Snake Bite

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sherlock fell backwards, shocked, as the creature that had been hiding by his side levered itself up out of the mud of the riverbank on four short legs that ended in vicious claws.

Its eyes were small and slitted, and they stared at Sherlock without emotion, like fragments of stone. Behind the rear legs its body turned into a long, flat tail that took up fully half its length. There were razor-edged ridges running along both sides of that tail. The thing was a reptile of some kind. Its skin was marked by deep cracks, and hung beneath it in swags and folds. Its head was flat, like a spade. Two nostrils were set at the very front, and set high, so that it could breathe while lying in the water, Sherlock deduced. It was obviously a hunter, and one that lay in wait, in hiding. From the tip of its snout to the end of its tail it was about the same size as Sherlock, but it seemed to be mostly muscle.

All this detail Sherlock picked up in the fragment of a second that it took the creature to use its tail to propel itself towards him. He stretched out his arms, trying to catch the thing in mid-air. His hands grabbed at its snout and clamped its mouth shut. Half of the teeth seemed to still be outside the mouth, pointing in all directions. He could hear air hissing through its nostrils, and he could smell its breath — rotting meat and rotting fish. Its front claws ripped at his chest, drawing blood and stinging, while its rear claws scrabbled for purchase on the ground. Its muscular tail lashed against the mud in an attempt to push it closer to Sherlock. The razor-sharp ridges along the sides of the tail raked against the skin of his legs, ripping the flesh and leaving lines of burning agony in their wake.

Sherlock twisted, forcing the creature around so that it was beneath him. His hands were still clamping its jaws shut, and he forced it down into the mud, manoeuvring his body so that he had one knee on its snout, holding its jaws closed, and the other knee trapping its tail. It writhed and squirmed beneath him but he was fairly sure that he had it trapped. For a while, anyway.

He glanced down at the boat, panicked. Arrhenius and his daughter were staring up the bank. They had obviously heard something of the struggle, but not seen anything. The incredible thing was that the creature was making almost no sound apart from the hissing of its breath through its nostrils. Any other animal would have been barking or growling or screeching or something, but this creature, whatever it was, seemed either unable or unwilling to make any noise when it fought.

With one quick action Sherlock put all of his weight into the hardest punch he could manage, directed right at the back of the creature’s neck. It bucked beneath him once, then was still. For one glorious moment he thought that he had killed it, but then he realized that he could still feel its sides moving as it breathed. He must have stunned it — or perhaps it was just playing dead, waiting for him to release it.

‘Go and see what’s making that noise.’ Mr Arrhenius’s voice floated up from the boat below. ‘If it is one of those adolescents then kill him. Then I want you to go back to their boat and retrieve that venom injector. I can’t afford to have that discovered. Then use it to kill the others. This time, do it properly.’

The girl ran for the edge of the boat. She moved like an animal — four-legged, hands and feet all making contact with the deck. She leaped, and when she hit the bank she was suddenly running on two legs, using her hands to push reeds out of the way. She seemed desperate to prove herself to her… her what? Her father? Sherlock still couldn’t quite believe it.

Sherlock’s gaze snapped between the approaching girl and the creature that was pinioned beneath him. He couldn’t work out what to do for the best, how to escape.

He could hear the hissing sound of the reeds parting to let the girl through. She would be on him in a moment, and even without the poison injector she would be able to rip his throat out with the hard nails on her fingers. And she would, as well — he had seen no more mercy in her eyes than he had in the eyes of the creature he was kneeling on. But if he stopped holding the reptilian creature down, ready to defend himself against the girl, then it would almost certainly turn on him and attack. He couldn’t hold it with one hand either, which meant that he couldn’t get the poison injector out of his pocket.

He did the only thing he could. In the back of his mind he heard Amyus Crowe’s voice saying, ‘If life gives you lemons, Sherlock, make lemonade. Use whatever you’ve got to hand to your advantage. Things that seem like problems might actually be solutions to other problems.’

Still holding the reptile by the snout, he slipped his other hand beneath it and grabbed its leg. He took his knee off its tail. Immediately it started to struggle. Before it could wriggle loose from his grasp, he used every ounce of his strength to hoist it into the air. It bucked and twisted, but he held on.

The reeds parted and the girl emerged. Her teeth were bared and her black tongue was extended. Her glittering eyes fixed themselves on Sherlock and she snarled.

So he threw the reptile at her.

It tried to turn in mid-air to bite him, but he had thrown it too hard and too far for it to reach him. It hit the girl full in the face. Shocked, she fell backwards, hands grabbing at the reptile to contain it. Sensing something warm nearby, the creature turned and tried to bite her. She grabbed at its snout with one hand and its scrabbling claws with the other. From what Sherlock could see of her face she wasn’t scared, or even surprised. She was completely focused on defeating this new threat.

The two of them — girl and reptile — disappeared into the reeds. Sherlock could hear the continued sounds of their struggle, growing fainter and fainter as they rolled down the riverbank towards the water. There was a splash, and then a lot of splashing. Then there was silence.

He stood up and stared down at the river. He couldn’t see the girl, or the reptile, but he could see Mr Arrhenius. The man was casting off, preparing to sail. He turned and stared up at Sherlock.

‘You and that river alligator appear to have solved a problem for me,’ he called cheerfully. ‘She was getting to be more of a liability than an asset.’

‘What you’re trying to do is madness!’ Sherlock shouted. ‘Don’t you realize how many people will die?’

Arrhenius shrugged as the boat drifted into the river. ‘I do not care. I am being well paid for this. My employers do not care either. After all, they run mines where people die all the time, and factories where people breathe in poisons every day that shorten their lives. As long as they make a profit, death is merely an unfortunate by-product of their business.’ He raised his hat. ‘You have been an interesting adversary. I trust we will not meet again.’

‘I’ll stop you!’ Sherlock yelled. ‘I will stop you.’

‘Beware the bite of the snake, young man,’ Arrhenius warned. He placed his hat back on his head and turned to check the sail.

Wildly, Sherlock plunged down the slope to the river. If he got to Arrhenius, if he could somehow stop the man from leaving, then maybe the ship wouldn’t blow up. Arrhenius had seemed to tell the girl that he had to get to the place where the explosion was going to happen — presumably the same place the Governor of the province was going to board the ship — and give a signal. Mud clung to his feet and he almost fell over twice as he made his way down, but he was too late. Arrhenius’s boat was out on the river and moving fast. There was an early morning breeze blowing from the coast, and Arrhenius’s sails were catching it and pushing him on.

He slammed his fist into his leg in frustration. So near and yet so far.

Hesitating for only a moment, he turned and climbed the bank again. When he got to the path at the top he sprinted back towards where he had left Cameron and Wu Fung-Yi. There was no sign of the girl. If she had survived the fight with the reptile then she must have run off, looking either for her father or for shelter.

Sherlock tried to feel guilty about what he had done — fighting a girl! — but he couldn’t. There was something drastically wrong with her. She was more animal than girl, and she was probably better off without Arrhenius. Sherlock had a feeling that she would survive no matter what the circumstances.

He wondered what her name was. It seemed such a trivial thing, but it was hard to think of her as a person without actually knowing.

It took him only a few minutes to reach the boat. He skidded down the bank and leaped for the deck. The two boys were waiting for him.

‘What happened?’ Cameron asked.

‘I’ll tell you as we go, but we’re in a race,’ Sherlock said, gasping for breath. ‘We need to cast off, raise sail and head upstream.’

‘You’re injured,’ Cameron observed, looking at the bloody scratches on Sherlock’s chest, face and legs.

‘Worry about that later. We need to move.’

As Sherlock cast off, Cameron struggled to raise the sail and Wu Fung-Yi took the rudder. Sherlock gasped out as much of the story as he could. ‘Arrhenius needs to give a signal to the fake cook on board the Monocacy,’ Sherlock finished as their boat drifted out into the river and the sail caught the breeze. ‘If he’s not there the bomb doesn’t go off.’

‘Why does he need to give a signal in the first place?’ Wu called from the rear of the boat. ‘Why not just set the explosives off?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘The Monocacy is a big ship. We know the explosives are stored in the fake water barrels, and that means they’re probably stored near the galley, deep inside the ship, where the Head Cook can keep an eye on them. He’ll have to light a fuse in order to set off the explosion. He won’t know, hidden inside the ship, when the Governor steps on board. He’ll need someone off the ship to tell him when to light the fuse — which means he’ll probably be looking through a porthole, waiting for that signal.’

‘But why can’t someone else do it?’ Cameron asked, glancing over his shoulder at Sherlock. ‘Why does it have to be Arrhenius?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Maybe Arrhenius doesn’t trust anyone else. Or maybe they want to restrict the number of people who are involved with the conspiracy — after all, the more people who know then the more chance that someone will give it away, and this particular plot needs to be kept very secret for it to work.’

‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ Cameron said. ‘What was my father’s role in this? Was he one of the conspirators, or did he find out about it some other way?’

Sherlock mused. ‘He was obviously part of it, but he also obviously had a change of heart. Maybe it was supposed to be his job to travel upstream to where the Monocacy is moored and give the signal, but he changed his mind. I remember seeing him talking to Arrhenius at the dinner party at your house. Arrhenius seemed angry. Maybe that’s when he said that he wasn’t going to take part in the conspiracy. I think he decided that he couldn’t stomach the loss of life that would result from the explosion. So Arrhenius had him killed, but then Arrhenius had to take his place and give the signal.’

‘So he was a hero, in the end?’ Cameron asked quietly. ‘He tried to do the right thing?’

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said. ‘He did.’

It was possible to see across the river now. The sun wasn’t yet visible above the horizon, but the stars had vanished and the sky itself was dark blue rather than black. The river was already filling up with other boats as people took the opportunity to make an early start.

‘Which boat belongs to Arrhenius?’ Wu asked. Sherlock and Cameron both scanned all the boats they could see.

‘Impossible to tell,’ Cameron called back. ‘It’s still too dark, and they’re all too far away. If the plan is to try and intercept him, then we’ll probably never make it. He’s got a head start on us, and we can’t spot which boat is his.’

Sherlock felt his fists clench in frustration. Their only chance was to stop Arrhenius from sending the signal, but if they couldn’t spot him, and couldn’t catch up with him, then what chance did they have?

The USS Monocacy was going to blow up, and people were going to die, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He felt so powerless.

Sherlock noticed one particular boat which was floating outside the main throng. It was long and thin, and made out of wood that had been painted a bright red. The edges of the boat were decorated with gold paint, and the front had been carved into the head of a dragon: all sharp teeth and flaring nostrils and, bizarrely, strands of beard hanging down beneath its jaw. Ten men were in the boat: eight of them held oars, one operated a rudder at the back while the tenth sat in the front facing backwards with a drum between his knees.

‘What’s that?’ Sherlock asked, pointing.

Cameron looked over. ‘It’s called a Dragon Boat,’ he said. ‘Each village has one. They race against one another at festivals.’

‘Fast?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Very,’ Wu called from the back of the boat. ‘Look at the muscles on the rowers.’

Sherlock glanced at the Dragon Boat. The oarsmen’s arms were thicker than his legs.

‘What are they doing out here?’ he called to Wu.

‘Practice,’ Wu replied. ‘They practise every morning before they go to work in the fields. There’s a big festival coming up.’

‘Steer towards them. I want to talk.’

Wu adjusted the rudder to bring them towards the Dragon Boat, while Sherlock and Cameron furled their sail so they wouldn’t be carried straight past. The oarsmen and the drummer in the front watched them curiously.

‘We need your help,’ Sherlock called. ‘We need to get upriver quickly.’

The men stared at him.

‘I can pay,’ he said. He glanced at Cameron, who nodded. ‘How much to take us?’

The men briefly conferred. The drummer called across: ‘Five cash.’

‘Agreed,’ Sherlock said automatically, not sure how much that was in coins but knowing that he had to get their help.

‘Each.’

Sherlock looked at Cameron again. ‘Agreed,’ he sighed.

‘We can’t just leave my uncle’s boat drifting here!’ Wu called from the rudder.

Sherlock nodded. ‘We’ll leave three of the oarsmen on board. They can take it to the bank. We’ll retrieve it later. That’ll create room for us to sit. We’ll have to row, I’m afraid.’

Cameron shrugged. ‘It’s a new experience. My life at the moment seems to be full of new experiences.’

Within a few minutes the three of them had swapped with three of the oarsmen, and Wu’s uncle’s boat was heading for the bank. Other boats diverted around them.

Sherlock glanced at the paddle. It was broad at the base, with a long handle. He hefted it experimentally, then glanced at the drummer. The man was naked to the waist, and as muscular as the rowers. His black hair hung down his back in a plait.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Sherlock said.

The drummer grinned at him, then deliberately brought a drumstick down on the drum. A deep dumm! vibrated through the boat. He hit it again, with the other stick — dumm! The oarsmen all held themselves ready. As the third dumm! shook Sherlock’s bones all of the oarsmen leaned forward and pushed their oars into the water. Sherlock, Cameron and Wu joined in.

The boat shot forward, white spume splashing up from the bows.

The man holding the rudder steered them so that the boat was heading upriver. Sherlock was amazed at how quickly they picked up speed. Other boats flashed past them, and Sherlock caught momentary visions of faces frozen in various expressions ranging from annoyance to surprise. They were easily travelling three or four times as fast as the other boats. At first he tried to keep a watch out for Mr Arrhenius, but everything began to blur into a continuous stream of images from which it was difficult to pick out anything in particular. Sherlock quickly fell into an exhausting routine of rowing. The muscles in his arms and shoulders burned with the unexpected exercise. The torn flesh on his chest felt as if liquid fire was dripping out of it. Water splashed his face, and he kept licking his lips just to get some moisture into his body. The sound of the drums became the sound of his pulse throbbing in his ears: dumm! dumm! dumm!

He glanced over his shoulder to where Cameron sat behind him. Cameron’s face was set, his jaw clenched, and his gaze seemed to pass across Sherlock without really recognizing him.

After a period of time that might have been minutes or might have been hours, he heard Wu Fung-Yi’s voice calling his name. ‘Sherlock! Sherlock!’

‘What?’ he called, shaking his head to clear the fog from it.

‘What’s that up ahead?’

Sherlock looked past the oarsmen in front of him. Beyond the bows of the Dragon Boat and past the carved wooden head of the dragon itself he saw a great wheel rising from the water.

‘It’s the Monocacy!’ His voice was hoarse. ‘We’ve made it! Tell them to steer for the ship!’

The Monocacy was stationary, close in to the riverbank. It was moored to a wooden pier. Hills rose up sharply from the edge of the river. Across on the other side were the ruins of what looked like an old military fort. One tower and a few walls still stood, but the rest was rubble.

The Dragon Boat carved its way through the water, heading for the USS Monocacy. Sailors on board noticed its approach and guns were trained on the Dragon Boat.

Sherlock motioned to the drummer in the front of the boat to slow the pace down, and bring them to a halt a hundred yards or so away from the ship. He set his oar in the boat and stood up cautiously, feeling the boat rock beneath him. He tried hard to keep his footing: if he fell into the water now then he wasn’t sure his arms had the strength to stop him from sinking.

‘My name is Sherlock Holmes,’ he shouted in English across the water to the sailors. ‘I am a British subject. I need to speak to Captain Bryan urgently.’

‘Do not approach!’ a voice called back. ‘If you do you will be fired upon!’

‘It is imperative that I speak to Captain Bryan!’

The fact that he knew the Captain’s name obviously impressed the sailors. They conferred among themselves, and then eventually someone of higher rank was called.

‘My name is Lieutenant MacCrery. What is your message?’ he shouted down from his position on the deck of the Monocacy.

‘Explosives have been hidden on board!’ Sherlock yelled.

‘What?’

‘There’s a bomb on board your ship!’

More frantic conferring, then: ‘Did you say there’s a bomb on board this ship?’

‘That’s exactly what I said.’

‘Come alongside the pier. Be aware: there are weapons trained on you. Any sign of trouble and we will fire!’

Sherlock gestured to the oarsmen to take the boat over to the pier. They obviously couldn’t understand what had been said, but they knew that there were guns pointed at them and they were nervous. Sherlock could hear muted discussions behind him along the lines that they ought to have asked for more money.

The Dragon Boat moved closer to the pier. Sherlock waited until they were beside the wooden structure, then he grabbed for a ladder that had been fastened to the side. The USS Monocacy rose above him like a dirty white cliff.

‘I’ll warn Captain Bryan,’ he called to Cameron and Wu. ‘You two keep an eye out for Mr Arrhenius. He can’t be that far behind us, and I’d hate him to give the signal while I was on board.’

‘What do we do if we spot him?’ Wu asked.

‘Raise the alarm,’ Sherlock suggested. ‘And then go after him.’

‘He killed my father,’ Cameron pointed out grimly. ‘And he killed your father as well. I can think of a whole set of things I want to say to him if I see him.’

‘Don’t do anything… final,’ Sherlock suggested. ‘We may need him alive to corroborate our story. If we can get him on board the ship then I doubt he’d either want or be able to send the signal to the man with the explosives.’ He glanced up at the ship and the cluster of sailors who were waiting for him. ‘Wish me luck. This might be the most important and difficult conversation of my life.’

‘If Arrhenius is here and we can’t find him,’ Cameron said, ‘it might also be the shortest.’