The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(44)

“‘“You are not from our little town,” Captain Waite said to me, “and cannot be familiar with some of our trade secrets. I must command you, then, never to reveal what you are about to see below, for there are many fishing charters that would pay dearly for our secret. If you do tell our secret, I shall know of it. Such things have a way of getting back to us. Rest assured that we would have our revenge, should you not heed our warning.”

“‘Then the chaplain and assistant bade me to follow the rest of the crew down. As you can imagine, I was quite filled with curiosity and trepidation from all this.

“‘You’ve almost certainly noticed the stench about the Bountiful Harvest. How could you not? It clings to me now so that I can barely stand to be among decent men. I shall have to take several baths and burn all my clothes if I’m to ever be rid of it. Well, the smell about the deck of the ship is nothing compared to the tangible reek below decks.

“‘The space below is an open area with a vast beam that runs the entire length of the ship. To this support is affixed a series of great chains, massive chains with each link large as the span of my arms, but I could only guess at the length, because they ran up to hawseholes high in the hull, and then out into the water. They thrummed with a constant tension, and were clearly part of the cause for our maddening speed. It was our job to pull them back up, and to this, Eliot, the chaplain’s assistant, and Marsh, the first mate, set us to work.

“‘I can only guess how far into the depths these chains dangled. Drawing them in was a Herculean task even with the forty or so men crammed into that hold. Whatever clung to the bottom ends, it would not release. We grappled with them for nearly an hour, trying to draw them back and all the time the ship seemed to be going faster and faster, and the beam the chains were attached to made a horrible groaning, and started to show cracks.

“‘“It’s no use,” the chaplain said. “They are held too tightly at the bottom, and we don’t have enough men to effect their release!”

“‘“It seems to me,” Eliot said, “that four was not quite enough. We should have had more men at the beginning, and so need less at the end!” He gave me a look then. He wears glasses, so I could not see his eyes properly, but I can well imagine the dark, cold look in them and I shuddered to the depths of my core and thought of the four bundles that went overboard.

“‘There is no help for it now,” the chaplain said. “We shall have to release the chains here.” Another groan from the ship and the first mate set us to battering and levering at the chains with a will.

“‘“Hammer, you dogs!” Marsh howled. “Release us, or we’ll all be dragged down and you’ll be screaming from the depths and have Dagon’s curse upon you all!”

“‘The name of “Dagon” meant nothing to me, though the sound of it brought a coldness to my belly. But the name had a galvanizing effect on the men, more even than the threat of the ship breaking apart, and they howled and hacked and pried at the chains like madmen. There were eight sets of chains in all, and any one of them might pull the ship under. So panicked was everyone that our attack on the chains was disorganized, so that several of the men had gotten their arms between the links. When the first chain tore free, the length of it was yanked with terrible force and pulled two men with it out the hawseholes in the hull. These holes were not quite large enough for men to pass through unharmed, but the terrible force yanked them through anyway, and I have nightmares now about their mangled bodies. I do not know if they were killed there, but I hope they had that mercy, because both chains and men went into the water, lost.

“‘This tragedy did not summon any caution whatsoever among the crew at the time, however, and we continued our frantic hammering and levering. I was just as mad with fear as the rest, mind you, caught in a fever I don’t like to remember.

“‘Before we’d got the rest of the chains off, we lost two more men. But finally we were free and the ship rested easy, with only the natural motion of the sea to affect her.

“‘We returned to the deck, and Captain Waite and the chaplain congratulated us all, not with the grimness I might have expected, but with the levity and joy of a holy baptism. I tell you that it was a break from man’s own world on that vessel, and I’m terribly glad to be free of it. You know the rest. I snuck off and now all I can think about is putting as much distance as I can between myself and the Bountiful Harvest. I shall have to learn both your English ways and a new trade, for I can’t imagine sailing the Atlantic again, knowing what lies underneath.’”

With this extraordinary statement concluded, Holmes leaned back and puffed away on his pipe. The constant patter of rain tapped restlessly on the window. In fact, it had been raining since this case began.

“So what do you make of that, Watson?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what to make of it,” I said.

“An extraordinary tale,” he said, “to be sure, and very difficult to credit. But backed as it is by the records… well, perhaps it is not all fancy. It also accounts for the hawseholes in the hull, though sheds very little light on the ports in the bottom, since they do not figure in his story.”

“I can corroborate one thing about his tale,” I said, and since Holmes’s narrative seemed to have come to its end, I hurriedly supplied my own, finishing with a dramatic flourish worthy of Holmes himself as I unveiled the tiara.