands were clamped on a rail hard enough that Sherlock could
swear that they were actually embedded in the wood. His hair was whipping around his face. He didn’t look scared, or even concerned. He just looked determined. He stared straight down the
centreline of the ship as if daring the storm to do its worst. Sherlock saw his lips move and, incredibly, heard the commanding tone of his voice even above the storm.

‘
Loosen the sails!
’ he yelled. ‘
Loosen those sails if you ever want to see your mothers and your lovers again!
’

Sherlock glanced up at the sails, and immediately understood. They were pulled tight under the force of the wind – so tight that they might rip from top to bottom if the storm got any
worse – and if the
Gloria Scott
was two miles from its centre then it might very well get worse. The ropes that held the sails were also pulled as tight as violin strings. They might
break, leaving the canvas to flap about destructively. The wind might also be strong enough to topple the ship over, if it didn’t rip the canvas. If the sails were loosened then the crew at
least had a chance. They would be adrift and at the mercy of the storm, not knowing where they might end up, but their chances of getting through this would be increased.

Incredibly, some of the sailors scrambled from their places of safety across the deck for the points where the sail rigging was attached. Sherlock wasn’t sure if they were more scared by
Mr Larchmont than they were by the storm, or whether they just knew that they had to risk their very lives in order to save the ship. Whatever the reason, they grabbed for where the ropes were
wound around hooks and stanchions and, two or three together, taking the strain, they released the tension in the ropes and reattached them loosely. Immediately the wind caught the sails and pulled
the ropes tight, but as the wind shifted the sails flapped loose and the ropes sagged, only to be pulled tight again moments later.

Sherlock glanced out past the railing, and caught his breath. Once, a year or more ago, he had woken up in a bedroom in a château in France belonging to Baron Maupertuis. Thinking he was
in Farnham, he had thrown open the curtains, and been shocked speechless by the sight of mountains outside the window. Suddenly he was back there again, staring at mountains in bemusement, but
these mountains were made of water, and they were a lot closer. Close enough that he felt he could almost reach out and touch them.

Suddenly the immensity and the grandeur of the world struck him. A feeling of exultation seemed to flood through his body, washing away all the fear and replacing it with wondrous amazement.
Farnham was small. London was small. There was so much else out there to see. How could Mycroft bear to stay in his flat and in his club and in his office, scuttling between them in a closed
carriage, when there was all this spectacle in the world?

The real storm broke over an hour later, but in Sherlock’s mind it had lost its power over his emotions by then. From that moment on he was just a spectator, awestruck at what he was
seeing. All physical sensation – fear, tiredness, pain, hunger – all of it faded away in the face of the incredible sights and sounds of nature at play. It didn’t matter that the
Gloria Scott
was being tossed around like a leaf on the edge of a waterfall; it didn’t matter that lightning struck the mainmast twice, leaving gashes of scorched wood and the smell of
burning in its wake; it didn’t matter that so much water was sloshing across the deck that the planks were invisible and the battened hatches were obvious only because the water would
suddenly break against their edges and spray upward. None of it was important. The ship and the sailors were like ants in the face of something massive and unstoppable and beautiful.

At one stage he slipped somewhere between sleep and a hypnotic state, his eyes open but seeing nothing.

He gradually came to his senses to find that the storm had abated. Sailors were moving across the deck, tightening the lines, unbattening the hatches and sweeping as much water as possible off
the deck and back into the sea. The sky was blue again, blue and clear. There were birds flying behind the ship once more, waiting for food to be thrown overboard.

Mr Larchmont was standing a few feet away. He glanced over at Sherlock.

‘Enjoy your little sleep?’ he asked.

Sherlock knew what he was expected to say. ‘Ready for duty, sir!’ he snapped, climbing to his feet.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Larchmont said. He looked up at the foremast. ‘I see some loose lines there. I would be much obliged if you would tighten them for me.’

‘Aye aye, sir!’ Sherlock headed for the rigging, but turned back and looked at Larchmont for a moment. ‘How many sailors did we lose, sir?’

Larchmont shook his head. ‘Too many,’ he said quietly. ‘And good men, all of them.’

Despite the exertions of the previous day, Sherlock awoke early. Lying in his hammock, gently swinging from side to side in the relative darkness of the sleeping area –
which was barely more than a widened section of corridor with hooks screwed to either side of the wall where the hammocks could be slung – he listened for a while to the gentle background
noise of creaking timbers, waves slapping against the sides of the ship, sailors snoring, snorting or talking in their sleep, and the blundering sounds of men either getting out of their hammocks
or getting into them. The business of running the
Gloria Scott
went on all day and all night, of course, and as one shift was rising another was going to sleep. Bells were rung to signal the
beginning and end of shifts, and Sherlock’s wasn’t for a while yet.

Eventually Sherlock slid out of his hammock and dressed in the same clothes he had worn the previous day, and the day before that, and all the days before that leading back to his abduction. The
only washing the clothes got was the soaking from the waves which came over the side of the ship. Ducking beneath the line of canvas hammocks that, strangely, almost mimicked the ship’s sails
in their swollen, occupied state, he made his way to the galley.

Wu Chung was absent. Instead, another sailor – a cadaverous individual named Scorby – was dishing out a mixture of hard biscuits, oat porridge and dried meat. Sherlock took a
plateful, sat at a vacant bench and quickly scoffed it down. He wondered what had happened to the Chinese cook. The last time Sherlock had seen him, Wu had been going towards the depths of the
ship. Had he survived the storm, or had something happened to him? Perhaps he had accidentally hit his head on a low beam when the
Gloria Scott
had been listing from side to side under the
heavy hand of the wind. Or perhaps he had gone down to the bilges – the dark, wet depths of the ship closest to the keel – and somehow fallen over and drowned in the stagnant water that
sloshed back and forth down there.

Sherlock pushed his empty plate away and got up. His place was instantly taken by another sailor. Heading back to where Scorby was still serving, he asked, ‘Where’s Wu?’

‘Wu Chung?’ Scorby asked, as if there was another Chinese sailor named Wu on board who Sherlock might have been asking after. ‘Up on deck, mate. ’E’s doin’
some kind of strange dance.’

Sherlock felt a sense of relief wash over him. Wu wasn’t exactly a friend, but he was one of the few sailors to have taken an interest in him. If Wu had died then who else was going to
teach Sherlock Cantonese?

He headed up the ladder towards the deck. The bright light made him blink and screw up his eyes. When they had adjusted he looked around, checking for any damage that the storm had left. It was
as if nothing had happened. The sails were full, the masts and yards were intact, and the deck was as dry as it ever got. The sailors on shift were moving around normally. Despite the violence of
the previous night Sherlock got the impression that tropical storms were something that happened, were dealt with and were then forgotten. Everyone and everything moved on.