Snake Bite

CHAPTER FOUR

Spikes of pain shot up Sherlock’s neck and down into his chest. His heart was pounding but his blurry vision was narrowing into a dark-edged tunnel.

He brought his hands up between the pirate’s forearms and then, with all his remaining strength, knocked them apart. The grip on his neck loosened. He sucked in huge gulps of air until the pirate’s hands snaked back around his neck and began to squeeze again.

Sherlock’s vision was restricted to a spot the size of a coin held at arm’s length. His skin and his muscles tingled as though someone was poking needles and pins into every square inch of it. He could hardly raise his hands, they felt so heavy.

Desperately, blindly, Sherlock reached out for the pirate’s face. He clamped his fingers on either side of the man’s head, and put his thumbs where he thought his eyes were. When he felt his opponent’s eyelids, squeezed shut beneath the pads of his thumbs, he pushed as hard as he could.

The pirate screamed. His hands vanished from around Sherlock’s throat. He pulled away, leaving Sherlock to fall backwards. Dimly Sherlock was aware of a scuttling, a blundering, as if the pirate had tried to get to his feet and run out of the cabin but had run into the wall and the door frame on the way. Sherlock rolled over and got to his hands and knees, then pushed himself up until he was standing. His vision was coming back now. The cabin was deserted. He put a shaking hand on the table and leaned there for a few moments until he thought his legs could take his weight without crumpling.

The roll of papers was beneath the table. The pirate hadn’t taken it when he left the cabin.

When he felt strong enough he bent down and picked the papers up. He was about to put them back on the table and take a closer look when he noticed a box in the corner. It was the one he’d seen loaded on to the ship with Mr Arrhenius’s belongings. There was something in it, scuttling around. Before he could investigate, he heard a voice from the doorway.

‘What do you think you are doing?’

Mr Arrhenius was standing in the doorway. He was holding a gun, and frowning.

‘One of the pirates got in here,’ Sherlock said, feeling a painful rasp in his throat. ‘I followed him in. We had a fight. He ran off. I don’t know where he went.’

‘I saw him stagger out on to the deck,’ Arrhenius said. He raised his gun and tapped it against his forehead, beneath his veil. ‘I… stopped him, then I came in to see what he had been doing here.’

‘He was trying to take this,’ Sherlock said, holding the roll of papers up.

‘Was he now?’ Arrhenius said. There was something strange about his voice, and he was looking oddly at Sherlock.

‘What is it?’ Sherlock asked, feeling bolder now that he had got his breath back.

‘Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’

Arrhenius extended his hand for the papers. Sherlock handed them over. He still desperately wanted to know what they were, but he knew that the strange passenger wasn’t going to tell him.

‘What’s happening on deck?’ he asked.

‘Captain Tollaway and the rest of the crew are turning the tide,’ Arrhenius declared. ‘It seems to me that they are going to repel the boarders. You should go and join them.’ He glanced around the cabin. ‘I must see if anything else is missing.’

Sherlock headed out on to the deck. A crumpled body lay to one side. It was the pirate who had attacked Sherlock in the cabin. Sherlock looked at him for a moment, then turned away. He didn’t feel any grief, or remorse, or fear. In fact, apart from the pain in his throat and the pounding of his head he didn’t feel anything.

Mr Arrhenius was right — the crew seemed to be beating back the pirates. A handful of bodies were scattered around the deck, contorted in various positions, and a few of the pirates appeared to be withdrawing, injured.

‘Avast!’ Larchmont’s voice yelled from the other side of the ship. ‘Withdraw to me, laddies!’

Sherlock watched in confusion as the crew of the Gloria Scott disengaged from their individual fights and backed across the deck towards Larchmont. They were winning. Why disengage from the fight now?

The crew shifted, and a path momentarily opened up between Sherlock and Mr Larchmont, and Sherlock suddenly realized what was happening. Larchmont was standing by the rail, and he was holding a strange contraption. It was a metal tube about the length of a man’s arm, sealed at one end and open at the other. It was pivoting on a metal knob which was attached to the rail. The knob somehow fitted into a recess in the tube. Sherlock had seen the metal knob before, while he’d been working on deck, and he had wondered what it was for. Now he knew. Gittens had said they had no cannon on board, but he had been wrong. There was one — a small one — and Larchmont was holding it. He was pointing it at the pirates.

‘Light it up,’ he said grimly. A hand holding a lit taper emerged from the throng of crewmen. The taper touched a hole at the sealed end of the cannon.

Mayhem ripped across the deck.

Whatever was in the cannon, it wasn’t a cannonball. Sherlock guessed it was probably a length of metal chain, along with nails and bits of scrap.

Those pirates who, miraculously, were not hit by the blizzard of metal turned and ran. The others… well, Sherlock didn’t even want to look. There would be a lot of clearing up to do later.

The crew let out a ragged cheer.

‘Well done, lads!’ Larchmont shouted. ‘Extra rum for everyone! Now make sure the motherless sons of the devil have really gone!’

Sherlock joined in as the majority of the crew crossed to the other side of the deck. They clustered against the rail, watching in disbelief. It was true — the pirates were casting off the lines that bound them to the Gloria Scott, and their ship was pulling away. The pirates on deck were shouting curses at the crew of the Gloria Scott and shaking their fists, but they were a lot more subdued than they had been earlier. There were fewer of them as well.

Sherlock felt sick, and his legs were suddenly weak. He leaned on the side of the ship and fixed his gaze on the distant horizon, waiting for the sensation to subside.

Why was he feeling like this? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in danger before. In the past couple of years he’d been chased, knocked unconscious, drugged, locked up in a lunatic asylum and attacked variously by men, dogs, mountain lions, lizards, falcons and bears. It had been an eventful few years. So why was he reacting this way now?

Because, the logical side of his brain told him, he was a long way from home. Nobody was going to leap in at the last moment to save him — not Matty, not Mycroft, not Amyus Crowe and not Virginia. He had never relied on their help before, but in the back of his mind he’d always known that if his intelligence and strength weren’t enough to carry the day then one of them would be there for him. But not now. Not here. And not for a long time to come.

The full weight of loneliness descended on him like a leaden cloud, and he found his eyes stinging with hot tears. If he died out here, on board the Gloria Scott, thousands of miles from England, then nobody would ever know. Even the other sailors would forget about him within a few weeks.

‘Dangerous situation,’ a voice said beside him. ‘I am gratified that you came through it alive.’

Wu Chung was standing there, gazing out across the water with a faint, enigmatic smile on his face. He had a scratch on his shoulder which had bled on to his cook’s apron, and there were scratches on his face.

‘Are you all right?’ Sherlock asked.

Wu Chung nodded. ‘There was a fight,’ he said. ‘I won.’

‘T’ai chi ch’uan?’ Sherlock asked, imagining Wu Chung in full combat, fighting off an opponent with subtle movements of his hands and feet.

Wu shook his head. ‘No — I used a frying pan. Unarmed combat is all very well, but if the universe in its infinite wisdom provides a weapon to hand then it would be rude not to use it.’

‘I was in a fight as well,’ Sherlock said.

‘I can see. Your neck looks like someone has tenderized it with a meat hammer, and your voice is as hoarse as a man who has been smoking rough tobacco for many years.’

‘I used the skills you taught me. They worked.’

‘Of course they did,’ Wu said, still gazing out across the sea. ‘I am a good teacher, am I not?’

He turned away, still without glancing at Sherlock’s face, and walked back across the deck. It was only then that Sherlock realized that he couldn’t be sure whether they had been speaking in English or Cantonese.

Sherlock spent the rest of the day on activities that he hoped he wouldn’t remember for very long — swabbing blood off the deck, throwing the bodies of pirates overboard, and sewing shrouds of sail canvas around the handful of sailors from the Gloria Scott who had perished in the battle. By the time the sun touched the horizon the deck was clear and there was little sign that anything untoward had happened, apart from the row of canvas-wrapped bodies lined up on the deck. Captain Tollaway read from a Bible, and the bodies were consigned to the ocean. The shrouds were weighted so that they would sink.

The sailors were in the mood for singing that night. Captain Tollaway had ordered the rum ration tripled, which made the sailors more than usually rambunctious, and they obviously wanted to blot out the memories of the pirate attack by any means they could. Sherlock found himself playing jig after jig on the cracked violin that Fiddler had lent him. He missed notes and sometimes segued from one tune to another without realizing, but the sailors didn’t seem to notice. As long as there were rum and music they were happy.

Even while he was sawing away at the old violin, surrounded by drunken sailors singing at the tops of their voices, Sherlock’s mind refused to stop thinking. He found himself trying to work out why the pirate who had raided the Arrhenius’s cabin had made straight for the strange spider’s-web diagrams. The implication was that he had known that they were there, and that he had some reason for wanting them. But that would imply either that the pirate had taken advantage of the completely accidental coincidence that his ship and the Gloria Scott were at the same point in the ocean at the same time, or that the whole attack had been deliberate — that the pirates had known in advance which ship they were going to attack. That suggested some kind of conspiracy above and beyond normal piracy. How could the pirates have known that the Gloria Scott was the ship they wanted to attack?

There was something very strange going on here. He wished he had somebody to discuss it with, but he didn’t trust anybody on board any more than he had to.

What he wouldn’t give to have Mycroft, or Amyus Crowe, or even Matty to hand.

A barely concealed sense of tension hung over the Gloria Scott for the remainder of the voyage. The crew kept casting worried glances at the distant horizon, keeping watch for more pirate ships, and both the Captain and Mr Larchmont spent considerably more time pacing up and down on deck than they had before the attack, trying to reassure the men by their presence. The crew were having to work harder as well. At the end of each extended shift, Sherlock climbed into his hammock exhausted, so tired that he slept dreamlessly until the bell was rung for his next shift.

During a break, a few days after the attack, he was standing at the rail and looking out to sea when he realized that somebody was standing beside him. He turned his head, expecting it to be Wu Chung, or perhaps Fiddler. A shiver ran through him when he saw that it was Mr Arrhenius.

He was still wearing his black beekeeper’s veil beneath his wide-brimmed hat. Sherlock could just make out the silhouette of his face beneath. His black leather gloves gripped hold of the rail. He seemed to be staring at the same point on the horizon as Sherlock.

‘I believe we should be seeing land soon,’ he said.

‘According to the Captain, we have only a day or two until we arrive in Shanghai.’

‘Landfall can’t come soon enough,’ Sherlock replied quietly. ‘This voyage feels like it’s gone on forever.’

Arrhenius nodded. ‘It has certainly been eventful,’ he admitted. He was silent for a while, then he said suddenly, ‘I believe I owe you an explanation.’

‘About what?’ Sherlock hoped that it might be about the papers the pirate had been after.

‘About my appearance. I understand that it shocked you, seeing me without my veil that time when you brought food to my cabin. I apologize.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘You don’t owe me anything. I admit that I’m curious, but you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.’

‘But still… I know how superstitious sailors get. Others have seen me, in unguarded moments, without my veil.’ He laughed sadly. ‘They probably think that I am some kind of supernatural creature — a demon, or a vampire perhaps. If I explain my condition to you, perhaps you can reassure them.’

‘I doubt they would listen to me about anything,’ Sherlock said dubiously. ‘I’m still pretty much an outsider on this ship. But I’m happy to give it a try, if that’s what you want.’

Arrhenius nodded. ‘I would appreciate that. Thank you.’ He paused, and Sherlock got the impression that he was searching for the right words. ‘My skin has not always been this colour,’ he said eventually. ‘When I was younger, it was the same colour as yours.’ He glanced sideways at Sherlock. ‘Well, perhaps not as tanned. Anyway, business affairs meant that I did a lot of travelling to other countries — Africa, Egypt, South America… If you name a port in any country on the globe I can guarantee that I have been there.’

‘I used to want to travel,’ Sherlock said. ‘Until I tried it. Now I can see why my brother prefers to stay at home.’

‘Travel broadens the mind,’ Arrhenius said, ‘but it has its disadvantages. Hot countries in particular breed diseases more virulent than anything that exists in England, or in Holland. You may have heard about the terrible effects of cholera and typhoid and the bubonic plague, but the effects of the little known black Formosa corruption are horrible to observe, and as for Tapanuli fever…’ He shuddered. ‘Watching a man dying of Tapanuli fever is like watching a man whose skin is slowly melting away from his body. Truly a terrible way to go.’

‘You’ve never… caught any of those diseases yourself?’ Sherlock asked after a few moments’ silence.

‘Have you ever heard of silver being used to prevent disease?’

Sherlock shook his head.

‘Silver has had some medicinal uses going back for centuries,’ Arrhenius continued. ‘Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher who is said to have been the father of medicine, wrote that silver could prevent illness and could help in the healing of wounds. The Phoenicians, who sailed the world long before either your country or mine had a navy, are supposed to have stored water, wine and vinegar in silver bottles to prevent them from spoiling. I have even heard of people putting silver coins in milk bottles to prevent the milk from going off, believe it or not.’

‘And you’ve been treating yourself with silver?’ Sherlock asked, fascinated.

‘It seemed… logical,’ Arrhenius said. ‘It seemed to me, based on everything that I researched, that it made sense. Silver prevents disease. So, every day for the past ten years I have taken a drink of colloidal silver — that is to say, of silver dust suspended in castor oil. In all of that time I have not been ill. Not one single time.’

‘But…’ Sherlock prompted.

‘Yes, there is always a “but”. In this case, over time the silver particles have collected in my tissues — most notably in my skin and my eyes. I am told, by the specialists that I have consulted, that the condition is called argyria. It is apparently quite rare.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘How ironic, that I should avoid so many other diseases only to fall prey to this one.’

‘Does it hurt?’ Sherlock asked.

Arrhenius shook his head. ‘Not in the slightest. It is… what is the word? A disfigurement, nothing more. It does not hurt, and I suffer no ill-effects other than the change in the colour of my skin. To be frank with you, if I knew then what I know now, I would make the same decision. To look strange, as I do, is unfortunate, but to never suffer from any disease, not even a cold… that is truly something worth having.’

‘What happens if you stop taking the silver? Will your skin recover?’

It looked as though Arrhenius was shaking his head, behind the veil. ‘Sadly, no. The minute particles of silver have become embedded in my flesh. There is no going back. Not that I ever would.’

There didn’t seem to be anything Sherlock could say to that, and the two of them stood there for a while in silence, looking out at the ocean. Eventually Arrhenius walked away, leaving Sherlock with his own thoughts.

Naively, Sherlock had expected there to be a moment when land was sighted as a dark smudge on the horizon, accompanied probably by a strong cheer from the crew and the breaking out of more rum. In fact, first a small island, barely larger than the ship, was seen in the distance. Then another. After a few hours there were ten or twenty islands on either side of the bows, and Mr Larchmont ordered the sails to be reduced to slow the Gloria Scott down and give him more control over the steering. They picked their way slowly among the islands. The mainland seemed to sneak up on them. For a while it looked like another, larger, island. By the time it became clear that it was more than that, distinct hills were visible in the hinterland behind the coves and harbours.

They had arrived at Shanghai. They had arrived in China.

Sherlock’s feelings were mixed. Partly he was filled with excitement at the idea of experiencing a new country, a new culture, where nothing would be the same as he was used to (‘except,’ he heard Amyus Crowe’s voice in the back of his mind, ‘human nature’). At the same time he was filled with sorrow, knowing that he was at the moment as far from home and as far from his friends as he was going to get. This was the end of the journey out. With luck, and perhaps a little careful planning, he could stay on the Gloria Scott and be part of the crew for the long journey home.

Would home still be the same when he got back?

Would he?

The temperature and the humidity had risen sharply as they approached land. The sea breezes that had been simultaneously pushing the ship along and cooling the crew down had died away, leaving a heavy stillness in the air. Sherlock could feel sweat breaking out across his shoulder blades every time he moved.

Fortunately, the riot of noise and colour and motion that was Shanghai harbour was enough to distract him from his thoughts and his discomfort. Boats and ships of unusual design were heading in every direction, usually at some speed, and everyone was shouting at everyone else. It reminded Sherlock of the times he had arrived on the train at Waterloo Station in London and seen people criss-crossing the concourse, somehow avoiding bumping into each other without apparently swerving or slowing down.

Sherlock noticed that several of the ships in the harbour were Chinese junks. He felt his skin crawl, remembering the pirate attack, but he told himself that the design was common to almost all Chinese ships. The pirates were sure to be a long way away by now.

Mr Larchmont ordered all of the sails to be taken down. Sherlock worked as the ship came to a gradual stop in a clear area of water out in the centre of the harbour. Mr Larchmont ordered the anchor to be weighed. For a while they just waited, but Sherlock became aware that a handful of small, flat-bottomed boats were heading their way. Presumably there had to be some kind of inspection, or at the very least a discussion with the local administrators, before they would be allowed to dock.

Sherlock gazed out at the harbour. A series of quays and jetties had been built along its curve, with watchtowers at either end of the crescent. Behind the quayside and the jetties Sherlock could make out a series of warehouses, all of which appeared to be built to the same design. Off to one side, and sprawling into the haze of the distance, was the town of Shanghai itself. It was surrounded by a wall that Sherlock estimated was about five times as high as Amyus Crowe. The presence of the wall and of the watchtowers suggested to Sherlock that the town had been subject to many attacks through its history, but the wall was crumbling in places, and the watchtowers were weather-beaten and almost falling down. Whatever bad things had happened in the past, Shanghai now seemed to be safe and perhaps even complacent, like an old and sleepy ginger tomcat with scars on its face and a torn nose.

As well as the Chinese junks there were a smattering of ships that looked more like the Gloria Scott in the harbour. Western traders were obviously welcomed by the Chinese. One ship in particular caught his eye. It was long, and low in the water, and painted white — or at least it had probably started out white, but was now a kind of creamy grey. It had two masts — one fore and one aft — but between them was a funnel and beside the funnel, in a kind of cage that protruded out sideways from the deck, was a large paddle wheel. It reminded Sherlock of the ship he had travelled to America on a year or so ago. That had used a coal-powered steam engine to power a pair of paddle wheels. The idea was that if the wind dropped then the engine could be fired up and the ship moved by the rotation of the paddle wheels in the water.

The funnel looked newer than the rest of the ship. He wondered if there had been some kind of accident. Maybe the ship had been damaged, and the funnel had been repaired and repainted.

His thoughts were interrupted by a commotion behind him. Captain Tollaway had appeared on the deck, with Mr Larchmont standing one pace behind him. He was wearing a fresh uniform and was even trying to smile.

Crewmen near Sherlock were helping three men on board. They had climbed up a rope ladder from their flat-bottomed boat. Two of them wore baggy robes of patterned silk which wrapped around their bodies, and padded slippers. The third man wore a similar robe, but with a loose black jacket over the top. All three of them had black caps on their heads. The caps had straight sides, flat tops and no brims. The overall effect was a strange mix of ostentation and reserve. They greeted the Captain effusively, bowing repeatedly. The Captain bowed back, looking uncomfortable.

The man with the black jacket seemed to be a translator. When the two administrators spoke in Cantonese he listened, then repeated the message back to the Captain in heavily accented English. When the Captain replied he did the same in reverse.

Whatever discussion or negotiation was going on, it was completed to the satisfaction of both parties. The meeting broke up with a lot more bowing, and the three men were escorted off the Gloria Scottagain.

Mr Larchmont spoke with the Captain, then turned to the attentive crew. ‘We’ll be docking in Shanghai shortly,’ he announced. ‘The Captain’s intention is to be here for a week while we sell off our cargo, barter for a new one and reprovision for the voyage home. I’ll be handin’ out your wages, in cash, down in the crew room over the next hour. If you want your hard-earned money, you need to come an’ get it from me, otherwise I’ll spend it on dresses and jewels for my missus back in Lambeth.’ He smiled at the chuckles and whistles that followed his comment. ‘That’s my story, lads, an’ I’m stickin’ to it. Now, I’ll be pinning up a roster of shore leave, an’ I want every man-jack of you to read it and follow it. This ship has to have a skeleton crew aboard at all times, and there have to be enough additional men to shift cargo in an’ out.’ He paused. ‘It’s been a hard voyage, an’ we’ve lost some mates. You deserve a good time, but keep a hand on your wallets an’ an eye on the local law. If you find yourselves in clink then I ain’t guaranteeing that I’ll be able to afford to get you out!’

It took most of the rest of the afternoon for the Gloria Scott to be towed to a vacant section of quayside by a flotilla of smaller boats. By the time the ship was fastened to the quay by thick ropes and a gangway laid from the deck down to the dock, the sun was dipping beneath the hills.

Within half an hour of having docked, the ship was nearly deserted. Any crew member who wasn’t required to stay behind had left. Even Mr Arrhenius, dressed in his beekeeper’s veil and black leather gloves, had left the ship. He had nodded at Sherlock as he walked towards the gangway. Perhaps he smiled slightly, but the veil made it difficult to tell. The sailors gave him a wide berth as he walked past, and none of them would walk on to the gangway while he was standing on it.

Eventually, as the sky turned from blue to red, Sherlock stood at the top of the gangway, looking towards the town. He wanted to explore, but he was nervous. He didn’t know anything about local customs. He might get into trouble.

A large hand touched his shoulder. ‘You can come with me,’ Wu Chung said in a kindly voice from behind him. He was speaking Cantonese, and Sherlock could understand him pretty well. ‘You should meet my family. They will cook oysters, and crab, and jellyfish for you. It will be a feast like you’ve never seen before.’

Sherlock smiled, but shook his head. ‘No, this is your time,’ he replied. ‘Go and see them again. Catch up on all the gossip. Tell them about your adventures. I don’t want them distracted by having a foreigner there, and having to be hospitable.’

‘You are a wise man,’ Wu said. He squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder. ‘Any time you want to come and see me, make your way to Renmin Dong Lu, and ask for the Wu family. Everyone knows where we live. You are welcome, always.’

He took his hand off Sherlock’s shoulder, but he still stayed where he was for a few moments. He seemed reluctant to leave. Sherlock turned to look at him. The big cook was staring wistfully out at the town.

‘I wonder if they will remember me,’ he said softly.

Before Sherlock could say anything, Wu Chung set off down the gangway. Watching him go, Sherlock considered how much he’d learned from the cook. Not only how to defend himself using the movements of T’ai chi ch’uan, but also how to communicate with the locals in Cantonese. He had been lucky in the teachers he had met over the past two years — Amyus Crowe, Rufus Stone and Wu Chung. And Mycroft, of course, although his brother rarely gave the impression that he was teaching Sherlock anything, despite the fact that everything he said contained a lesson of some kind.

He wondered with a slight and sudden flutter of his heart where his friends and family thought he was.

As he was about to disembark he heard a voice behind him say, ‘I always wanted a crewman who could take orders without complaining, work hard without shirking and then walk off the ship without being paid. People told me I was mad, but I said to them, “You wait — one day I’ll find a crewman just like that.” And here you are, laddie. Here you are.’

Sherlock turned. He had already recognized the voice. It was Mr Larchmont, and he was gazing at Sherlock with a bemused expression on his face. He held up an envelope — rough brown manila, stained by many sets of fingerprints. ‘Do you want your pay, or shall I donate it to the Jim Larchmont Charity for Distressed Ship’s Masters?’

‘Sorry,’ Sherlock said, reaching out for the envelope. ‘I nearly forgot.’

‘You’re a good sailor, laddie,’ Larchmont said as he handed it over. ‘I keep forgetting you started out as a stowaway. You deserve pay — more than some of those other wastes of victuals I was forced to employ.’ He paused. ‘You’re coming back, I hope? Not stopping off here to make your fortune, or see more of the world?’

‘I’m coming back,’ Sherlock confirmed. ‘I want to get home to England.’

Larchmont stared at him for a few moments. ‘There’re ships in dock that are leaving sooner than we are, and heading back for Blighty,’ he said softly. ‘If you want, I could have a word with one of the captains for you. Get you a berth.’

‘Thanks,’ Sherlock said, ‘but I’d rather wait a few days and leave with the Gloria Scott.’ He shrugged. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but the ship feels like home.’

‘Aye,’ Larchmont murmured. ‘That she does.’ He paused, and then in a louder voice said, ‘You be off now before the sun goes down and the rats come out of their holes. Stay away from card games, strong spirits and any woman that tries to speak to you before you’ve spoken to her.’

‘Aye aye, sir!’ Sherlock saluted, and then turned and headed for the gangway. As he went he slipped the envelope that Mr Larchmont had given him into a pocket of his jacket. Before he could pull his fingers out, they encountered something else — a smooth, curved piece of metal. He pulled it out, curious as to what it was. It took a moment before he recognized it as the object he had picked up off the deck outside Mr Arrhenius’s cabin a few days before. He stared at it, bemused.

‘Fifteen seconds, laddie, then you have to stay and prise the barnacles off the hull!’ Mr Larchmont shouted.

‘Aye aye, sir!’ Sherlock called back. He slipped the metal object back into his pocket next to the envelope of cash and sprinted down the gangway towards the Shanghai quayside.