ON BOARD THE “GEHENNA”
When the Gehenna had passed
down the Styx and out through the beautiful Cimmerian
Harbor into the broad waters of the ocean, and everything
was comparatively safe for a while at least, Sherlock
Holmes came down from the bridge, where he had taken
his place as the commander of the expedition at the
moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with
anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain
could be seen to be throbbing violently, and the corrugations
of his gray matter were not pleasant to witness as
he tried vainly to squeeze an idea out of them.
“What is the matter?”
asked Demosthenes, anxiously. “We are not
in any danger, are we?”
“No,” replied Holmes.
“But I am somewhat puzzled at the bubbles on
the surface of the ocean, and the ripples which we
passed over an hour or two ago, barely perceptible
through the most powerful microscope, indicate to
my mind that for some reason at present unknown to
me the House-boat has changed her course. Take
that bubble floating by. It is the last expiring
bit of aerial agitation of the House-boat’s wake.
Observe whence it comes. Not from the Azores
quarter, but as if instead of steering a straight
course thither the House-boat had taken a sharp turn
to the northeast, and was making for Havre; or, in
other words, Paris instead of London seems to have
become their destination.”
Demosthenes looked at Holmes with
blank amazement, and, to keep from stammering out
the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips, he
opened his bonbonnière and swallowed a pebble.
“You don’t happen to have
a cocaine tablet in your box, do you?” queried
Holmes.
“No,” returned the Greek.
“Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but these
pebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down. How
on earth do you know that that bubble comes from the
wake of the House-boat?”
“By my chemical knowledge, merely,”
replied Holmes. “A merely worldly vessel
leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake. That
one we have just discovered is not so, but sulphurescent,
if I may coin a word which it seems to me the English
language is very much in need of. It proves, then,
that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian
craft, and the only Stygian craft that has cleared
the Cimmerian Harbor for years is the House-boat Q.E.D.”
“We can go back until we find
the ripple again, and follow that, I presume,”
sneered Le Coq, who did not take much stock
in the theories of his great rival, largely because
he was a detective by intuition rather than by study
of the science.
“You can if you want to, but
it is better not to,” rejoined Holmes, simply,
as though not observing the sneer, “because the
ripple represents the outer lines of the angle of
disturbance in the water; and as any one of the sides
to an angle is greater than the perpendicular from
the hypothenuse to the apex, you’d merely be
going the long way. This is especially important
when you consider the formation of the bow of the
House-boat, which is rounded like the stern of most
vessels, and comes near to making a pair of ripples
at an angle of ninety degrees.”
“Then,” observed Sir Walter,
with a sigh of disappointment, “we must change
our course and sail for Paris?”
“I am afraid so,” said
Holmes; “but of course it’s by no means
certain as yet. I think if Columbus would go
up into the mizzentop and look about him, he might
discover something either in confirmation or refutation
of the theory.”
“He couldn’t discover
anything,” put in Pinzon. “He never
did.”
“Well, I like that!” retorted
Columbus. “I’d like to know who discovered
America.”
“So should I,” observed
Leif Ericson, with a wink at Vespucci.
“Tut!” retorted Columbus.
“I did it, and the world knows it, whether you
claim it or not.”
“Yes, just as Noah discovered
Ararat,” replied Pinzon. “You sat
upon the deck until we ran plumb into an island, after
floating about for three months, and then you couldn’t
tell it from a continent, even when you had it right
before your eyes. Noah might just as well have
told his family that he discovered a roof garden as
for you to go back to Spain telling ’em all
that San Salvador was the United States.”
“Well, I don’t care,”
said Columbus, with a short laugh. “I’m
the one they celebrate, so what’s the odds?
I’d rather stay down here in the smoking-room
enjoying a small game, anyhow, than climb up that mast
and strain my eyes for ten or a dozen hours looking
for evidence to prove or disprove the correctness
of another man’s theory. I wouldn’t
know evidence when I saw it, anyhow. Send Judge
Blackstone.”
“I draw the line at the mizzentop,”
observed Blackstone. “The dignity of the
bench must and shall be preserved, and I’ll never
consent to climb up that rigging, getting pitch and
paint on my ermine, no matter who asks me to go.”
“Whomsoever I tell to go, shall
go,” put in Holmes, firmly. “I am
commander of this ship. It will pay you to remember
that, Judge Blackstone.”
“And I am the Court of Appeals,”
retorted Blackstone, hotly. “Bear that in
mind, captain, when you try to send me up. I’ll
issue a writ of habeas corpus on my own body,
and commit you for contempt.”
“There’s no use of sending
the Judge, anyhow,” said Raleigh, fearing by
the glitter that came into the eye of the commander
that trouble might ensue unless pacificatory measures
were resorted to. “He’s accustomed
to weighing everything carefully, and cannot be rushed
into a decision. If he saw any evidence, he’d
have to sit on it a week before reaching a conclusion.
What we need here more than anything else is an expert
seaman, a lookout, and I nominate Shem. He has
sailed under his father, and I have it on good authority
that he is a nautical expert.”
Holmes hesitated for an instant.
He was considering the necessity of disciplining the
recalcitrant Blackstone, but he finally yielded.
“Very well,” he said.
“Shem be it. Bo’sun, pipe Shem on
deck, and tell him that general order number one requires
him to report at the mizzentop right away, and that
immediately he sees anything he shall come below and
make it known to me. As for the rest of us, having
a very considerable appetite, I do now decree that
it is dinner-time. Shall we go below?”
“I don’t think I care
for any, thank you,” said Raleigh. “Fact
is ah I dined last week, and
am not hungry.”
Noah laughed. “Oh, come
below and watch us eat, then,” he said.
“It’ll do you good.”
But there was no reply. Raleigh
had plunged head first into his state-room, which
fortunately happened to be on the upper deck.
The rest of the spirits repaired below to the saloon,
where they were soon engaged in an animated discussion
of such viands as the larder provided.
“This,” said Dr. Johnson,
from the head of the table, “is what I call
comfort. I don’t know that I am so anxious
to recover the House-boat, after all.”
“Nor I,” said Socrates,
“with a ship like this to go off cruising on,
and with such a larder. Look at the thickness
of that puree, Doctor ”
“Excuse me,” said Boswell,
faintly, “but I I’ve left my
note-bub-book upstairs, Doctor, and I’d like
to go up and get it.”
“Certainly,” said Dr.
Johnson. “I judge from your color, which
is highly suggestive of a modern magazine poster,
that it might be well too if you stayed on deck for
a little while and made a few entries in your commonplace
book.”
“Thank you,” said Boswell,
gratefully. “Shall you say anything clever
during dinner, sir? If so, I might be putting
it down while I’m up ”
“Get out!” roared the
Doctor. “Get up as high as you can get
up with Shem on the mizzentop ”
“Very good, sir,” replied Boswell, and
he was off.
“You ought to be more lenient
with him, Doctor,” said Bonaparte; “he
means well.”
“I know it,” observed
Johnson; “but he’s so very previous.
Last winter, at Chaucer’s dinner to Burns, I
made a speech, which Boswell printed a week before
it was delivered, with the words ‘laughter’
and ’uproarious applause’ interspersed
through it. It placed me in a false position.”
“How did he know what you were
going to say?” queried Demosthenes.
“Don’t know,” replied
Johnson. “Kind of mind-reader, I fancy,”
he added, blushing a trifle. “But, Captain
Holmes, what do you deduce from your observation of
the wake of the House-boat? If she’s going
to Paris, why the change?”
“I have two theories,” replied the detective.
“Which is always safe,” said Le Coq.
“Always; it doubles your chances
of success,” acquiesced Holmes. “Anyhow,
it gives you a choice, which makes it more interesting.
The change of her course from Londonward to Parisward
proves to me either that Kidd is not satisfied with
the extent of the revenge he has already taken, and
wishes to ruin you gentlemen financially by turning
your wives, daughters, and sisters loose on the Parisian
shops, or that the pirates have themselves been overthrown
by the ladies, who have decided to prolong their cruise
and get some fun out of their misfortune.”
“And where else than to Paris
would any one in search of pleasure go?” asked
Bonaparte.
“I had more fun a few miles
outside of Brussels,” said Wellington, with a
sly wink at Washington.
“Oh, let up on that!”
retorted Bonaparte. “It wasn’t you
beat me at Waterloo. You couldn’t have
beaten me at a plain ordinary game of old-maid with
a stacked pack of cards, much less in the game of war,
if you hadn’t had the elements with you.”
“Tut!” snapped Wellington.
“It was clear science laid you out, Boney.”
“Taisey-voo!” shouted
the irate Corsican. “Clear science be hanged!
Wet science was what did it. If it hadn’t
been for the rain, my little Duke, I should have been
in London within a week, my grenadiers would have been
camping in your Rue Peekadeely, and the Old Guard all
over everywhere else.”
“You must have had a gay army,
then,” laughed Cæsar. “What are French
soldiers made of, that they can’t stand the wet unshrunk
linen or flannel?”
“Bah!” observed Napoleon,
shrugging his shoulders and walking a few paces away.
“You do not understand the French. The Frenchman
is not a pell-mell soldier like you Romans; he is
the poet of arms; he does not go in for glory at the
expense of his dignity; style, form, is dearer to him
than honor, and he has no use for fighting in the
wet and coming out of the fight conspicuous as a victor
with the curl out of his feathers and his epaulets
rusted with the damp. There is no glory in water.
But if we had had umbrellas and mackintoshes, as every
Englishman who comes to the Continent always has,
and a bath-tub for everybody, then would your Waterloo
have been different again, and the great democracy
of Europe with a Bonaparte for emperor would have
been founded for what the Americans call the keeps;
and as for your little Great Britain, ha! she would
have become the Blackwell’s Island of the Greater
France.”
“You’re almost as funny
as Punch isn’t,” drawled Wellington,
with an angry gesture at Bonaparte. “You
weren’t within telephoning distance of victory
all day. We simply played with you, my boy.
It was a regular game of golf for us. We let
you keep up pretty close and win a few holes, but
on the home drive we had you beaten in one stroke.
Go to, my dear Bonaparte, and stop talking about the
flood.”
“It’s a lucky thing for
us that Noah wasn’t a Frenchman, eh?” said
Frederick the Great. “How that rain would
have fazed him if he had been! The human race
would have been wiped out.”
“Oh, pshaw!” ejaculated
Noah, deprecating the unseemliness of the quarrel,
and putting his arm affectionately about Bonaparte’s
shoulder. “When you come down to that,
I was French as French as one could be in
those days and these Gallic subjects of
my friend here were, every one of ’em, my lineal
descendants, and their hatred of rain was inherited
directly from me, their ancestor.”
“Are not we English as much
your descendants?” queried Wellington, arching
his eyebrows.
“You are,” said Noah,
“but you take after Mrs. Noah more than after
me. Water never fazes a woman, and your delight
in tubs is an essentially feminine trait. The
first thing Mrs. Noah carried aboard was a laundry
outfit, and then she went back for rugs and coats and
all sorts of hand-baggage. Gad, it makes me laugh
to this day when I think of it! She looked for
all the world like an Englishman travelling on the
Continent as she walked up the gang-plank behind the
elephants, each elephant with a Gladstone bag in his
trunk and a hat-box tied to his tail.” Here
the venerable old weather-prophet winked at Munchausen,
and the little quarrel which had been imminent passed
off in a general laugh.
“Where’s Boswell?
He ought to get that anecdote,” said Johnson.
“I’ve locked him up in
the library,” said Holmes. “He’s
in charge of the log, and as I have a pretty good
general idea as to what is about to happen, I have
mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to work
writing it up.” Here the detective gave
a sudden start, placed his hand to his ear, listened
intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch
and glancing at it, added, quietly, “In three
minutes Shem will be in here to announce a discovery,
and one of great importance, I judge, from the squeak.”
The assemblage gazed earnestly at Holmes for a moment.
“The squeak?” queried Raleigh.
“Precisely,” said Holmes.
“The squeak is what I said, and as I always say
what I mean, it follows logically that I meant what
I said.”
“I heard no squeak,” observed
Dr. Johnson; “and, furthermore, I fail to see
how a squeak, if I had heard it, would have portended
a discovery of importance.”
“It would not to
you,” said Holmes; “but with me it is different.
My hearing is unusually acute. I can hear the
dropping of a pin through a stone wall ten feet thick;
any sound within a mile of my eardrum vibrates thereon
with an intensity which would surprise you, and it
is by the use of cocaine that I have acquired this
wonderfully acute sense. A property which dulls
the senses of most people renders mine doubly apprehensive;
therefore, gentlemen, while to you there was no auricular
disturbance, to me there was. I heard Shem sliding
down the mast a minute since. The fact that he
slid down the mast instead of climbing down the rigging
showed that he was in great haste, therefore he must
have something to communicate of great importance.”
“Why isn’t he here already,
then? It wouldn’t take him two minutes to
get from the deck here,” asked the ever-suspicious
Le Coq.
“It is simple,” returned
Holmes, calmly. “If you will go yourself
and slide down that mast you will see. Shem has
stopped for a little witch-hazel to soothe his burns.
It is no cool matter sliding down a mast two hundred
feet in height.”
As Sherlock Holmes spoke the door
burst open and Shem rushed in.
“A signal of distress, captain!” he cried.
“From what quarter to larboard?”
asked Holmes.
“No,” returned Shem, breathless.
“Then it must be dead ahead,” said Holmes.
“Why not to starboard?” asked Le
Coq, dryly.
“Because,” answered Holmes,
confidently, “it never happens so. If you
had ever read a truly exciting sea-tale, my dear Le
Coq, you would have known that interesting things,
and particularly signals of distress, are never seen
except to larboard or dead ahead.”
A murmur of applause greeted this retort, and Le
Coq subsided.
“The nature of the signal?” demanded Holmes.
“A black flag, skull and cross-bones
down, at half-mast!” cried Shem, “and
on a rock-bound coast!”
“They’re marooned, by
heavens!” shouted Holmes, springing to his feet
and rushing to the deck, where he was joined immediately
by Sir Walter, Dr. Johnson, Bonaparte, and the others.
“Isn’t he a daisy?”
whispered Demosthenes to Diogenes as they climbed the
stairs.
“He is more than that; he’s
a blooming orchid,” said Diogenes, with intense
enthusiasm. “I think I’ll get my X-ray
lantern and see if he’s honest.”