Snake Bite (6 page)

‘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.