The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Part 7 (1/2)

”'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 er from Hudson had become imminent I found it in the japanese cabinet, as he told the doctor Take it and read it to e to do it myself'

”These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed to me, and I will read theht to him They are endorsed outside, as you see, 'Soe of the bark Gloria Scott, fro 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 ht that you should come to blush for me--you who love me and who have seldom, I hope, had reason to do other than respectover me, then I should wish you to read this, that you ht from me how far I have been to blao well (which rant!), 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 on to read this line, I know that I shall already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or as iswith ue sealed forever in death In either case the time for suppression is past, and every hich I tell you is the naked truth, and this I swear as I hope for mercy

”'My naer days, and you can understand now the shock that it was to e friend addressed me in words which seee it was that I entered a London banking-house, and as Ar 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 exaht have been dealt leniently with, but the laere o 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 Criht, and the old convict shi+ps had been largely used as transports in the Black Sea The government was compelled, therefore, to use s out their prisoners The Gloria Scott had been in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was an old-fashi+oned, 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 jail-birds, 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, e set sail from Falmouth

”'The partitions between the cells of the convicts, instead of being of thick oak, as is usual in convict-shi+ps, were quite thin and frail The man next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I had particularly noticed ere led down the quay He was a young , thin nose, and rather nut-cracker jaws He carried his head very jauntily in the air, had a swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else, reht I don't think any of our heads would have come up to his shoulder, and I am sure that he could not haveso y and resolution The sight of it was to lad, then, to find that he was ht, I heard a whisper close toin the board which separated us

”'”Hullo, chummy!” said he, ”what's your name, and what are you here for?”

”'I answered hi with

”'”I'ast,” said he, ”and by God! You'll learn to bless my na of his case, for it was one which had hout the country soood fareat ability, but of incurably vicious habits, who had by an ingenious syste London merchants

”'”Ha, ha! You remember my case!” said he proudly

”'”Very well, indeed”

”'”Thenqueer 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 ot more pounds to my name than you've hairs on your head And if you've money, my son, and kno to handle it and spread it, you can do anything Now, you don't think it likely that ato wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy 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 hih”

”'That was his style of talk, and at first I thought it ; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in with all possible soleain command of the vessel A dozen of the prisoners had hatched it before they caast was the leader, and his money was the ood ot the dibbs, he has, and where do you think he is at this moment? Why, he's the chaplain of this shi+p--the chaplain, no less! He caht, and ht up from keel to main-truck The crew are his, body and soul He could buy 'eross with a cash discount, and he did it before ever they signed on He's got two of the warders and Mereer, the second ht 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 shi+p, with the crew at our back, it's ti-school You speak to your ht, and see if he is to be trusted”

”'I did so, and foundfellow in ery His naed it, like myself, and he is now a rich and prosperous h to join the conspiracy, as the onlyourselves, and before we had crossed the Bay there were only two of the prisoners ere not in the secret One of these was of weak mind, and we did not dare to trust hi from jaundice, and could not be of any use to us

”'Fro to prevent us fro possession of the shi+p The creere a set of ruffians, specially picked for the job The sha a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day we had each stoay 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 ht-hand man The captain, the two hteen soldiers, and the doctor were all that we had against us Yet, safe as it e deterlect no precaution, and to ht It came, however, more quickly than we expected, and in this way

”'One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor had co his hand down on the bottom of his bunk he felt the outline of the pistols If he had been silent he , but he was a nervous little chap, so he gave a cry of surprise and turned so pale that the ed before he could give the alarm, and tied down upon the bed He had unlocked the door that led to the deck, and ere through it in a rush The two sentries were shot down, and so was a corporal who ca to see as the matter There were two more soldiers at the door of the state-room, 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 with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table, while the chaplain stood with a s 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 state-room was next the cabin, and we flocked in there and flopped down on the settees, all speaking together, for ere justthat ere 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 tu the 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 sha on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn ht that I think we should have given the job up if it 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 hts 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 hter-house like that shi+p! Prendergast was like a raging devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children and threw theeant that was horribly wounded and yet kept on swi tihting was over there was no one left of our enemies except just the warders the reat quarrel arose There were h to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wish to haveto knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while ht of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that ould not see it done But there was no ast and those ith hi a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box It nearly ca the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if ished we o We jumped at the offer, for ere already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, andthat 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 coast threw us over a chart, told us that ere shi+pwrecked rees and Long 25 degrees west, and then cut the painter and let us go

”'And now I co part of my story,the rising, but noe left theht wind froan to draay fro, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, ere theout our position and planning what coast we should make for It was a nice question, for the Cape de Verdes 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 as coht 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 hera dense black cloud of s like a monstrous tree upon the sky line A few seconds later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the sn left of the Gloria Scott In an instant ept the boat's head round again and pulled with all our strength for the place where the haze still trailing over the waterhour before we reached it, and at first we feared that we had come too late to save any one A splintered boat and a nu on the waves showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there was no sign of life, and we had turned away in despair e heard a cry for help, and saw at so stretched across it When we pulled hi seaman of the naive us no account of what had happened until the following ast and his gang had proceeded to put to death the five re prisoners The tarders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the third ast then descended into the 'tween-decks and with his own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon There only remained the first mate, as a bold and activehim with the bloody knife in his hand he kicked off his bonds, which he had so 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 match-box 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 h Hudson thought it was caused by the misdirected bullet of one of the convicts rather than the mate's match Be the cause what it may, it was the end of the Gloria Scott and of the rabble who held command of her

”'Such, in a feords, my dear boy, is the history of this terrible business in which I was involved Next day ere picked up by the brig Hotspur, bound for Australia, whose captain found no difficulty in believing that ere the survivors of a passenger shi+p which had foundered The transport shi+p Gloria Scott was set down by the Ad 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 na the croere gathered fro our former identities The rest I need not relate We prospered, we traveled, we caht country estates For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried Is when in the seanized 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 noas that I strove to keep the peace with him, and you will in some measure syone froue'

”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 circuood felloas heart-broken 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 theain after that day on which the letter of warning ritten They both disappeared utterly and coed with the police, so that Beddoes hadabout, and it was believed by the police that he had done aith 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 hied 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”

Adventure V

The Musgrave Ritual

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of h in his ht he was the neatest and h also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the er to distraction Not that I ah-and-tu on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man But with ars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden ive myself virtuous airs I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer huer and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite ith a patriotic V R done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it

Our chambers were always full of che into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places But his papers weredocuments, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would e them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent y when he performed the remarkable feats hich his nay during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardlysave from the sofa to the table Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner One winter's night, as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to hi extracts into his co our room a little more habitable He could not deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he went off to his bedrooe tin box behind hi down upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid I could see that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages

”There are cases enough here, Watson,” said he, looking at me with mischievous eyes ”I think that if you knew all that I had in this box you would askothers in”

”These are the records of your early work, then?” I asked ”I have often wished that I had notes of those cases”

”Yes, rapher had colorifysort of way ”They are not all successes, Watson,” said he ”But there are so them Here's the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abo a little recherche”

He dived his arht up a s lid, such as children's toys are kept in From within he produced a cru of ith a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal