I
have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter's
night on either side of the fire, "which I really think, Watson, that it would
be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary
case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice
of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it." He had picked from a drawer
a little tarnished cylinder, and, undoing the tape, he handed me a short note
scrawled upon a half-sheet of slate gray-paper.
"The supply of game
for London is going steadily up," it ran.
"Head-keeper Hudson,
we believe, had been now told to receive all orders for flypaper and for preservation
of your hen-pheasant's life."
As I glanced up from reading this enigmatic message,
I saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon my face. "You look a little bewildered,"
said he.
"I cannot see how such a message as this could
inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise."
"Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader,
who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been
the butt end of a pistol."
"You arouse my curiosity," said I. "But why did
you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this
case?"
"Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged."
I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion
what had first turned is mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never
caught him before in a communicative humor. Now he sat forward in this arm chair
and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he lit his pipe and sat for
some time smoking and turning them over. "You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?"
he asked. "He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college.
I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my
rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed
much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes,
and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so
that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that
only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning
as I went down to chapel.
"It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship,
but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to
come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his
visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was
a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to
me in most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of
union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down
to his father's place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality
for a month of the long vacation.
"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth
and consideration, a J.P., and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet
just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was and
old-fashioned, widespread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue
leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably
good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a
former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who
could not put in a pleasant month there.
"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his
only son. There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while
on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of
little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength, both physically
and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had traveled far, had seen much
of the world. And had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thickset,
burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue
eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness
and charity on the countryside, and was noted for the leniency of his sentences
from the bench.
"One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were
sitting over a glass of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about
those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system,
although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life.
The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description
of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.
"'Come, now, Mr. Holmes,' said he, laughing good-humoredly.
'I'm an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.'
"'I fear there is not very much,' I answered; 'I
might suggest that you have gone about in fear of some personal attack with the
last twelvemonth.'
"The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at
me in great surprise.
"'Well, that's true enough,' said he. 'You know,
Victor,' turning to his son, 'when we broke up that poaching gang they swore to
knife us, and Sir Edward Holly has actually been attacked. I've always been on
my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it.'
"'You have a very handsome stick,' I answered.
'By the inscription I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you
have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole
so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions
unless you had some danger to fear.'
"'Anything else?' he asked, smiling.
"'You have boxed a good deal in your youth.'
"'Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose
knocked a little out of the straight?'
"'No,' said I. 'It is your ears. They have the
peculiar flattening and thickening which marks the boxing man.'
"'Anything else?'
"'You have done a good deal of digging by your
callosities.'
"'Made all my money at the gold fields.'
"'You have been in New Zealand.'
"'Right again.'
"'You have visited Japan.'
"'Quite true.'
"'And you have been most intimately associated
with some one whose initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to
entirely forget.'
"Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue
eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face
among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.
"You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his
son and I were. His attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar,
and sprinkled the water from one of the finger-glasses over his face, he gave
a gasp or two and sat up.
"'Ah, boys,' said he, forcing a smile, 'I hope
I haven't frightened you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart,
and it does not take much to knock me over. I don't know how you manage this,
Mr. Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would
be children in your hands. That's your line of life, sir, and you may take the
word of a man who has seen something of the world.'
"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated
estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me,
Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be
made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however,
I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to think of anything
else.
"'I hope that I have said nothing to pain you?'
said I.
"'Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender
point. Might I ask how you know, and how much you know?' He spoke now in a half-jesting
fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.
"'It is simplicity itself,' said I. 'When you bared
your arm to draw that fish into the boat I saw that J. A. Had been tattooed in
the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear
from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that
efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials
had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget
them.'
"What an eye you have!" he cried, with a sigh of
relief. 'It is just as you say. But we won't talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts
of our old lovers are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a quiet
cigar.'
"From that day, amid all his cordiality, there
was always a touch of suspicion in Mr. Trevor's manner towards me. Even his son
remarked it. 'You've given the governor such a turn,' said he, 'that he'll never
be sure again of what you know and what you don't know.' He did not mean to show
it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind that it peeped out at every
action. At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I
drew my visit to a close. On the very day, however, before I left, and incident
occurred which proved in the sequel to be of importance.
"We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs,
the three of us, basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when
a maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to see Mr.
Trevor.
"'What is his name?' asked my host.
"'He would not give any.'
"'What does he want, then?'
"'He says that you know him, and that he only wants
a moment's conversation.'
"'Show him round here.'
"An instant afterwards there appeared a little
wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore
an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red-and-black check shirt,
dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and
crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow
teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of
sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr. Trevor make a sort of
hiccoughing noise in his throat, and jumping out of his chair, he ran into the
house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a strong reek of brandy as he passed
me.
"'Well, my man,' said he. 'What can I do for you?'
"The sailor stood looking at him with puckered
eyes, and with the same loose lipped smile upon his face.
"'You don't know me?' he asked.
"'Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson,' said Mr.
Trevor in a tone of surprise.
"'Hudson it is, sir,' said the seaman. 'Why, it's
thirty year and more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me
still picking my salt meat out of the harness cask.'
"'Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten
old times,' cried Mr. Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something
in a low voice. 'Go into the kitchen,' he continued out loud, 'and you will get
food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a situation.'
"'Thank you, sir,' said the seaman, touching his
forelock. 'I'm just off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, shorthanded at that,
and I wants a rest. I thought I'd get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with you.'
"'Ah!' cried Trevor. 'You know where Mr. Beddoes
is?'
"'Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends
are,' said the fellow with a sinister smile, and he slouched off after the maid
to the kitchen. Mr. Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmate
with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the
lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we entered the house, we found him
stretched dead drunk upon the dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most
ugly impression upon my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe
behind me, for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarrassment to my
friend.
"All this occurred during the first month of the
long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working
out a few experiments in organic chemistry. On day, however, when the autumn was
far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my
friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe, and saying that he was in great
need of my advice and assistance. Of course I dropped everything and set out for
the North once more.
"He met me with the dogcart at the station, and
I saw at a glance that the last two months had been very trying ones for him.
He had grown thin and careworn, and had lost the loud, cheery manner for which
he had been remarkable.
"'The governor is dying,' were the first words
he said.
"'Impossible!' I cried. 'What is the matter?'
"'Apoplexy. Nervous shock, He's been on the verge
all day. I doubt if we shall find him alive.'
"I was, as you may think, Watson, horrified at
this unexpected news.
"'What has caused it?' I asked.
"'Ah, that is the point. Jump in and we can talk
it over while we drive. You remember that fellow who came upon the evening before
you left us?'
"'Perfectly.'
"'Do you know who it was that we let into the house
that day?'
"'I have no idea.'
"'It was the devil, Holmes,' he cried.
"I stared at him in astonishment.
"'Yes, it was the devil himself. We have not had
a peaceful hour since--not one. The governor has never held up his head from that
evening, and now the life has been crushed out of him and his heart broken, all
through this accursed Hudson.'
"'What power had he, then?'
"'Ah, that is what I would give so much to know.
The kindly, charitable, good old governor--how could he have fallen into the clutches
of such a ruffian! But I am so glad that you have come, Holmes. I trust very much
to your judgment and discretion, and I know that you will advise me for the best.'
"We were dashing along the smooth white country
road, with the long stretch of the Broads in front of us glimmering in the red
light of the setting sun. From a grove upon our left I could already see the high
chimneys and the flag-staff which marked the squire's dwelling.
"'My father made the fellow gardener,' said my
companion, 'and then, as that did not satisfy him, he was promoted to be butler.
The house seemed to be at his mercy, and he wandered about and did what he chose
in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile language. The dad
raised their wages all round to recompense them for the annoyance. The fellow
would take the boat and my father's best gun and treat himself to little shooting
trips. And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face that I would
have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. I
tell you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this time; and
now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a little more, I might
not have been a wiser man.
"'Well, matters went from bad to worse with us,
and this animal Hudson became more and more intrusive, until at last, on making
some insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the shoulders
and turned him out of the room. He slunk away with a livid face and two venomous
eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue could do. I don't know what passed
between the poor dad and him after that, but the dad came to me next day and asked
me whether I would mind apologizing to Hudson. I refused, as you can imagine,
and asked my father how he could allow such a wretch to take such liberties with
himself and his household."'
"Ah, my boy," said he, "it is all very well to
talk, but you don't know how I am placed. But you shall know, Victor. I'll see
that you shall know, come what may. You wouldn't believe harm of your poor old
father, would you, lad?" He was very much moved, and shut himself up in the study
all day, where I could see through the window that he was writing busily.
"'That evening there came what seemed to me to
be a grand release, for Hudson told us that he was going to leave us. He walked
into the dining-room as we sat after dinner, and announced his intention in the
thick voice of a half-drunken man.
"'I've had enough of Norfolk," said he.
"I'll run down to Mr. Beddoes in Hampshire. He'll
be as glad to see me as you were, I dare say."
"'You're not going away in any kind of spirit,
Hudson, I hope," said my father, with a tameness which mad my blood boil.
"'I've not had my 'pology," said he sulkily, glancing
in my direction.
"'Victor, you will acknowledge that you have used
this worthy fellow rather roughly," said the dad, turning to me.
"'On the contrary, I think that we have both shown
extraordinary patience towards him," I answered.
"'Oh, you do, do you?" he snarls.
"Very good, mate. We'll see about that!"
"'He slouched out of the room, and half an hour
afterwards left the house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness.
Night after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was recovering
his confidence that the blow did at last fall.'
"'And how?' I asked eagerly.
"'In a most extraordinary fashion. A letter arrived
for my father yesterday evening, bearing the Fordingbridge postmark. My father
read it, clapped both his hands to his head, and began running round the room
in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his senses. When I at
last drew him down on to the sofa, his mouth and eyelids were all puckered on
one side, and I saw that he had a stroke. Dr. Fordham came over at once. We put
him to bed; but the paralysis has spread, he has shown no sign of returning consciousness,
and I think that we shall hardly find him alive.'
"'You horrify me, Trevor!' I cried. 'What then
could have been in this letter to cause so dreadful a result?'
"'Nothing. There lies the inexplicable part of
it. The message was absurd and trivial. Ah, my God, it is as I feared!'
"As he spoke we came round the curve of the avenue,
and saw in the fading light that every blind in the house had been drawn down.
As we dashed up to the door, my friend's face convulsed with grief, a gentleman
in black emerged from it.
"'When did it happen, doctor?' asked Trevor.
"'Almost immediately after you left.'
"'Did he recover consciousness?'
"'For an instant before the end.'
"'Any message for me.'
"'Only that the papers were in the back drawer
of the Japanese cabinet.'
"My friend ascended with the doctor to the chamber
of death, while I remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over
in my head, and feeling as somber as ever I had done in my life. What was the
past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveler, and gold-digger, and how had he placed
himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should he faint at an
allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he
had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire,
and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to
blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might
either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret
which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate
that such a betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear enough. But then how
could this letter be trivial and grotesque, as describe by the son? He must have
misread it. If so, it must have been one of those ingenious secret codes which
mean one thing while they seem to mean another. I must see this letter. If there
were a hidden meaning in it, I was confident that I could pluck it forth. For
an hour I sat pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought
in a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but composed, with
these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp. He sat down opposite
to me, drew the lamp to the edge of the table, and handed me a short note scribbled,
as you see, upon a single sheet of gray paper.
"The supply of game
for London is going steadily up,' it ran. 'Head-keeper
Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly paper and
for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.'
"I dare say my face looked as bewildered as your
did just now when first I read this message. Then I reread it very carefully.
It was evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried in
this strange combination of words. Or could it be that there was a prearranged
significance to such phrases as flypaper and hen-pheasant'? Such a meaning would
be arbitrary and could not be deduced in any way. And yet I was loath to believe
that this was the case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemed to show that
the subject of the message was as I had guessed, and that it was from Beddoes
rather than the sailor. I tried it backwards, but the combination 'life pheasant's
hen' was not encouraging. Then I tried alternate words, but neither 'the of for'
nor 'supply game London' promised to throw any light upon it.
"And then in an instant the key of the riddle was
in my hands, and I saw that every third word, beginning with the first, would
give a message which might well drive old Trevor to despair.
"It was short and terse, the warning, as I now
read it to my companion:
"'The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for
your life.'
"Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands,
'It must be that, I suppose,' said he. "This is worse than death, for it means
disgrace as well. But what is the meaning of these "head-keepers" and "hen-pheasants"?
"'It means nothing to the message, but it might
mean a good deal to us if we had no other means of discovering the sender. You
see that he has begun by writing
"The...game...is," and so on. Afterwards he had,
to fulfill the prearranged cipher, to fill in any two words in each space. He
would naturally use the first words which came to his mind, and if there were
so many which referred to sport among them, you may be tolerably sure that he
is either an ardent shot or interested in breeding. Do you know anything of this
Beddoes?'
"'Why, now that you mention it,' said he, 'I remember
that my poor father used to have an invitation from him to shoot over his preserves
every autumn.'
"'Then it is undoubtedly from him that the note
comes,' said I. 'It only remains for us to find out what this secret was which
the sailor Hudson seems to have held over the heads of these two wealthy and respected
men.'
"'Alas, Holmes, I fear that it is one of sin and
shame!' cried my friend. 'But from you I shall have no secrets. Here is the statement
which was drawn up by my father when he knew that the danger from Hudson had become
imminent. I found it in the Japanese cabinet, as he told the doctor. Take it and
read it to me, for I have neither the strength nor the courage to do it myself.'
"These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed
to me, and I will read them to you, as I read them in the old study that night
to him. They are endorsed outside, as you see, 'Some particulars of the voyage
of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on the 8th October,
1855, to her destruction in N. Lat. 15 degrees 20', W. Long. 25 degrees 14' on
Nov. 6th.' It is in the form of a letter, and runs in this way:
"'My dear, dear son, now that approaching disgrace
begins to darken the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth and
honesty that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the loss of my position
in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes of all who have known me, which cuts
me to the heart; but it is the thought that you should come to blush for me--you
who love me and who have seldom, I hope, had reason to do other than respect me.
But if the blow falls which is forever hanging over me, then I should wish you
to read this, that you may know straight from me how far I have been to blame.
On the other hand, if all should go well (which may kind God Almighty grant!),
then if by any chance this paper should be still undestroyed and should fall into
your hands, I conjure you, by all you hold sacred, by the memory of your dear
mother, and by the love which had been between us, to hurl it into the fire and
to never give one thought to it again.
"'If then your eye goes onto read this line, I
know that I shall already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or as is
more likely, for you know that my heart is weak, by lying with my tongue sealed
forever in death. In either case the time for suppression is past, and every word
which I tell you is the naked truth, and this I swear as I hope for mercy.
"'My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James
Armitage in my younger days, and you can understand now the shock that it was
to me a few weeks ago when your college friend addressed me in words which seemed
to imply that he had surprised my secret. As Armitage it was that I entered a
London banking-house, and as Armitage I was convicted of breaking my country's
laws, and was sentenced to transportation. Do not think very harshly of me, laddie.
It was a debt of honor, so called, which I had to pay, and I used money which
was not my own to do it, in the certainty that I could replace it before there
could be any possibility of its being missed. But the most dreadful ill-luck pursued
me. The money which I had reckoned upon never came to hand, and a premature examination
of accounts exposed my deficit. The case might have been dealt leniently with,
but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than now, and on
my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven other
convicts in 'tween-decks of the bark Gloria Scott, bound for Australia.
"'It was the year '55 when the Crimean war was
at its height, and the old convict ships had been largely used as transports in
the Black Sea. The government was compelled, therefore, to use smaller and less
suitable vessels for sending out their prisoners. The Gloria Scott had
been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was an old-fashioned, heavy-bowed, broad-beamed
craft, and the new clippers had cut her out. She was a five-hundred-ton boat;
and besides her thirty-eight jailbirds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen
soldiers, a captain, three mates, a doctor, a chaplain, and four warders. Nearly
a hundred souls were in her, all told, when we set said from Falmouth.
"'The partitions between the cells of the convicts,
instead of being of thick oak, as is usual in convict-ships, were quite thin and
frail. The man next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I had particularly
noticed when we were led down the quay. He was a young man with a clear, hairless
face, a long, thin nose, and rather nutcracker jaws. He carried his head very
jauntily in the air, had a swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else,
remarkable for his extraordinary height. I don't think any of our heads would
have come up to his shoulder, and I am sure that he could not have measured less
than six and a half feet. It was strange among so many sad and weary faces to
see one which was full of energy and resolution. The sight of it was to me like
a fire in a snowstorm. I was glad, then, to find that he was my neighbor, and
gladder still when, in the dead of the night, I heard a whisper close to my ear,
and found that he had managed to cut an opening in the board which separated us.
"'Hullo, chummy!" said he, "what's your name, and
what are you here for?"
"'I answered him, and asked in turn who I was talking
with.
"'I'm Jack Prendergast," said he, "and by God!
You'll learn to bless my name before you've done with me."
"'I remembered hearing of his case, for it was
one which had made an immense sensation throughout the country some time before
my own arrest. He was a man of good family and of great ability, but on incurably
vicious habits, who had be an ingenious system of fraud obtained huge sums of
money from the leading London merchants.
"'Ha, ha! You remember my case!" said he proudly.
"'Very well, indeed."
"'Then maybe you remember something queer about
it?"
"'What was that, then?"
"'I'd had nearly a quarter of a million, hadn't
I?"
"'So it was said."
"'But none was recovered, eh?"
"'No."
"'Well, where d'ye suppose the balance is?" he
asked.
"'I have no idea," said I. "
'"Right between my finger and thumb," he cried.
"By God! I've go more pounds to my name than you've
hairs on your head. And if you've money, my son, and know how to handle it and
spread it, you can do anything. Now, you don't think it likely that a man who
could do anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking hold
of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, moldy old coffin of a Chin China coaster. No,
sir, such a man will look after himself and will look after his chums. You may
lay to that! You hold on to him, and you may kiss the book that he'll haul you
through."
"'That was his style of talk, and at first I thought
it meant nothing; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in with
all possible solemnity, he let me understand that there really was a plot to gain
command of the vessel. A dozen of the prisoners had hatched it before they came
aboard, Prendergast was the leader, and his money was the motive power.
"'I'd a partner," said he, "a rare good man, as
true as a stock to a barrel. He's got the dibbs, he has, and where do you think
he is at this moment? Why, he's the chaplain of this ship--the chaplain, no less!
He came aboard with a black coat, and his papers right, and money enough in his
box to buy the thing right up from keel to main-truck. The crew are his, body
and soul. He could buy 'em at so much a gross with a cash discount, and he did
it before ever they signed on. He's got two of the warders and Mereer, the second
mate, and he'd get the captain himself, if he thought him worth it."
"'What are we to do, then?" I asked.
"'What do you think?" said he.
"We'll make the coats of some of these soldiers
redder than ever the tailor did."
"'But they are armed," said I.
"'And so shall we be, my boy. There's a brace of
pistols for every mother's son of us, and if we can't carry this ship, with the
crew at our back, it's time we were all sent to a young misses' boarding-school.
You speak to your mate upon the left tonight, and see if he is to be trusted."
"'I did so, and found my other neighbor to be a
young fellow in much the same position as myself, whose crime had been forgery.
His name was Evans, but he afterwards changed it, like myself, and his is now
a rich and prosperous man in the south of England. He was ready enough to join
the conspiracy, as the only means of saving ourselves, and before we had crossed
the Bay there were only two of the prisoners who were not in the secret. One of
these was of weak mind, and we did not dare to trust him, and the other was suffering
from jaundice, and could not be of any use to us.
"'From the beginning there was really nothing to
prevent us from taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians,
specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort
us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often did he come
that by the third day we had each stowed away at the foot of our beds a file,
a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, and twenty slugs. Two of the warders were
agents of Prendergast, and the second mate was his right-hand man. The captain,
the two mates, two warders Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers, and the doctor
were all that we had against us. Yet, safe as it was, we determined to neglect
no precaution, and to make our attack suddenly by night. It came, however, more
quickly than we expected, and in this way.
"'One evening, about the third week after our start,
the doctor had come down to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and putting
his hand down on the bottom of his bunk he felt the outline of the pistols. If
he had been silent he might have blown the whole thing, but he was a nervous little
chap, so he gave a cry of surprise and turned so pale that the man knew what was
up in an instant and seized him. He was gagged before he could give the alarm,
and tied down upon the bed. He had unlocked the door that led to the deck, and
we were through it in a rush.
The two sentries were shot down, and so was a corporal
who came running to see what was the matter. There were two more soldiers at the
door of the stateroom, and their muskets seemed not to be loaded, for they never
fired upon us, and they were shot while trying to fix their bayonets. Then we
rushed on into the captain's cabin, but as we pushed open the door there was an
explosion from within, and there he lay wit his brains smeared over the chart
of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table, while the chaplain stood with
a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow. The two mates had both been seized
by the crew, and the whole business seemed to be settled.
"'The stateroom was next the cabin, and we flocked
in there and flopped down on the settees, all speaking together, for we were just
mad with the feeling that we were free once more. There were lockers all round,
and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of them in, and pulled out a dozen
of brown sherry. We cracked off the necks of the bottles, poured the stuff out
into tumblers, and were just tossing them off, when in an instant without warning
there came the roar of muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of smoke
that we could not see across the table. When it cleared again the place was a
shambles. Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the
floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when
I think of it. We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given
the job up if had not been for Prendergast. He bellowed like a bull and rushed
for the door with all that were left alive at his heels. Out we ran, and there
on the poop were the lieutenant and ten of his men. The swing skylights above
the saloon table had been a bit open, and they had fired on us through the slit.
We got on them before they could load, and they
stood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in five minutes it
was all over. My God! Was there ever a slaughterhouse like that ship! Predergast
was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children
and threw them overboard alive or dead. There was one sergeant that was horribly
wounded and yet kept on swimming for a surprising time, until some one in mercy
blew out his brains. When the fighting was over there was no one left of our enemies
except just the warders the mates, and the doctor.
"'It was over them that the great quarrel arose.
There were many of us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who
had no wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers
over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while men
were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors,
said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Predergast and those
who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it,
said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box.
It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners,
but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at
the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that
there would be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of sailor togs each,
a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk and one of biscuits, and a compass.
Prendergast threw us over a chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose
ship had foundered in Lat. 15 degrees and Long 25 degrees west, and then cut the
painter and let us go.
"'And now I come to the most surprising part of
my story, my dear son. The seamen had hauled the fore-yard aback during the rising,
but now as we left them they brought it square again, and as there was a light
wind from the north and east the bark began to draw slowly away from us. Our boat
lay, rising and falling, upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, who were
the most educated of the party, were sitting in the sheets working out our position
and planning what coast we should make for. It was a nice question, for the Cape
de Verde were about five hundred miles to the north of us, and the African coast
about seven hundred to the east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round to
the north, we thought that Sierra Leone might be best, and turned our head in
that direction, the bark being at that time nearly hull down on our starboard
quarter. Suddenly as we looked at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot
up from her, which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky line. A few seconds
later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke thinned away there
was no sign left of the Gloria Scott. In an instant we swept the boat's
head round again and pulled with all our strength for the place where the haze
still trailing over the water marked the scene of this catastrophe.
"'It was a long hour before we reached it, and
at first we feared that we had come too late to save any one. A splintered boat
and a number of crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on the waves
showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there was no sign of life, and we
had turned away in despair when we heard a cry for help, and saw at some distance
a piece of wreckage with a man lying stretched across it. When we pulled him aboard
the boat he proved to be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who was so burned
and exhausted that he could give us no account of what had happened until the
following morning.
"'It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast
and his gang had proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners. The two
warders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third mate. Prendergast
then descended into the 'tween-decks and with his own hands cut the throat of
the unfortunate surgeon. There only remained the first mate, who was a bold and
active man. When he saw the convict approaching him with the bloody knife in his
hand he kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow contrived to loosen, and rushing
down the deck he plunged into the after-hold. A dozen convicts, who descended
with their pistols in search of him, found him with a matchbox in his hand seated
beside an open powder-barrel, which was one of a hundred carried on board, and
swearing that he would blow all hands up if he were in any way molested. An instant
later the explosion occurred, though Hudson thought it was caused by the misdirected
bullet of one of the convicts rather than the mate's match.
Be the cause what I may, it was the end of the
Gloria Scott and of the rabble who held command of her.
"'Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history
of this terrible business in which I was involved. Next day we were picked up
by the brig Hotspur, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty in
believing that we were the survivors of a passenger ship which had foundered.
The transport ship Gloria Scott was set down by the Admiralty as being
lost at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her true fate. After an excellent
voyage the Hotspur landed us at Sydney, where Evans and I changed our names and
made our way to the diggings, where, among the crowds who were gathered from all
nations, we had no difficulty in losing our former identities. The rest I need
not relate. We prospered, we traveled, we came back as rich colonials to England,
and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we have led peaceful
and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried. Imagine, then,
my feelings when in the seaman who came to us I recognized instantly the man who
had been picked off the wreck. He had tracked us down somehow, and had set himself
to live upon our fears. You will understand now how it was that I strove to keep
the peace with him, and you will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears
which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his other victim with threats upon
his tongue.'
"Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to
be hardly legible, 'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet Lord,
have mercy on our souls!'
"That was the narrative which I read that night
to young Trevor, and I think, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a dramatic
one. The good fellow was heartbroken at it, and went out to the Terai tea planting,
where I hear that he is doing well. As to the sailor and Beddoes, neither of them
was ever heard of again after that day on which the letter of warning was written.
They both disappeared utterly and completely. No complaint had been lodged with
he police, so that Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen
lurking about, and it was believed by the police that he had done away with Beddoes
and had fled. For myself I believe that the truth was exactly the opposite. I
think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation and believing
himself to have been already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had
fled from the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those are
the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection,
I am sure that they are very heartily at your service."