Snake Bite

CHAPTER THREE

Larchmont passed by and clicked his fingers at Sherlock and Gittens. ‘You two,’ he snapped. ‘Look lively now, and break out the weapons from the armoury. Spread them among the crew.’ He slipped a rusty key from around his neck, where it was hanging from a cord, and handed it to Gittens. ‘Get on now — quickly. I’ll send sailors down to collect them. When you run out of weapons, start issuing belaying pins. When you run out of belaying pins, issue hooks and chains.’

‘Armoury?’ Sherlock questioned as Larchmont stalked away to shout at another sailor. ‘I didn’t even know we had an armoury.’

Gittens laughed bitterly. ‘Don’t start getting ideas,’ he said. ‘It’s not like this is a Naval warship. The armoury is just a cupboard near the Captain’s cabin, and the weapons are things that’ve been collected on various voyages over the past couple of years. There’re some swords, some knives, and a couple of muskets and rifles so rusted they’ll probably explode in a man’s hands as soon as the trigger is pulled. There’re also the axes that we use to chop timber up an’ splice ropes, and there’re rumours that the Captain has an Army revolver that he picked up in a bazaar somewhere which he keeps under his pillow in case of mutiny.’ He laughed again, but there was no humour in the sound. ‘Oh, and I suppose we can count Wu Chung’s cooking knives as well. Let’s hope he’s been sharpening them regular-like.’

‘It’s not a lot to fight off pirates,’ Sherlock said anxiously. ‘Don’t we have any cannon, or anything like that?’

‘This is a trading ship. We carry cargo. Cannon are heavy, and they take up space that could be used for stacking crates or sacks. No, our best chance is to pile on full sail, and hope we can outrun them.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘But the hold is full of cargo. That’s going to slow us down.’ He looked around. ‘Mr Larchmont needs to order the crew to throw the crates overboard! We need to be as light as possible — that’s the only way we can get up enough speed!’

He made to move off towards where Larchmont was shouting at the sailors to unfurl all the sails and tighten all the ropes, but Gittens caught at his arm.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he hissed. ‘We didn’t sail halfway around the world so we could dump our cargo at the first sign of trouble. That’s where the Captain makes his money. He’d rather order half the crew to jump in the sea than throw the cargo overboard. Sailors are ten a farthing. They can be picked up at any port. Losing cargo means losing money.’ He glanced out towards the sea. ‘An’ based on what I’ve heard about Chinese pirates, I’d be first in line to jump. I’d rather take my chances with the sharks, I surely would.’

Gittens pulled Sherlock with him towards the nearest hatch. They made their way rapidly down into the inside of the ship, and Gittens led the way to an anonymous padlocked door halfway along a corridor. Sailors pushed past them, expressions of alarm on their faces. Some of them started forming a queue beside the armoury — presumably on Larchmont’s orders. As Gittens managed to unlock the stiff padlock the sailors suddenly squeezed themselves to the sides of the corridor, and Sherlock saw Captain Tollaway striding down the centre. The expression on his face was thunderous, but Sherlock thought he could detect a grey tinge of concern beneath the dark gaze.

His revolver was swinging in his hand.

‘Take courage, boys,’ he said to nobody in particular as he passed. ‘We’re not going to let these barbarous savages get their hands on our cargo! We’ll fight to the last man rather than let that happen! A shilling to any man who kills one of the pirates!’

The queue of sailors let out a ragged cheer as he passed, but Sherlock suspected they were all wondering who the last man was going to be.

Gittens pulled the cupboard door open. Inside Sherlock saw swords and knives hanging from hooks. Some of them were rusty. Gittens gestured to Sherlock to pull them out and start handing them to the sailors in the queue. Gittens himself pulled bundles of oiled cloth out from the back of the cupboard and unwrapped them to reveal some long and antiquated guns. Sherlock had seen the farmers in Farnham use more modern weapons to scare off birds.

This was not looking good. He could feel a knot of apprehension coiling and uncoiling in his stomach. Surely, having survived the storm, he couldn’t now die here, in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from everything he held dear? There were things he needed to do back home. What about Virginia?

After the weapons had been distributed, Gittens closed and locked the cupboard. He had kept two knives for himself, and he tucked them into his belt. One of them was short and chunky, with a leather-wrapped handle. The other had a curved blade and an edge that was shaped like a wave — it wasn’t an English knife, that was for sure.

Gittens made as if to head back to the ladder, then hesitated. He pulled the first knife from his belt and handed it to Sherlock.

‘Here,’ he said roughly. ‘Keep this. It might help. If anything helps, apart from prayer.’

Before Sherlock could say anything, Gittens was racing off.

Up on deck the tension was so thick that it seemed to hang like a veil of smoke above the crew. Half the men were either up in the rigging or pulling at ropes on deck; the other half were armed and clustered along the side of the ship off which the sails had been seen. Sherlock moved across to join them, worming his way through the press of bodies until he was up against the rail.

The ship was cutting rapidly though the waves, and spray drifted back into Sherlock’s face. Their pursuers might have been sails on the horizon twenty minutes before, but now they were appreciably closer. Sherlock craned his neck to get a look.

The pursuing vessel was unlike anything Sherlock had seen before. Its hull was curved so that the bows and the stern were projecting upwards, raised above the sea, and the middle section rode low in the waves. The sails were a reddish brown in colour, and corrugated like fans, and rather than being flat across the top, like the sails Sherlock was used to, they came to points. It was difficult to see the stern of the ship, but from what little Sherlock could tell the rudder was much bigger than the one on the Gloria Scott, and it took three or four men to move it. Whatever principles of design the designers of the ship had followed, they were different to those used in England.

Sherlock could make out figures clustered along the side of the pursuing ship. They were all holding swords, and they were waving the swords above their heads.

Sherlock’s fingers clenched on the leather-covered handle of his knife. It wasn’t much to defend his life with.

The wind that was blowing from the direction of the stern brought with it the sound of voices. The pirates were singing some kind of war chant.

As Sherlock and the rest of the crew watched, the chase played out. Despite every scrap of sail that the Gloria Scott possessed being called into use, despite every rope being tightened until it creaked, the pursuing ship gradually ate up the distance between them. Sherlock could see the faces of the Chinese pirates: tattooed and snarling. Half of them were bald, while the other half had long hair that was either falling wildly around their shoulders or was drawn back into a plait hanging down their backs.

Mr Larchmont’s voice rose above the rushing of the wind and the chanting of the pirates. ‘Hold fast, my laddies! We’ll be laughing about this adventure and drinking in the taverns of Shanghai before you know it!’

But they wouldn’t be. Sherlock was sure of it. The Chinese pirate ship was built for speed, while the Gloria Scott was weighed down by her cargo. The pirate ship raced like a greyhound across the sea while the Gloria Scott wallowed in the waves like a pregnant bulldog.

Sherlock realized that Wu Chung was standing beside him. The Chinese cook stared out impassively at the ship behind them.

‘It is called a “junk” in your language,’ he said quietly after a while, ‘although that is not our word for it. Junks are faster and better equipped than any other ship on the seas. We have been sailing them for thousands of years — while your people were just looking at the oceans and wondering how to get across them.’

‘What will they do to us if they catch us?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Steal our cargo, for sure,’ Chung said. ‘If we had lots of passengers then they might hold them for ransom from the authorities in Shanghai, but we only have one and I don’t think he would fetch very much money. These pirates are superstitious fellows. One look at his face and they would throw him overboard.’

‘And what about the rest of us?’

‘If we are lucky they will leave us locked up in the hold, adrift, with our sails ripped and all our food taken.’

‘And if we’re unlucky?’ Sherlock had to ask the question, but he knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

Wu Chung obviously felt the same way. ‘Do not ask,’ he said quietly. ‘You may find out, soon enough.’

‘But you speak Cantonese,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘You are Chinese — like them. Can’t you talk to them — reason with them? There must be something that we can offer them that would make them go away.’

Wu shook his head. ‘I may speak the same language as them, but I am not like them. Perhaps my appearance will save my life, perhaps not. The fact that I am on this ship with you means that I will be treated like you. Worse, perhaps, as I have left my home and I am working with foreign devils. There is nothing I can offer them that they cannot take for themselves.’

Sherlock glanced down at Wu’s hand. The cook was grasping a large carving knife. His knuckles were white and bloodless, he was holding the handle so tightly.

Wu saw that Sherlock was looking at the knife. ‘I will fight with you,’ he said calmly. ‘And, if that is the will of the universe, I will die alongside you.’

Sherlock shivered. ‘I’m really hoping it doesn’t come to that,’ he said.

Even while Sherlock and Wu had been talking, the junk had got closer. Sherlock could make out individual voices, and he could see the pirates’ weapons clearly. Some of them were holding curved swords; some were holding long pikes with wickedly barbed blades on the end; some were holding strange metal shapes that resembled nothing so much as two swords tied together and covered with jutting metal thorns. The deck of the junk was a forest of sharp blades.

He had never felt so threatened, or so helpless, in his life. He could see the fierceness of the pirates’ expressions and the wildness of their clothing. Many of them wore turbans made out of red or blue cloth. Some of them were bare-chested, others wore rough shirts or waistcoats. Most of them also had broad leather belts around their waists into which they had tucked an array of knives, swords and ancient pistols, and baggy trousers tucked into leather boots.

Sherlock noticed that a lot of them were wearing jewellery. That made sense. It wasn’t as if they could place their treasure in a bank on shore, and hiding it somewhere on board their junk meant taking the risk that another pirate would steal it. The only safe solution was to carry as much of their personal wealth as they could.

Despite his terror, Sherlock spotted that one of the pirates was holding something. It was about the size and shape of a turnip, and he was hefting it as if he intended to throw it. Sherlock wondered exactly what he thought he was doing. Throwing rocks, or the nearest equivalent, wasn’t exactly going to help the pirates take over the Gloria Scott, was it?

Then he realized that a lot of the pirates were holding similar objects.

The rest of the crew of the Gloria Scott were equally puzzled. Sherlock could hear fevered discussions all around him as his companions speculated wildly on what the pirates were planning.

They had their answer sooner than they wanted. As the two ships came within throwing range three of the pirates fiddled with the objects in their hands. It took a moment for Sherlock to work out what they had done, but when the pirates balanced themselves like cricketers and threw the turnip-sized objects towards the Gloria Scott Sherlock could see that they each trailed behind them a length of string that had been set alight.

A fuse.

‘Watch out, lads!’ Mr Larchmont’s voice rose above the commotion. ‘This is the devil’s work!’

The objects arced overhead. One of them hit a mast and bounced off, falling back into the strip of ocean between the two ships. The other two hit the deck, bounced a couple of times, then rolled to a stop.

Before anyone could get to them, they exploded.

They were something like fireworks and something like small bombs. Scarlet and yellow flames spread rapidly over the deck as some kind of oily substance splattered across the wood and soaked in. Sparks scattered like swarms of fiery insects. Sailors rushed to throw buckets of seawater on to the burning oil. Steam rose up from the deck, but the flames just hissed and then kept on burning.

‘Sand!’ Larchmont bellowed from somewhere towards the back of the deck. Break out the sandbags! Spread sand on the flames if you value your lives!’

Five more fireballs burst on the deck, spilling oil and flames and sparks in all directions. A sailor running with a bucket of water slipped and fell into the conflagration. Sherlock saw him roll out again instantly, but his shirt was on fire. Without thinking, Sherlock ran over to him and tried to brush the flames out, but the oil had soaked into the cloth and it wouldn’t extinguish. Another sailor joined Sherlock, and together they managed to rip the shirt from the man’s back and throw it overboard, singeing their fingers in the process.

Black smoke billowed across the deck, obscuring Sherlock’s view. The smoke caught at the back of his throat and he choked. His eyes stung.

Panic engulfed the ship.

But only for a moment, and then discipline reasserted itself, bolstered by Mr Larchmont’s shouted orders. A group of sailors ran forward with sandbags, dragged from somewhere inside the ship. They ripped the seams open with knives and scattered the sand across the burning oil. It smothered the flames instantly. Dark smoke drifted across the deck, but the hellish glow of the fire was gone. Discipline reasserted itself.

Either because they realized that the crew of the Gloria Scott were standing by with more sandbags, or because the pirates had run out of ammunition, no more fireballs sailed overhead from the junk. The tone of the pirates’ shouts changed as well, from triumphant laughing to a darker collection of curses and threats.

Movement on the deck of the junk attracted his attention. He stared intently. Pirates were massing at the closest point to the Gloria Scott. They were carrying grappling hooks. Having softened the crew up with their fireballs, the pirates were preparing to board the Gloria Scott. Sherlock could swear that some of them were looking directly at him, and smiling with exposed teeth.

He felt an involuntary shiver run through him. His stomach churned, and there was an acidic, metallic taste at the back of his throat. Part of him desperately wanted the chase to be over, so that something would happen. As it was, all he could do was wait, and the waiting was unbearable. On the other hand, another part of him dreaded the inevitable battle and hoped the chase would continue until they hit land. All he had was a small knife to offer up against swords, pikes and weapons the like of which he had never seen before. If it came to a fight he wouldn’t last thirty seconds.

And then the first pirate threw the first grappling hook. It arced across the distance between the ships, trailing a rope behind it like a pencil line scrawled across the blue page of the sky. The distance was too great: the hook hit the side of the Gloria Scott and bounced off, but it was a signal that triggered the rest of the pirates into action. While the first one pulled his hook out of the water, ready to try again, the others swung their hooks around their heads and let them fly. The air was suddenly filled with sharp metal and wet rope. Most of the hooks fell short, but four or five of them cleared the Gloria Scott’s rail and hit the deck. A great shout went up from the pirates. The ropes were pulled sharply back before any of the Gloria Scott’s crew could get to them — pulled with enough force that the curved hooks embedded themselves in the railing that ran around the edge of the deck. The ropes pulled tight, forming precarious bridges over which the pirates could clamber like monkeys, but before any of them could get all the way across, the Gloria Scott’s crew started sawing through the ropes with swords and knives, or swinging at them with axes. Others tried to prise the hooks from the wooden rail by hand. None of those first ropes lasted longer than thirty seconds, sending the pirates who were climbing along them falling into the narrowing strip of water between the two ships, but by that time there were twenty more hooks embedding themselves in the Gloria Scott’s deck and rails and masts, or tangling themselves in the ship’s rigging. Sherlock glanced around desperately.

Pretty soon there would be too many hooks and ropes for the crew to deal with.

‘Look lively!’ Mr Larchmont yelled. ‘If you ever want to see your wives and girlfriends again, don’t let these barbarians set one pox-ridden foot on this ship!’

Sherlock saw that as well as climbing along the ropes, the pirates were also hauling on them from the safety of their deck, trying to narrow the distance between the two vessels. It seemed to be working. The Gloria Scott and the pirate ship were nearly side by side now, and there was barely five yards between them.

A hook hit the deck next to Sherlock’s foot. Before he could do anything the rope pulled taut, and the hook whipped away from him, catching in the wooden rim surrounding one of the hatches. Sherlock leaped towards it, desperately sawing at the fibres with his knife, but his blade was blunt and slipped off the wet surface. He grabbed at the hook and tried to pull it out of the wood. His fingers kept scrabbling for purchase.

He glanced up. There were pirates already on board, fighting hand to hand with the crew! Ignoring them as best he could, he let his gaze trace the line of the rope to where it crossed the rail. A pirate with wild, shoulder-length hair and a massive scar down the side of his face was already halfway across!

Sherlock redoubled his efforts. The grappling hook shifted beneath his hands: the barbed tines hadn’t penetrated very far into the sun-baked wood, and by straining every fibre of his muscles he could just about pull it clear.

Sherlock gave one last heave, and the grappling hook shifted so that only one tine was caught on the wooden hatch. He glanced up. The grinning pirate was almost at the rail now.

Sherlock kicked at the grappling hook, desperately trying to dislodge it.

Somewhere on the ship a gun fired, and fired again. The Captain?

Still kicking at the hook, Sherlock looked up again.

It was too late. The pirate had reached the deck of the Gloria Scott. He took a step towards Sherlock, raising his sword menacingly.

He had a dragon tattooed on his forearm: a beautiful, sinuous creature rippling over his muscle and coloured in iridescent blue. For a split second that seemed to last an eternity Sherlock found himself admiring the artistry.

The pirate’s upper lip pulled back in a sneer of triumph. His teeth were mottled black with decay, and spaced like gravestones.

More in sheer frustration than in hope, Sherlock kicked the grappling hook one last time. It tore free of the hatch with a ripping of wood and a spray of splinters. At the same time a freak roll of the waves pulled the two ships apart by ten feet or so. The rope suddenly went taut and the hook hurtled back towards where it had come from. The sharp points caught the pirate in the shoulder. His face took on a look of pain and astonishment as the rope yanked tighter, dragging him off his feet and back towards the railing. His back hit the top of the rail with a sickening crunch and he vanished over the edge. Despite the sounds of clashing steel, shouts and gunfire that filled the air, Sherlock could swear that he heard a terrified scream cut short by a splash.

With the ships that close together, Sherlock didn’t give the pirate much of a chance of climbing back up. If he didn’t drown straight away then the hulls would probably squash him like an insect as they came together.

And good riddance too.

In a moment of relative calm, Sherlock glanced around, trying to orientate himself. His impression was that the battle was evenly matched. There seemed to be as many pirates as there were crew, fighting hand to hand, and a quick glance at the unoccupied web of ropes that now linked the two ships together suggested that all of the pirates who could come across had done so. The remainder were presumably needed to man the pirate ship, to steer it, and stop it from suddenly veering sideways and smashing into the Gloria Scott.

Off to one side he caught sight of Mr Arrhenius. The veiled man had emerged from his cabin to see what was going on. He was standing half hidden by the ship’s middle mast. He raised his hand, and Sherlock saw that he was holding a pistol. Carefully he took aim and fired. A pirate across the other side of the deck suddenly jerked and fell down.

Arrhenius glanced at Sherlock and nodded. Sherlock raised a thumb in acknowledgement of the passenger’s help.

As Sherlock turned away a movement caught his eye. One pirate had broken off from the fight and was slipping along the raised deck towards the rear of the ship, aiming for the doorway in the middle — the doorway that led back towards the cabins. He was small, and what little hair he had was pulled back into a waxed pigtail. It was the surreptitious way he was moving that attracted Sherlock’s attention. In the midst of a chaos of wildly waving weapons and grappling figures, this man moved as if he didn’t want to be noticed.

Amyus Crowe often told Sherlock to look for the things that stick out, the things that don’t belong. Those are things that have a story to tell. Those are things that need to be explained.

So Sherlock followed.

By the time he got to the doorway the pirate had vanished into the shadows of the corridor. Sherlock hung back for a moment, in case the man was going to turn around and come straight out, but after a few seconds he went in after him.

The clamour of the fight outside died away quickly. Sherlock paused while his eyes got used to the relative darkness. The pirate had gone directly to the door of Mr Arrhenius’s cabin. But Arrhenius was out on deck, fighting — Sherlock had seen him. What on earth was the pirate looking for?

The door was open a crack, and Sherlock moved quietly closer. He looked inside.

The pirate was a dark shape illuminated only by the meagre light shining through the portholes, but Sherlock could see him bending over a table. He seemed to be gazing intently at something.

Sherlock wished he could see what it was. As if fate had heard him, the ship suddenly pitched sideways, and Sherlock found himself falling against the cabin door. It swung open and he staggered into the room.

The pirate’s head snapped up. His gaze skewered Sherlock. His fingers, which had been holding a set of papers on the table, let go, allowing them to roll up, but Sherlock had time to see that the thing the pirate had been looking at was a set of diagrams that looked like spider’s webs of lines.

What was going on?

The pirate grabbed at the papers and came around the desk towards Sherlock. He snarled something in Chinese, and it took Sherlock a moment to translate it. ‘Out of my way, boy, or I will cut your heart out and eat it.’ At least, that’s what Sherlock thought he said.

Sherlock straightened up. ‘Put that back,’ he found himself saying.

The pirate sneered. He stepped towards Sherlock, holding the bundle of papers in his left hand. He raised his right hand, and Sherlock saw with no surprise that he was holding a knife. He lunged, aiming the knife at Sherlock’s chest.

Without thinking, Sherlock blocked the lunging knife with a sweep of his outstretched left hand, then thrust his right hand out, hitting the pirate’s right arm with the heel of his palm. The impact temporarily paralysed the pirate’s muscles. His fingers spasmed, and he dropped the knife. Sherlock realized with amazement that he had performed a classic T’ai chi ch’uan move, but faster than ever before.

The pirate took a step backwards. Still holding the papers, he twisted around and lashed out with his right foot, raising it high enough that if it connected it would break Sherlock’s nose. His body leaned backwards to maintain balance. Anticipating what was going to happen, Sherlock dropped to his hands and bent left leg, and scythed his right leg around parallel to the floor, knocking the pirate’s own right leg from beneath him. The pirate fell, sprawling clumsily. The papers flew out of his hand and landed beneath the table.

Sherlock was amazed. It was as if his body already knew what to do without his brain having to tell it. Thank heaven for Wu Chung’s gentle instruction.

The pirate scrabbled across the deck, heading for the papers. Whatever they were, he wanted them badly. And Sherlock wanted to stop him just as much. He grabbed hold of the pirate’s right foot and pulled him back. The man’s fingers clutched at the carpet, but when it became obvious that he couldn’t stop himself moving he rolled over and kicked out viciously. The heel of his boot caught Sherlock on his cheekbone. A lightning bolt of red-hot agony shot through his head, blurring all of his senses and all of his thoughts.

Hands grabbed him around the throat and started to squeeze.