The Pursuit of the House-Boat

by John Kendrick Bangs

  VIII

  ON BOARD THE "GEHENNA"

  When the _Gehenna_ had passed down the Styx and out through the beautifulCimmerian Harbor into the broad waters of the ocean, and everything wascomparatively safe for a while at least, Sherlock Holmes came down fromthe bridge, where he had taken his place as the commander of theexpedition at the moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with anxiety,and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be throbbingviolently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not pleasant towitness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea out of them.

  "What is the matter?" asked Demosthenes, anxiously. "We are not in anydanger, are we?"

  "No," replied Holmes. "But I am somewhat puzzled at the bubbles on thesurface of the ocean, and the ripples which we passed over an hour or twoago, barely perceptible through the most powerful microscope, indicate tomy mind that for some reason at present unknown to me the House-boat haschanged her course. Take that bubble floating by. It is the last expiringbit of aerial agitation of the House-boat's wake. Observe whence it comes.Not from the Azores quarter, but as if instead of steering a straightcourse thither the House-boat had taken a sharp turn to the northeast, andwas making for Havre; or, in other words, Paris instead of London seems tohave become their destination."

  Demosthenes looked at Holmes with blank amazement, and, to keep fromstammering out the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips, he openedhis _bonbonniere_ and swallowed a pebble.

  "You don't happen to have a cocaine tablet in your box, do you?" queriedHolmes.

  "No," returned the Greek. "Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but thesepebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down. How on earth do you know thatthat bubble comes from the wake of the House-boat?"

  "By my chemical knowledge, merely," replied Holmes. "A merely worldlyvessel leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake. That one we have justdiscovered is not so, but sulphurescent, if I may coin a word which itseems to me the English language is very much in need of. It proves, then,that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian craft, and the onlyStygian craft that has cleared the Cimmerian Harbor for years is theHouse-boat--Q.E.D."

  "We can go back until we find the ripple again, and follow that, Ipresume," sneered Le Coq, who did not take much stock in the theories ofhis great rival, largely because he was a detective by intuition ratherthan by study of the science.

  "You can if you want to, but it is better not to," rejoined Holmes,simply, as though not observing the sneer, "because the ripple representsthe outer lines of the angle of disturbance in the water; and as any oneof the sides to an angle is greater than the perpendicular from thehypothenuse to the apex, you'd merely be going the long way. This isespecially important when you consider the formation of the bow of theHouse-boat, which is rounded like the stern of most vessels, and comesnear to making a pair of ripples at an angle of ninety degrees."

  "Then," observed Sir Walter, with a sigh of disappointment, "we mustchange our course and sail for Paris?"

  "I am afraid so," said Holmes; "but of course it's by no means certain asyet. I think if Columbus would go up into the mizzentop and look abouthim, he might discover something either in confirmation or refutation ofthe theory."

  "He couldn't discover anything," put in Pinzon. "He never did."

  "Well, I like that!" retorted Columbus. "I'd like to know who discoveredAmerica."

  "So should I," observed Leif Ericson, with a wink at Vespucci.

  "Tut!" retorted Columbus. "I did it, and the world knows it, whether youclaim it or not."

  "Yes, just as Noah discovered Ararat," replied Pinzon. "You sat upon thedeck until we ran plumb into an island, after floating about for threemonths, and then you couldn't tell it from a continent, even when you hadit right before your eyes. Noah might just as well have told his familythat he discovered a roof garden as for you to go back to Spain telling'em all that San Salvador was the United States."

  "Well, I don't care," said Columbus, with a short laugh. "I'm the one theycelebrate, so what's the odds? I'd rather stay down here in thesmoking-room enjoying a small game, anyhow, than climb up that mast andstrain my eyes for ten or a dozen hours looking for evidence to prove ordisprove the correctness of another man's theory. I wouldn't know evidencewhen I saw it, anyhow. Send Judge Blackstone."

  "I draw the line at the mizzentop," observed Blackstone. "The dignity ofthe bench must and shall be preserved, and I'll never consent to climb upthat rigging, getting pitch and paint on my ermine, no matter who asks meto go."

  JUDGE BLACKSTONE REFUSES TO CLIMB TO THE MIZZENTOP]

  "Whomsoever I tell to go, shall go," put in Holmes, firmly. "I amcommander of this ship. It will pay you to remember that, JudgeBlackstone."

  "And I am the Court of Appeals," retorted Blackstone, hotly. "Bear that inmind, captain, when you try to send me up. I'll issue a writ of _habeascorpus_ on my own body, and commit you for contempt."

  "There's no use of sending the Judge, anyhow," said Raleigh, fearing bythe glitter that came into the eye of the commander that trouble mightensue unless pacificatory measures were resorted to. "He's accustomed toweighing everything carefully, and cannot be rushed into a decision. If hesaw any evidence, he'd have to sit on it a week before reaching aconclusion. What we need here more than anything else is an expert seaman,a lookout, and I nominate Shem. He has sailed under his father, and I haveit on good authority that he is a nautical expert."

  Holmes hesitated for an instant. He was considering the necessity ofdisciplining the recalcitrant Blackstone, but he finally yielded.

  "Very well," he said. "Shem be it. Bo'sun, pipe Shem on deck, and tell himthat general order number one requires him to report at the mizzentopright away, and that immediately he sees anything he shall come below andmake it known to me. As for the rest of us, having a very considerableappetite, I do now decree that it is dinner-time. Shall we go below?"

  SHEM IN THE LOOKOUT]

  "I don't think I care for any, thank you," said Raleigh. "Fact is--ah--Idined last week, and am not hungry."

  Noah laughed. "Oh, come below and watch us eat, then," he said. "It'll doyou good."

  But there was no reply. Raleigh had plunged head first into hisstate-room, which fortunately happened to be on the upper deck. The restof the spirits repaired below to the saloon, where they were soon engagedin an animated discussion of such viands as the larder provided.

  "This," said Dr. Johnson, from the head of the table, "is what I callcomfort. I don't know that I am so anxious to recover the House-boat,after all."

  "Nor I," said Socrates, "with a ship like this to go off cruising on, andwith such a larder. Look at the thickness of that puree, Doctor--"

  "Excuse me," said Boswell, faintly, "but I--I've left my note-bub-bookupstairs, Doctor, and I'd like to go up and get it."

  "Certainly," said Dr. Johnson. "I judge from your color, which is highlysuggestive of a modern magazine poster, that it might be well too if youstayed on deck for a little while and made a few entries in yourcommonplace book."

  "Thank you," said Boswell, gratefully. "Shall you say anything cleverduring dinner, sir? If so, I might be putting it down while I'm up--"

  "Get out!" roared the Doctor. "Get up as high as you can--get up with Shemon the mizzentop--"

  "Very good, sir," replied Boswell, and he was off.

  "You ought to be more lenient with him, Doctor," said Bonaparte; "he meanswell."

  "I know it," observed Johnson; "but he's so very previous. Last winter, atChaucer's dinner to Burns, I made a speech, which Boswell printed a weekbefore it was delivered, with the words 'laughter' and 'uproariousapplause' interspersed through it. It placed me in a false position."

  "How did he know what you were going to say?" queried Demosthenes.

  "Don't know," replied Johnson. "Kind of mind-reader, I fancy," he added,blushing a trifle. "But, Captain Holmes, what do you deduce from yourobservation of the wake of the House-boat? If she's going to Paris, whythe chang
e?"

  "I have two theories," replied the detective.

  "Which is always safe," said Le Coq.

  "Always; it doubles your chances of success," acquiesced Holmes. "Anyhow,it gives you a choice, which makes it more interesting. The change of hercourse from Londonward to Parisward proves to me either that Kidd is notsatisfied with the extent of the revenge he has already taken, and wishesto ruin you gentlemen financially by turning your wives, daughters, andsisters loose on the Parisian shops, or that the pirates have themselvesbeen overthrown by the ladies, who have decided to prolong their cruiseand get some fun out of their misfortune."

  "And where else than to Paris would any one in search of pleasure go?"asked Bonaparte.

  "I had more fun a few miles outside of Brussels," said Wellington, with asly wink at Washington.

  "Oh, let up on that!" retorted Bonaparte. "It wasn't you beat me atWaterloo. You couldn't have beaten me at a plain ordinary game of old-maidwith a stacked pack of cards, much less in the game of war, if you hadn'thad the elements with you."

  "Tut!" snapped Wellington. "It was clear science laid you out, Boney."

  "Taisey-voo!" shouted the irate Corsican. "Clear science be hanged! Wetscience was what did it. If it hadn't been for the rain, my little Duke, Ishould have been in London within a week, my grenadiers would have beencamping in your Rue Peekadeely, and the Old Guard all over everywhereelse."

  "You must have had a gay army, then," laughed Caesar. "What are Frenchsoldiers made of, that they can't stand the wet--unshrunk linen orflannel?"

  "Bah!" observed Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders and walking a few pacesaway. "You do not understand the French. The Frenchman is not a pell-mellsoldier like you Romans; he is the poet of arms; he does not go in forglory at the expense of his dignity; style, form, is dearer to him thanhonor, and he has no use for fighting in the wet and coming out of thefight conspicuous as a victor with the curl out of his feathers and hisepaulets rusted with the damp. There is no glory in water. But if we hadhad umbrellas and mackintoshes, as every Englishman who comes to theContinent always has, and a bath-tub for everybody, then would yourWaterloo have been different again, and the great democracy of Europe witha Bonaparte for emperor would have been founded for what the Americanscall the keeps; and as for your little Great Britain, ha! she would havebecome the Blackwell's Island of the Greater France."

  "You're almost as funny as _Punch_ isn't," drawled Wellington, with anangry gesture at Bonaparte. "You weren't within telephoning distance ofvictory all day. We simply played with you, my boy. It was a regular gameof golf for us. We let you keep up pretty close and win a few holes, buton the home drive we had you beaten in one stroke. Go to, my dearBonaparte, and stop talking about the flood."

  "It's a lucky thing for us that Noah wasn't a Frenchman, eh?" saidFrederick the Great. "How that rain would have fazed him if he had been!The human race would have been wiped out."

  "Oh, pshaw!" ejaculated Noah, deprecating the unseemliness of the quarrel,and putting his arm affectionately about Bonaparte's shoulder. "When youcome down to that, I was French--as French as one could be in thosedays--and these Gallic subjects of my friend here were, every one of 'em,my lineal descendants, and their hatred of rain was inherited directlyfrom me, their ancestor."

  "Are not we English as much your descendants?" queried Wellington, archinghis eyebrows.

  "You are," said Noah, "but you take after Mrs. Noah more than after me.Water never fazes a woman, and your delight in tubs is an essentiallyfeminine trait. The first thing Mrs. Noah carried aboard was a laundryoutfit, and then she went back for rugs and coats and all sorts ofhand-baggage. Gad, it makes me laugh to this day when I think of it! Shelooked for all the world like an Englishman travelling on the Continent asshe walked up the gang-plank behind the elephants, each elephant with aGladstone bag in his trunk and a hat-box tied to his tail." Here thevenerable old weather-prophet winked at Munchausen, and the little quarrelwhich had been imminent passed off in a general laugh.

  "Where's Boswell? He ought to get that anecdote," said Johnson.

  "I've locked him up in the library," said Holmes. "He's in charge of thelog, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about tohappen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to workwriting it up." Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed his hand tohis ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch andglancing at it, added, quietly, "In three minutes Shem will be in here toannounce a discovery, and one of great importance, I judge, from thesqueak."

  The assemblage gazed earnestly at Holmes for a moment.

  "The squeak?" queried Raleigh.

  "Precisely," said Holmes. "The squeak is what I said, and as I always saywhat I mean, it follows logically that I meant what I said."

  "I heard no squeak," observed Dr. Johnson; "and, furthermore, I fail tosee how a squeak, if I had heard it, would have portended a discovery ofimportance."

  "It would not--to you," said Holmes; "but with me it is different. Myhearing is unusually acute. I can hear the dropping of a pin through astone wall ten feet thick; any sound within a mile of my eardrum vibratesthereon with an intensity which would surprise you, and it is by the useof cocaine that I have acquired this wonderfully acute sense. A propertywhich dulls the senses of most people renders mine doubly apprehensive;therefore, gentlemen, while to you there was no auricular disturbance, tome there was. I heard Shem sliding down the mast a minute since. The factthat he slid down the mast instead of climbing down the rigging showedthat he was in great haste, therefore he must have something tocommunicate of great importance."

  "Why isn't he here already, then? It wouldn't take him two minutes to getfrom the deck here," asked the ever-suspicious Le Coq.

  "It is simple," returned Holmes, calmly. "If you will go yourself andslide down that mast you will see. Shem has stopped for a littlewitch-hazel to soothe his burns. It is no cool matter sliding down a masttwo hundred feet in height."

  As Sherlock Holmes spoke the door burst open and Shem rushed in.

  "A signal of distress, captain!" he cried.

  "From what quarter--to larboard?" asked Holmes.

  "No," returned Shem, breathless.

  "Then it must be dead ahead," said Holmes.

  "Why not to starboard?" asked Le Coq, dryly.

  "Because," answered Holmes, confidently, "it never happens so. If you hadever read a truly exciting sea-tale, my dear Le Coq, you would have knownthat interesting things, and particularly signals of distress, are neverseen except to larboard or dead ahead."

  A murmur of applause greeted this retort, and Le Coq subsided.

  "The nature of the signal?" demanded Holmes.

  "A black flag, skull and cross-bones down, at half-mast!" cried Shem, "andon a rock-bound coast!"

  "They're marooned, by heavens!" shouted Holmes, springing to his feet andrushing to the deck, where he was joined immediately by Sir Walter, Dr.Johnson, Bonaparte, and the others.

  "Isn't he a daisy?" whispered Demosthenes to Diogenes as they climbed thestairs.

  "He is more than that; he's a blooming orchid," said Diogenes, withintense enthusiasm. "I think I'll get my X-ray lantern and see if he'shonest."