Death on a Pale Horse

10





I had my marching orders and went to resume watch on deck. Holmes would conceal himself below with a view of the mailroom grille and any reappearance of the drunken “stoker.” In the absence of Moran, there was little else to do. My feelings were the dejection of one who knows he has been hoodwinked and wonders where the true robbery may be taking place. I went back up the companionway to the ship’s rail just forward of the starboard paddle-box with its green riding-light. If Prince Napoleon-Jerome should need me, he would know where I was. Just above me, Captain Legrand of the Comtesse de Flandre faced all winds and weathers on his open navigating-bridge, which ran the width of the ship above the forward saloon deck. At intervals, I heard him ring down to the engine-room as he moved the brass handle of the telegraph to and fro.

Behind the bridge and below it, the helmsman stood on his platform, wrapped in the long jacket and hood of his sou’wester. Most of the ship’s crew took this duty in their turn, for it was only a matter of turning the wheel according to whatever point of the compass was chosen by the skipper. With the ship’s wheel between his hands, his head at the level of the captain’s feet, a helmsman steers according to simple spoken orders. The commands may be given directly by the captain, or shouted down by a callboy on the bridge if the wind is high. For good measure, there is a repeater telegraph ahead of the wheel, on whose dial the helmsman can read the orders from the bridge telegraph to the engine-room. While it is true that he may see little of what is ahead of him, the duty of the man at the helm is only to do as he is told, according to compass bearings.

There may sometimes be a look-out in the bows who will “sing out” a warning of any minor obstruction in the water or small boat in the steamer’s path. All crew members will give warnings when they think necessary, but they assume that the captain on his bridge can see larger vessels before they do.

For some reason not yet apparent, the bridge telegraph rang. We dropped to “Half Speed” ahead, and the steamer rolled a little as she lost way. The foremast hand walked past me, he who had given the boy a lucifer match to light the starboard navigation-lamp on the paddle-box. Like most of the hands, this fellow might be called on to relieve the helmsman or assist the ship to make fast at a pier head and attend the gangways. Just now, he was strolling towards the bows as if to take up watch, lighting his pipe as he went.

A few minutes later, we had our first encounter since leaving Ostend. A throbbing marked the approaching propeller of a screw-driven ship, not the beat of a paddle-steamer’s wheels. The bridge telegraph rang “Slow Ahead.” “Starboard helm!” was called back to the helmsman. At a snail’s pace we passed our visitor about a hundred yards to port, her red riding-light just visible. I recalled the well-known verses of the Seaman’s Litany, Thomas Gray’s lesson in navigation. I had learnt it with every schoolboy in a Scottish fishing town:

Green to Green or Red to Red—

In perfect safety—Go ahead!

Only the dimmest outline of the other ship was visible, but the glimmer of her port riding-light continued to face ours through the murk. As we passed her, the captain of the Comtesse de Flandre reached up, pulled the whistle lanyard, and sent a comradely blast of sound and steam echoing across the lonely water.

There is nowhere so desolate as the sea on such a crossing. The stillness is eerie. A steamer’s siren, a shout, even a gunshot, echoes back as if this place were the empty end of the world, far from home, far from help. The bridge telegraph rang again, and the Comtesse picked up speed with a rush of water from the blades of her paddle-wheels and the rising beat of steel on waves.

I wondered what Holmes was doing—or even what there was for him to do. I saw only a few more wraiths of fishing smacks and luggers on their way to cast their nets. Sometimes I thought I saw the same vessel on several occasions, but it was impossible to be certain. From time to time, our siren wailed across the quiet water and several calls were answered from different quarters of the opaque stillness. Often it was just a friendly shout from a lugger, fishing the shallows of the sands off Dunkirk. We kept strictly to our compass bearing. It is easy enough for a ship to go aground on these sandbanks and break her back.

I stood amidships, looking out across the paddle-box on which the passenger gangways had been stowed for use at Dover. My eye caught a glimmering of light on the sluggish grey tide through which our dusty red paddle blades were cleaving their way. Then there was a white gleam in the fog, higher than a ship’s foremast. It grew to a distant blaze and fell away again. It must be the swivelled gleam of the Ruytingen lightship, nearer than I expected, searching forlornly for the horizon.

Though we were still on the Belgian side, the Comtesse de Flandre now pulled hard to port, as if to set a dead straight course for Dover. I was quite alone just then, except for the foremast hand, who had come back from his look-out and was trimming the wick of the red port riding-light behind me.

The man had scarcely disappeared down the forward hatchway of the crew’s quarters when a commotion began. It is hard to imagine the tedium of such a crossing. Even the sight of the Ruytingen lightship had been an event worth celebrating. A dozen or so of the passengers had gone up to the prow, hoping for a view of it. I had just taken out my watch and read the time by one of the oil-lights on a tall standard when there was a shout from the watchers in the bows.

“Steamer ahead!”

I looked out across the paddle-box again. In the distance, a single green light appeared fleetingly on our starboard bow, vanished, then reappeared. It must be some distance away. I could certainly not make out the vessel or navigation buoy that might be carrying it. The channel through the sand-banks must have been buoyed. Perhaps the green light was merely assuring us that we were following the dredged channel. It was hard to tell in such a fog. Once again, however, the telegraph on the Comtesse de Flandre’s navigation-bridge rang its cautious command of “Slow Ahead,” and we eased forward. There was no cause for alarm. If a ship was crossing our bow at that distance, it would be out of our path long before we reached its present position.

The mid-Channel vapour had closed in so completely by now that it would have been hard to know, except by one’s watch, whether it was day or night. Our helm had been put hard a-starboard briefly to counteract the effects of the tide on our starboard bow as we rounded the Ruytingen lightship. Perhaps we were momentarily carried off course. Except for the captain at his compass, it might be impossible in these conditions for anyone to tell whether we were heading north, south, east, or west. It must be north, if we were crossing direct to Dover.

At that moment a sudden shout went up from the people in the bows. It was a cry, directed at the captain of some other vessel.

“Hoy! Hoy! Where are you coming to?”

I stepped aside for a view of what was going on. I could see less from where I was standing than those in the bows might. Yet the sea was so calm and the silence so deep that any captain on another ship in the vicinity must surely have heard that shout. But the green navigation light on that other vessel had gone and what I could see now, off our starboard bow, was red. I was reassured to see that it seemed to be going no faster than half speed, seven or eight knots. Perhaps it was only a warning light that we were passing on one of the sand-bank buoys. From its position, I supposed that any skipper crossing our bow did so in order to pass down our port side. That would be safe enough.

Green to Green or Red to Red—

In perfect safety—Go ahead!

But was he not going to cross our bow too close? I believe it was the shout of “Where are you coming to?” that had alerted our own captain. Immediately above me, I could hear him calling down to the helmsman on the platform just behind him.

“Hard a-port!”

The figure in the sou’wester held the wheel between his hands and obeyed. Then the captain reached for the lanyard. The steam whistle on our funnel blew a deep-throated blast. It was answered by three other ships, intermittently from various points of the compass, no doubt including the vessel ahead of us. This channel through the sand-banks now contained far more shipping than I had realised.

“Hold your helm!” The captain’s order to the man below him was given with some uneasiness.

The helmsman’s back and shoulders moved as he turned the wheel to its maximum but it was not enough.

“Hold on to your helm!”

I still assumed that it was a matter of the tide having carried us a little further off course than he had expected as we rounded the lightship.

“Hard over with it!”

The seaman remained on his starboard helm. Despite this, if the tide had carried us off course, we ought still to be showing our port light to the other vessel.

The bridge telegraph rang “Stand By.” To stop the engines completely at this point would have left us helpless to manoeuvre against the tide. Again the whistle of the Comtesse de Flandre blew long and hard, a hoarse shriek this time and a blast of steam just above my head. As the note fell away across that quiet sea, the captain cupped his hands and yelled with all the power of his lungs at the oncoming skipper.

“Ease her! Stop her! Good God, man, where the devil are you coming to?”

A cloudy phantom materialised ahead of us, towering above the horizon, but at last turning away—or so it seemed. The warning shouted from our bridge must have carried across the silent stretch of water. But she could see no more of us than we could see of her. Then, by the oncoming beat of her paddles, I guessed she could not be more than a few hundred yards away, her outline still clouded. I held my breath as I suddenly saw all three of her navigation lights coming into view. Now it seemed as if she was travelling at the speed of an express train: white at the masthead, green to her starboard and red to port. Was she turning again because she had seen that there was no longer room to cross our bow? In a tight curve she was surely coming down our starboard side, very close and far too fast.

When all three lights I see ahead,

I Port my helm and show my Red.

But the next thing I heard from the bridge was the voice of the first mate.

“My God, captain! Look! That man is starboarding his helm! Port! Hard a-port! Stop her! Reverse the engines! Astern! Full speed!”

The captain had already reached these conclusions for himself. I saw him hurry to the starboard side of the bridge and grasp the telegraph handle. It jangled “Stop” followed by “Full Astern.” I distinctly saw the position of the handle, and also “Full Astern” on the helmsman’s repeater dial. I heard the verbal order. I heard the repeater ring below, the sound carried up through the engine-room ventilation hatch. I heard it ring twice more with orders to the engineers below.

I could hardly believe that the captain of the oncoming vessel was not mad or drunk or, perhaps, had handed the bridge over to some inexperienced junior officer. He was turning to starboard again, as if to cross our bow once more. The very thing that would bring catastrophe. At such an angle as this, his own bow would be coming at us amidships in a moment more. Even in the fog, he must see our three lights when we could so plainly see his. Why had he not held a simple course dead ahead to pass us safely? His red port riding-light was now on our green starboard quarter!

If to my Starboard Red appear,

It is my duty to keep clear.…

But that was too late. I saw what I could still hardly understand, as that ghostly giant rose through the mist, almost on top of our bows. Then I knew the worst and how it had happened. Coming down upon us was one of the newer and heavier railway steamers. From the low deck of our smaller ship, she seemed the height of a house. The red and green of her riding-lights, the white of her masthead light were glaring above. The starboard green wheeled away as she turned more directly towards us. I knew the answer! It was the height of her bows that hid us from her navigation bridge! A vessel that was so much lower might now be concealed from her captain’s view. Her starboard light had disappeared; even the light on her foremast was hidden by those tall bows. Only her red port lantern glared ever closer.

The helmsman beside me had wrenched the wheel hard to port, in obedience to his orders. He must have known that it would never save us at so short a distance. At the best, it might make the angle of collision more oblique. The oncoming bow rode towards our starboard side. I never felt more helpless in my life. Holmes and I were playing a game of life and death with Rawdon Moran. Could this be some wild sport contrived by him? But what? Even he could scarcely bring two ships into collision as if they were no more than children’s yachts on a pond in Kensington Gardens.

It was not a whistle but a howling siren call that hooted from the forward funnel of the oncoming ship, far too late. The whistle of the Comtesse de Flandre pierced the fog again. This time it rang on and on, in a crescendo of steam from its casing on the forward funnel, for all the world as if the lanyard cord were stuck. Our engines had stopped at the telegraph’s command and we wallowed, helpless to move and avoid a collision. Then the paddles were just beginning their tantalisingly slow reversal without time to go full astern. The ship lay almost motionless, awaiting her fate.

Screams burst from the people gathered in the bows at what they saw coming upon them. There was turmoil on the deck. Passengers began to run for the stern, knocking open the low gate that enclosed the first-class promenade. They would not be safe anywhere on board, but they could not imagine what else to do in the last few dreadful seconds except to get away from the point of impact. I remember thinking that so long as the oncoming bow hit our paddle-box, our steel paddle blades might take the full force of it, and the wound to our ship would not be mortal.

Captain Legrand shouted down to the helmsman: “Let go of that wheel and look after yourself.”

The helm was useless now in any case. Much good would the ship’s wheel or rudder be in this predicament! But when I looked again, I saw that the helmsman had already taken flight without waiting to be warned.

And then the bows of the vessel above us drove into our paddle sponson. That is to say, it had missed the paddle wheel and carved through the wooden platform forward of it, where the ship’s main deck is extended outwards over the paddle-box for twenty feet or so. On the bow of the other steamer above us was the name of a newly-built “luxury” ferry also constructed for the Belgian government, the Princess Henriette, no doubt bound from Dover to Ostend.

The starboard sponson of the Comtesse de Flandre crunched inward like matchwood under the sharp cleaving of the Henriette’s steel bow. I snatched at one of the tall deck ventilators to steady myself. Oddly as it seemed to me, I felt no impact at first beyond a quivering of the deck planking underfoot. Perhaps we should be saved after all. I thought I had known much worse than this when a Scottish steamer bumped awkwardly against a harbour quay or an island pier. But then the heavy bow of the Princess Henriette was halted, as it came up with a violent shudder against the main iron frame of the Comtesse de Flandre’s engine-room.

On the helmsman’s platform, now deserted, the ship’s wheel spun from port to starboard and back again. Lamps and bollards rolled about the deck. There was a smashing of glass and crockery in the saloons. Then I heard two distinct grinding sounds beneath my feet, short and sharp. I knew at once that this had been a mortal blow after all. Had it not been for the iron frame of the engine room, I fully believe the larger ship would have cut us clean in two at once and sent everyone on board to the bottom of the English Channel in the next minute. At a mere seven or eight knots, you might suppose that the damage from such a collision would be slighter, but there was a weight of almost a thousand tons of riveted iron and steel behind it.

How had it happened? I was to find out much sooner then I expected.

The captain of the Princess Henriette must have known our position from the blasts on our whistle to which he had responded. He had appeared to slow down, for seven or eight knots was probably less than half the full speed of such a leviathan.

I drew away and by some instinct headed towards the port paddle-box on the other side of the deck. Napoleon-Jerome’s party was well escorted, but there was something I must confirm before I searched for Holmes. I could not get Rawdon Moran out of my head. Could he be on board after all? I pushed my way through the groups of bewildered passengers as they jostled on to the deck from the saloon below. I walked round the port paddle-box to examine its forward edge, and saw that someone—or something—had extinguished the red port riding-light. I put my hand on the metal lantern, in case the impact had knocked the light out. But it was not even warm. I thought of the foremast hand trimming the wick and knew that the light had been put out a little while ago—deliberately.

This was no time for ancient history, but I recalled an instance in my boyhood of a collision at night caused by a ship’s navigation light that guttered and failed—port or starboard, I do not recall. It was not a common cause of accidents at sea, but neither was it unknown.

And then—where was that foremast hand who had presented a lucifer to the ship’s boy to light this starboard lamp and who had appeared to be trimming the wick just now? There was no sign of him. In the last minutes of our voyage, could he also have been the helmsman enveloped in the sou’wester? Could the captain tell, in such visibility and with eyes straining to see the outline of the oncoming ship, whether his orders were being precisely carried out? Could he be sure that some slight manoeuvrings of the helm would not carry us closer to disaster?

What had seemed to take a lifetime had been all over in a couple of minutes. As I turned, I heard a distant but ominous rushing sound below me. The sea was beginning to flood the bowels of the ship. Captain Legrand was stooping at the engine-room skylight on the deck, shouting directions to the chief engineer through cupped hands. Despite the wail of the ship’s whistle, I caught his words.

“Evacuate the engine-room. Ease the safety valves if you can. Leave the furnace doors, open the tubes. The companionways are almost impassable. Evacuate yourselves and the stokers through the hatch in the forward stoke-hold.”

I found myself struggling against passengers heading against me for the gangways, as though that would save them! Even before they could reach them, they were driven back by billows of steam from the wrecked starboard paddle-box.

I looked around in case Holmes was already on deck. Though the oil-lights still shone, it had become more difficult to see. There was a hissing curtain of steam rising between the joints of the deck planking as the water entered the fires of the after boiler. Then towards the bow there was an ominous roar as the remaining fires were drowned out by the incoming flood. The navigating-bridge was enveloped in smoke and steam from the cracked boilers. The structure itself had been knocked askew by the impact, and it seemed that the vessel now listed increasingly to leeward.

With a feeling of numbed anxiety I thought that if Holmes was still below and had been near the point of impact, he might already be dead. But if he had survived—and surely he had—he might choose to die rather than abandon his protégées. He would have tried to reach Napoleon-Jerome and his companions in the after-saloon. That was where he was most likely to be. I struggled to reach it, pushing my way through the confusion as fugitives from the lower saloons forced a passage up the steps of the companionway, adding to the bewildered crowd on the upper deck. Those in the so-called royal saloon on the after-deck might be safe if anyone was.

I found my way back to the saloon and slid open the door at its side. It is no cliché to say that my heart sank when I saw no sign of Holmes. Napoleon-Jerome sat more than ever like a banker or a gentleman farmer at one end of the sofa. General Boucher and Lieutenant Cabell stood on either side of him. Cups and glasses, some broken, were scattered on the carpet. Inside the saloon, it was more evident than out on the deck that the wreck of the Comtesse de Flandre had tilted several more degrees to starboard. Somewhat to my irritation, the prince folded his hands as if composing an address to an ambassador in precise and correct English.

“We shall not sink, I do not believe so, doctor,” he said primly. “I know steam paddle vessels. They are flat-bottomed boats. They are like a wooden box. They float a very long time after an exchange of blows. I was in the Crimea, you know, in the war against the Tsar. Our monitor Rochefort was engaged and suffered an unlucky hit. Much of her side was blown away. She was disabled, but she did not sink. She floated until she became a nuisance to navigation and had to be sunk by our own gunfire.”

To dispute with royalty, even if it has neither a throne nor a crown, is not easy. I tried to think how Sherlock Holmes would have put it to him. It was no good.

“Sir, I must go below and search for my colleague. The sea is coming in by the paddle sponson. It may not yet be flooding beneath the waterline, but it is very close. You can see from the steam outside that it has already filled the stoke-hold sufficiently to put out the fires. The boilers have cracked and steam is escaping from them as well. There is no pressure left to work the pumps, and the ship will fill with water below the Plimsoll line. That will sink her.”

Lieutenant Cabell was blunter. “You must go now, Your Majesty. There is a boat just outside which we are attempting to lower.”

The prince waved his hand side to side.

“They will come from the other ship and fetch us. I think they have boats enough. I will not have it said that I was rescued and that all the other people on this steamer were left to take their chance. We shall all go in the proper manner. I do not care a lot to be seen scrambling down the side of a ship to save myself. I fear every chance of an accident in such weather as this, and being myself in the water. I shall remain for a time.”

I made one more effort and wished afterwards that I had not. “I too know something of ships, sir. This vessel is listing. The movement is gradual. But when the moment comes, she will go over without warning. You will not get as far as the door of this saloon. Whatever your decision, I am going down below at once.”

“You will go down below to look for your colleague, Doctor Vastson?”

“At once, sir. I can do no more here. Please take the advice of Lieutenant Cabell.”

Plon-Plon waved his hand side to side, rather like a fan.

“If you are going anyway, monsieur, there is a box belonging to me which I should like, if it is still there. It lies in the coffresforts of the Messageries Impériales. It is consigned to myself at Lancaster Gate. There is an armed guard, but I expect they will have run away. It is marked with a crown.”

General Boulanger intervened before I could reply. There was a chain at the belt of his morning dress, and from it he unhooked two keys on a ring.

“This, monsieur, is all the authority you require. I have an oil-lamp at my disposal. You will please take that for your safety.”

Safety! There is a French phrase—un mauvais quart d’heure—which refers to an anticipation of disagreeable experiences. It describes precisely my feelings as I felt my way down the half-lit steps of the companionway. The fog had shown no sign of lifting, and no lifeboat had yet reached the stricken Comtesse from the vessel that had run her down. But the rush of passengers from the lower saloons to the upper deck had ceased and I had the lower deck pretty much to myself. Below-decks, the stricken steamer was silent now except for the wash of water that swilled to and fro across the planking. Only the echo of distant voices above indicated the turmoil and panic there. I found my way by a glimmer of mounted oil-lights overhead which the water had not yet reached and which showed me the way dimly.

The worst thing belowdecks was a fetid stench from the bilges of the sinking vessel, as the contaminated water ran erratically about the sloping deck. The engine-room passage stretching aft was more than ankle-deep in it. My lamp shone upon the heavy pistons of the ship’s engines, now silent and motionless in mid-stride. There was a creaking of the hull as it seemed to heel over a little more. But that was no more than a tidal swell catching the flank of the vessel. Where was Sherlock Holmes? The deep well of the engine-room that lay beneath the heavy machinery was flooding steadily. Passing the paddle-box, I came to the open sponson. Here one could stand on the platform and step down twelve or eighteen inches into a lifeboat held alongside. But as yet there was no boat.

I came to the steel grille beside the bureau de change, guarding the mailroom and its high-value packages. I had no need of Lieutenant Cabell’s key to open the gate. The three guardians had left the steel grille open as they fled when the bow of the Princesse Henriette crunched into the side of the steamer. What else should they do, as the sea began to flood this lower deck? They must have expected that the ship would capsize at any second, and they had run for their lives, leaving the mailroom of the coffresforts unlocked. Who shall blame them for that?

The shouting on the deck above me had diminished. If I heard the sounds correctly, the two lifeboats of the Comtesse de Flandre were being lowered, and no doubt the first rescue boat from the Princesse Henriette had been launched. I shone my lamp on the cavernous cage with its high-value packages. Where was Holmes? My oil-lamp was giving out little more than a glow. Yet from what I could now see of the interior of this strong-room, everything was as it had been. Napoleon-Jerome’s coffin-like war-chest lay in its place. Yet how was it to be rescued before the ship foundered? I should never be able to shift it on my own. I tried to lift one end, but only to ensure that it had not been tampered with. To judge from its weight, I was sure that it had not been.

“Watson!”

He was carrying no lamp of his own. I had neither seen nor heard him approach along the engine-room passageway.

“Leave that!” he called. “There is every chance that we shall break in two after such a blow.”

I had expected that at the least we would lug the war-chest to the sponson, where a boat might be brought alongside.

“Leave Plon Plon’s war-chest?”

I could see his aquiline profile against that failing glow of my oil-light.

“My dear fellow, there is nothing in that chest worth the loss of a human life. Not yours and certainly not mine.”

“But there must be enough in there to start a revolution in Paris!”

He smiled, though at what I could not say.

“If it pleases you to think so—but not a revolution of the kind you suppose. To tell you the truth, I have been in possession of the keys to it ever since I left Brussels, thanks to Brother Mycroft. But you shall have your way, old fellow. And you shall carry away as payment however much of the contents you think worth carrying. Stand back.”

He knelt down and I held the lamp closer. Apart from the polished brass lock-plate, there were subsidiary keyholes at either end of the glossy oak chest. The well-oiled levers of the locks moved smoothly and easily in obedience to the key, hardly touching the wards as they rose to ease back the bolts. Holmes took the edges of the lid and lifted it silently back. Napoleon-Jerome’s treasure trove was covered by a sheet of heavy silver foil, for all the world like the lining of an ammunition box. He rolled this back, and I stared at the royal fortune that was intended to restore the descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte to the throne of France.

The contents were wrapped in large parcels, set out in double rows and addressed to the Chaplain General’s Office, North Camp, Aldershot. Each wrapper bore an identical printed label upon it: “Army Temperance Society Pamphlets. Series 9.” And that was all.

Sherlock Holmes’s eyes glinted in the yellow light as I stared at this display.

“My dear Watson! Did you really imagine that the Queen of the Night and the Mogul diamonds would be in here? I have gone to some lengths in Brussels to induce those who have betrayed us to our opponents to think so. That was the prime purpose of my visit. But that you should believe it is very singular—and indeed rather gratifying! Of course Colonel Moran cannot afford to ignore the possibility, having been assured of its value on the best possible information. He dare not turn back. But as for trusting Plon Plon’s baubles to the Messageries Impériales, only consider. It needs just one guard to be corrupted. Or suppose the ship’s captain—or any member of the crew—cannot resist the money offered by an international brotherhood of crime. No matter that his ultimate reward is likely to be a bullet in the head. What then? We already know there is a stoker on this ship who cannot be a stoker. A helmsman in his sou’wester could have been anyone. Above all, only a complete fool would trust a consignment of royal gems to a box that has been stamped and marked with a Napoleonic crown.”

“Then who is beyond bribing?”

“The Prince’s make-believe valet, if no one else. You have met the man already. Theodore Cabell, otherwise known as Captain Cabell, late of the Swiss military intelligence service, for the time being in the service of our client. A man whose bland manner belies tenacity and resolve. A sharp mind. It was he who first suspected the conspiracy of the forged despatches between Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the Comtesse de Flandre eighteen months ago. My success in the matter owed more than a little to him.”

He closed the lid again and locked it.

I believe it was the tension of what had gone before that now overcame me. I began to shake with laughter at the thought of the temperance pamphlets in the royal treasure chest—and the baubles no doubt on their way to the military security of Aldershot Garrison. I confess that it was not a healthy or wholesome laughter; even at that moment, it felt too close to hysteria. If I had stopped to think for a moment, I should have known, as Holmes did, that the worst dangers still lay ahead. When Rawdon Moran discovered how neatly he had been cheated, the matter would not rest there.

At that moment, the hoarse wail of the Comtesse de Flandre’s siren, which had diminished every minute as the steam pipe failed, faded altogether. It was a warning that the sea washing through the stoke-hold had put out the last fires. Apart from the scattered oil-lights along the lower-deck passageways and the upper-deck structures, the steamer was dead. Only the whistle of the Princess Henriette still carried its gusts of sound across the murky water. In the quietness around us, there was a sudden voice of command from the companionway to the upper deck.

“Holloa! Holloa! Is there anyone still down there? Make yourselves known! The ship is going over! Our last boat must cast off in five minutes! Are you there? Is anyone still there?”

Without waiting for a reply, the officer went back to the upper deck. Holmes had kept his forefinger to his lips to indicate silence. Now he lowered it.

“This is not over,” he said softly. “Have you your revolver with you?”

“Of course. Have you?”

“No. I should like to borrow yours, if you would be so kind.”

With a sense of exasperation, I gave it to him. We went slowly back towards the companionway steps, through the rush and swill of water on the tilted deck planking of the passageway. I guessed there would be no further warning before a sudden lurch and capsizing of the broken hull. We came up into the fog and the cold, between the funnels and the after-saloon. There was a haloed light here and there, but the vapour in the air seemed as thick as ever. No one remained in the first-class saloon. Plon Plon and his party were safe if anyone was. Two or three of the ship’s officers and a handful of passengers seemed to be making their way towards the boat.

What followed next was beyond anything I could have imagined. We were standing behind the funnels just aft of the remains of the navigation-bridge. Lifeboats from the Princesse Henriette had come alongside the stern and taken off the passengers. The forward deck of our vessel was thankfully deserted. At the moment of the impact, the bow of the Henriette had not quite cut us in two. Now, beneath my feet I felt the timbers of the Comtesse de Flandre pulling apart; then I heard them screech and rend. Without further warning, the intolerable weight of tons of water in the depths of the ship on its port side twisted the broken hull beyond endurance. There came a deep rumble, though not a loud one.

Through the last drifts of smoke and steam that overhung the deck, unreal as if in a dream, I saw the bows of the steamer rise slowly and ghostlike before us. There was nothing louder than the dripping of water. The forepart sank gently back into the waves as it split away. Rolling aside, a thirty-foot length of the ship turned over slowly and capsized without a further sound. It was no longer part of the ship. Water streamed down the riveted steel of its flanks, as the bows disappeared from our view beneath the quiet waves. There was no turbulence and no echo in the depths. We watched like mourners at a burial.

Looking back on this disaster, everything I have described took far less time to happen that it takes to tell. And how can a few bald sentences convey the drama of it, except to those who have lived through such a quiet catastrophe? But fortunately, ships do not always “sink like a stone,” especially if they are flat-bottomed steamers. Napoleon-Jerome was right about that. Also, thankfully, the sea was calm. Our heavy boilers had broken away and sunk with the bows. Lightened by this, the wreck of the Comtesse de Flandre floated, from the paddle-boxes and funnels back to the stern. The list to starboard was no longer quite so pronounced. In what time was left before the remainder of the wreck sank, the work of rescue might be concluded.

Not all of this rescue attempt had gone well. The second mate of the Comtesse de Flandre, an experienced sailor with a record of service in the Royal Navy, had knocked the starboard lifeboat off its chocks at the stern. It had then been swung out above the sea by its davits. By some miscalculation in handling it, the bow had abruptly dropped down with the stern drawn up high, and the mechanism had jammed. The boat had been left suspended from the side of the ship at an impossible angle. Fortunately the Princesse Henriette had by then lowered one of her after lifeboats into the waves on an even keel. Looking over the rail amidships, I could see that the sailors on both ships had also thrown into the sea anything that would float well enough to support passengers in the water until they could be picked up. There were several planks, a hen-coop, and even a small carpenter’s bench still drifting within a few yards of us.

Through the fog, the dim shape of the other steamer appeared briefly and intermittently in the distant sweep of the Ruytingen light vessel. The two ships had drifted apart immediately after the collision, but the Princesse Henriette was only a short distance away and appeared to be intact. We had heard the rattle of her chain and a heavy splash as her anchor went down. When the indistinct gleam from Ruytingen swept the surface again, it illuminated briefly the outline of two or three small fishing smacks and luggers, which hove to in case they could assist us. It seemed that we had not been as isolated as I had supposed.