Snake Bite by Andrew Lane Read Free Book Online Page B

anonymous padlocked door halfway along a
corridor. Sailors pushed past them, expressions of alarm on their faces. Some of them started forming a queue beside the armoury – presumably on Larchmont’s orders. As Gittens managed
to unlock the stiff padlock the sailors suddenly squeezed themselves to the sides of the corridor, and Sherlock saw Captain Tollaway striding down the centre. The expression on his face was
thunderous, but Sherlock thought he could detect a grey tinge of concern beneath the dark gaze.
    His revolver was swinging in his hand.
    ‘Take courage, boys,’ he said to nobody in particular as he passed. ‘We’re not going to let these barbarous savages get their hands on our cargo! We’ll fight to the
last man rather than let that happen! A shilling to any man who kills one of the pirates!’
    The queue of sailors let out a ragged cheer as he passed, but Sherlock suspected they were all wondering who the last man was going to be.
    Gittens pulled the cupboard door open. Inside Sherlock saw swords and knives hanging from hooks. Some of them were rusty. Gittens gestured to Sherlock to pull them out and start handing them to
the sailors in the queue. Gittens himself pulled bundles of oiled cloth out from the back of the cupboard and unwrapped them to reveal some long and antiquated guns. Sherlock had seen the farmers
in Farnham use more modern weapons to scare off birds.
    This was not looking good. He could feel a knot of apprehension coiling and uncoiling in his stomach. Surely, having survived the storm, he couldn’t now die here, in the middle of the
ocean, thousands of miles from everything he held dear? There were things he needed to do back home. What about Virginia?
    After the weapons had been distributed, Gittens closed and locked the cupboard. He had kept two knives for himself, and he tucked them into his belt. One of them was short and chunky, with a
leather-wrapped handle. The other had a curved blade and an edge that was shaped like a wave – it wasn’t an English knife, that was for sure.
    Gittens made as if to head back to the ladder, then hesitated. He pulled the first knife from his belt and handed it to Sherlock.
    ‘Here,’ he said roughly. ‘Keep this. It might help. If anything helps, apart from prayer.’
    Before Sherlock could say anything, Gittens was racing off.
    Up on deck the tension was so thick that it seemed to hang like a veil of smoke above the crew. Half the men were either up in the rigging or pulling at ropes on deck; the other half were armed
and clustered along the side of the ship off which the sails had been seen. Sherlock moved across to join them, worming his way through the press of bodies until he was up against the rail.
    The ship was cutting rapidly though the waves, and spray drifted back into Sherlock’s face. Their pursuers might have been sails on the horizon twenty minutes before, but now they were
appreciably closer. Sherlock craned his neck to get a look.
    The pursuing vessel was unlike anything Sherlock had seen before. Its hull was curved so that the bows and the stern were projecting upwards, raised above the sea, and the middle section rode
low in the waves. The sails were a reddish brown in colour, and corrugated like fans, and rather than being flat across the top, like the sails Sherlock was used to, they came to points. It was
difficult to see the stern of the ship, but from what little Sherlock could tell the rudder was much bigger than the one on the
Gloria Scott
, and it took three or four men to move it.
Whatever principles of design the designers of the ship had followed, they were different to those used in England.
    Sherlock could make out figures clustered along the side of the pursuing ship. They were all holding swords, and they were waving the swords above their heads.
    Sherlock’s fingers clenched on the leather-covered handle of his knife. It wasn’t much to defend his life with.
    The wind that was blowing from the