                                      1893
                                SHERLOCK HOLMES
                               THE "GLORIA SCOTT"
                           by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  "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, has been now told to receive all
orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life.

  As I glanced up from reading this enigmatical 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 endeavoured to elicit from my companion what had first
turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never
caught him before in a communicative humour. Now he sat forward in his
armchair 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, and 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 an old-fashioned, widespread, oakbeamed 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 travelled far, had seen much of the
world, and had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was
a thick-set, 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-humouredly. '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 within 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 someone 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 loves 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, an 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 moments
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
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, short-handed at that, and I
wants a rest. I thought I'd get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with
you.'
  "'Ah!' cried Mr. 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. One 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 dog-cart 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 flagstaff 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 his 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
daresay."
  "'"You're not going away in an unkind spirit Hudson, I hope," said
my father with a tameness which made my blood boil.
  "'"I've not had my 'poIogy," 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 snarled. "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 Fordingham 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 sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was
the past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveller, 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 described 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 was 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 daresay my face looked as bewildered as yours 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 backward, 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 fulfil 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' 20', W. Long.
25' 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 has 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 is more
likely, for you know that my heart is weak, be 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 honour, 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 the '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
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, when we set sail 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
nut-cracker 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 neighbour, 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 of
incurably vicious habits, who had by 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,
  "'"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 got
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, 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 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 mothers 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 to-night, and
see if he is to be trusted."
  "'"I did so and found my other neighbour 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 he 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 with 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 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 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 slaughter-house like that ship!
Prendergast 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 someone 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 Prendergast 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'
and Long. 25' 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 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 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 anyone. 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 match-box in his hand seated beside an open powder-barrel,
which was one of the 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 it 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 travelled, 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 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 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 the 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."
                                    THE END
