Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition

by Craig Stephen Copland

  The sun set at a quarter to nine and at least a thousand sailors, owners, and spectators were gathered. Before the first prize was announced, the regatta ‘Admiral’ called for attention.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, sailors all,” he shouted. “This has been a glorious week and we have held one of the largest and finest regattas in the history of England.”

  A cheer went up. He continued.

  “Before we hand out all of the prizes, we have a special announcement. It concerns an event that has never before taken place in the history of sailing in Great Britain. There are so many splendid boats and wonderful sailors gathered here, in this one location, that an opportunity has presented itself. A group of boat owners has proposed a truly great sailing race; one that has never happened before. It will be an open race. Any boat may enter. The Black Friars Distillery in Plymouth, the makers of the fine Plymouth Gin, is offering a prize of a thousand pounds. Are you ready to hear what has been proposed?”

  Shouts of “aye” and “yes” along with cries of “get on with it” were heard.

  “Tomorrow morning all boats are invited to take part in a race down the Solent, through the Needles, down the Channel and out into the Celtic Sea. From there they must sail to the south coast of Ireland and round the Fastnet Rock. The finish line will be in the Plymouth Harbor. Already over one hundred boats have said they will take part. The race around the Fastnet will be one of the greatest sailing races of all time!”

  He went on to give further details, but the crowd was all abuzz. Even as the prizes were awarded and the fireworks set off, the talk was all about the Fastnet race, the great race. The greatest race ever. It would take most boats almost three days and they would have to pass through some of the most treacherous waters in the nation. Truly, it would be a superb test of sailing prowess.

  When we finally returned to the inn, at close to eleven o’clock in the evening, Captain Trentacost and the four old sailors were gathered in the parlor waiting for us. They were all full of the great race and indeed gave themselves some credit for having helped to propose it to the regatta officials. I could see that they were quite serious about the venture, so much so that they were drinking tea instead of rum. They announced that they would soon be off to bed so as to be ready at first light to prepare for the race to Fastnet and back. No doubt many bets had been placed.

  Holmes retreated out on to the porch to have a final pipe and look out over the water before retiring. I joined him and enjoyed the sublime view of the moon over the waters. My serenity was interrupted by a cluster of men at the base of the stairs who were chatting, unaware of our presence. I could not hear what they were saying but I recognized them. There were six in total. Three were the local lads who had been hired by our friends to help crew the Indefatigable. The other three were the imposing American chaps that I had stood behind whilst in the registration line earlier in the week. Something about their meeting so late and secretively caused me concern.

  “You don’t suppose,” I said to Holmes, “that those American fellows are trying to poach our local crew? Our men are counting on them for the great race tomorrow. I don’t like the look of what’s going on.”

  “Neither do I,” said Holmes, “although I doubt whether they are being hired for any other boat.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because those Americans do not have a boat.”

  He said no more and turned to climb the stairs up to our room, then retired to his bed in silence. I did the same. Victor was already in his bed and fast asleep.

  Chapter Four

  Recruited to the Indefatigable

  AT FIVE THIRTY the following morning, I was awakened by a loud “Wake up lads!” and the turning up of the gaslight. The first glimmer of dawn was slipping in through the windows and my sleepy eyes could make out Captain Trentacost and Sir Monroe standing over us.

  “Good heavens, father” said Victor. “What is it?”

  “Sorry to do this to you, boys, but something has come up and we need you.”

  “What’s come up?” asked Victor.

  “Our local crew has deserted us. They must have been given a better offer. All we got was a note saying that they had fulfilled their obligations to us for the regatta and would not be working for us any longer.”

  “Well,” said Victor. “Where are they? Can you not find them and make them a better offer?”

  “We can find neither hide nor hair of them. Gone. All three of them.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Victor, as if the presence of his father and Sir Munroe waking us up was not an obvious answer.

  “We’re recruiting the three of you. Now up you get and get dressed and meet us downstairs for some breakfast before we take you out and show you what you have to do. Hurry. Jump to it.”

  “Aye, aye, gentlemen,” said Holmes, to my surprise. “We shall be as true and loyal as Suleiman was to the Knights. You can count on us.”

  Holmes’s strange behavior never ceased to perplex me. But Victor was having none of it.

  “Faaaather,” pleaded Victor. “I cannot abide sailing. You know I can’t.”

  “For the next three days, you can learn to abide it,” came the reply. “Now get moving or my boot will be up your arse. See you downstairs.”

  I looked at Holmes and saw that he was already out of his bed and getting dressed.

  “Are you honestly going to get on a boat and sail with them?” I asked.

  “I suspect that they need us in more ways than they know,” he replied and shuffled off out of the room. I shrugged and reminded myself that I was not a bad swimmer and so was not likely to drown. Three days at sea I thought I could manage, and most certainly our men were in a pinch and we were needed.

  Whilst I was dressing, Victor came up to me and sat down on my bed.

  “Doctor John,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. It’s not just that I do not like sailing. For some reason, it terrifies me. The prospect of three days on the ocean frightens me to death but I can’t disappoint my father. This race will be the last great hurrah for him and his pals. You wouldn’t happen to have anything in your medical bag that I could take? I know there’s nothing that can make me brave, but maybe something to render me almost unconscious so I don’t have to think.”

  He looked at me and I could see the desperation in his eyes. I sat down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “The only way,” I said, “to get over a paralyzing fear is to conquer it. It’s just like falling off a horse. You have to get up and keep going. You can do it.”

  His lower lip began to tremble. “Oh, please, John. I can’t.”

  I thought for a moment and then came to a solution.

  “I have some laudanum. If you take it now you will be floating on a cloud for the next two hours. By that time, you’ll be on the boat with no way to escape. And then you’ll just have to make it through.”

  I gave him a strong dose and we made our way down for breakfast. I knew that within ten minutes he would be temporarily inhabiting a dream world and was reasonably sure that the joy of being on the ocean on a beautiful morning would help to remove all his fears.

  The old sailors were assembled around a table in the breakfast room as I entered.

  “Doc,” called one of them to me, “can you cook?”

  I was not expecting any such question and after recovering my composure, I assured them that I had no such ability whatsoever. I could not recall a single meal in my life that I had cooked for anyone other than myself. I had been provided for by my parents, by school kitchen workers, by the dear ladies at medical school, by the cookies in the army, and most recently, by the blessed Mrs. Hudson. And I was quite certain that Sherlock Holmes’s experience was even less than mine.

  “We need a cook,” stated Captain Trentacost. “One of the local lads was going to do that for us, but he’s gone. We’ll be out on the water for three days. We have to eat.”

  In what was either
a stroke of fortune or disaster, it so happened that at that moment the young woman, Molly, who had been waiting on us for the past few days, walked into the room to take our breakfast order.

  “Miss Molly,” said Sir Monroe, “can you cook?”

  She gave him quite the look and then replied, “I can cook.”

  “Have you ever cooked on a boat?” Monroe continued. “Ever worked a galley?”

  “I’ve cooked on a boat,” she said.

  “Well then,” he roared, “will you come and cook for us for the next three days whilst we sail out to Fastnet and back?”

  She laughed spontaneously. “You must be daft. Not if you offered me a hundred pounds would I spend three days on a boat with you old bounders.”

  “You heard what she said,” said Monroe. “For two hundred pounds, she’ll come and cook for us.”

  Molly looked stunned. Two hundred pounds was more than she would earn in an entire year. She smiled and replied, “It’s too early in the morning for your jokes, sir. How do you want your eggs?”

  “We’re serious, Molly. Two hundred pounds for three days and we promise to behave.”

  She looked around and gave a glance to each of us. We all smiled and nodded.

  “Very well, but if any one of you gets fresh, I’ll put poison in your tea.”

  “Splendid,” said the Captain. “as fair a contract as I’ve ever heard. Would you mind, my dear, being down at the dock in an hour?”

  She put down her notepad and departed. The reverend picked it up and continued to take the breakfast order.

  An hour later, in the light of early morning, we were all assembled on the Indefatigable. Our motley crew of five old salts, three young landlubbers, and one wisp of a girl slipped away from the mooring and drifted out into the open waters. Victor was smiling dreamily. We had about two hours to learn what we had to know and master our stations. I looked back at the shore, with the morning sun now causing long shadows to fall to the west of the trees and buildings, and thought, for the last time it turned out, that a sailing adventure was a bit of all right.

  As I watched, I noticed three men running from the land out on to the pier. Curious, I pulled out my small set of field glasses to look at them. They were the same three American chaps I had observed the previous evening trying to poach away our local boys. Beside me, Sherlock Holmes was observing the same thing.

  “Surprised them didn’t we.” I said. “They probably thought our yacht would be waylaid after they poached our boys. I think we showed them a thing or two. We London landsmen are made of sterner stuff.”

  Holmes looked at me in friendly condescension. “As you are known to be a gambling man, my dear doctor, I will lay a fiver that those chaps will be waiting for us in Plymouth and could not care a fig about our local crew.”

  Something was up. I knew Sherlock Holmes all too well to think he would risk five pounds on a bet to which he did not already know the most assured result. I mumbled a decline of his offer.

  The Captain gave a quick introduction to terms and tasks. Our boat was quite large for a cutter, nearly seventy feet long. The crew was spread out all along the deck.

  “That is not a rope,” he said. “It’s a line. And those are not piano wires, they’re stays. And that thing at the bow is not a pole-sticking-out, it’s a bowsprit.” And on he went. Victor seemed to be vaguely familiar with everything, gleaned from years of living with his father. Holmes and I were innocents afloat, but, to my surprise, little Miss Molly was fully familiar with everything already. It appeared that she had been on boats many times before.

  “My sister and I came fifth in the junior cat-rigged sloops last year,” she said. “My father has worked on boats all his life and he taught me.”

  Our lessons over, I was assigned to the front of the boat or, having been chastised for calling it that, to the bow, and given charge of what the Captain called the Yankee sail. The Brits, he explained, used another name, but that was what he learned to call it whilst in America. Holmes was given a post at the staysail, not far from my station.

  We practiced our roles through the various points of sail. Close, beam, and broad reaches were covered, and then we tacked several times. Unfortunately, explained the skipper, the first leg of the race, west and down the Solent and through the Needle gap, would require us to tack constantly. A cutter was not as agile in coming about as the sloops, but once out on the open water, he assured us, we would make up for lost time.

  Chapter Five

  The Race to Fastnet

  WE WERE AS READY as we would ever be and at 8:30 we sailed past the stern of the signal boat and hailed the officials. “Indefatigable, here!” shouted Senator Tom. “Cleared!” came the reply. I looked out over the water and could see at least one hundred boats of all shapes and sizes, each one jockeying to get itself into the best position for the flying start.

  At the ten-minute mark, the first gun sounded and the Captain sailed away from the start line. At five minutes, the second gun was fired and we came about a full one hundred and eighty degrees and sailed close to the wind but under controlled speed. At the one-minute mark the final warning gun went off and we turned to catch more wind and began to heel over as we raced toward the line. I watched and held my breath as the line approached, knowing that if we crossed before the gun sounded we would have to turn around and do our start all over again. We could not have been more than twenty-five yards from the line and almost on a beam reach when the starter gun went off. We were flying across the waves and near the head of the pack. Several yachts had jumped the gun and had to turn around and repeat the start, but we had done well.

  “Good work, there mates!” shouted the skipper. “Now get ready to hike out when the wind picks up. We’re going to do a right proud piece of work here.” In truth, he peppered his shouts to us with no end of colorful oaths and curses which are best left to your unholy imaginations. The effect, however, of flying over the waves with the wind streaming across my face was intoxicating. I was keeping close eye on Victor to see how he was managing. The laudanum had worn off and I feared his terror of the sea would take over, but he appeared to be caught up in the moment every bit as much as I was. Holmes was uncharacteristically beaming with a smile and actually laughing every time a spray swept across the boat as we plunged down into the trough of the next wave. All across the water of the Solent, I could see sail after sail of sloop, yawl, cutter, ketch, and the occasional schooner. It was one of the most euphoric moments of my life and I was enjoying it to the hilt.

  Our first tack had led us toward the north shore of the waterway and we would soon have to come about and take a starboard tack back across.

  “Prepare to come about in five minutes,” came the command from the Captain.

  “No! No!” came a scream from the door of the cabin. Miss Molly was standing there wagging her head from side to side. “Five will take you too close. There’s dirty wind off the point. Three minutes, no more!”

  It struck me as highly irregular to have a teenaged cook contradicting a sixty-year-old captain, but there she was. The Captain glared at her for several seconds and then shifted his gaze to the fast approaching shore.

  “As I said!” he shouted. “Coming about in two minutes!”

  He then beckoned with his index finger to Miss Molly and indicated that she was to sit in the seat adjacent to the helm. She came over and sat down.

  It took us at least an hour and a dozen more tacks to work our way down the western side of the Solent and then through the gap and around the gleaming white cliffs that towered over the Needles. From there it was smooth sailing on a close reach all the way across the open water and past Swanage. We gave a wide berth to the Swanage Point and I could see the waves crashing and foaming on the rocks and shoals that extended well out into the water. Sailing into a stiff Westerly, we rounded the Durlston headlands and again into the wide-open water of the English Channel. We headed on a bearing of 270 degrees and, unless the wind changed, we wo
uld just stay the course, passing the Isle of Portland and on to Star Point.

  There was now not much to do. So, I found myself a cushion and relaxed, enjoying the splendor of the waves and the passing shore. We were all gathered on the deck and the reverend offered an exceptionally well-informed travelogue on the various towns and natural features on the passing shore. Quite the knowledgeable chap.

  In the distance, I could see the headlands of the Lizard, the southernmost point of Great Britain, and I remembered from my schooldays that we were passing through what was known as The Graveyard of Ships. The waters off England’s southwest coast were some of the most treacherous on earth. The rocks and shoals that stretched out from the Lizard had claimed many passing boats and countless lives over the past five hundred or more years. I was not worried, however, as I trusted the Captain to swing out into the open waters to the south and give a very wide berth to the dangerous area near the shore.

  As we came closer and closer to the Lizard shoals, I started to think that he was cutting it a bit close. Most assuredly we were in a race and shortening the distance by coming as close as possible to sands bars and rocks was an honored strategy, but I kept thinking that he was going to make it a near run thing.

  I glanced over at Miss Molly and could see that she was having the same thoughts as I was. When we were no more than one hundred yards from the waves crashing on the rocks, she finally leaped up and shouted at the helmsman.

  “Are you daft, man? Get us out away from the shoals before we smash.”

  He smiled at her. “They’re only dangerous if you don’t know your way through them. And I’m sure that they have not moved in the past thirty years.”

  It was now obvious that he was going to run the boat straight through the rocks. I looked around and could see that Holmes and Victor were now standing up and becoming increasingly uncomfortable. What was odd was that the other four men were sitting quietly, smoking nonchalantly, and ignoring the fast-approaching doom of our craft.