Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [44]
Sherlock wandered up towards the front of the ship – the bows, as sailors called them. He passed the bridge on the way – the raised area where the Captain stood, immaculate in his uniform and peaked cap, along with the helmsman who steered the vessel via a huge wheel, the same size and construction as the wheel of a cart, as far as Sherlock could tell. Behind them was a small cabin, shielded from the wind and the rain, but the majority of the bridge was actually open deck. Set to one side was a strange metal object on a pole, something like an alarm clock with extra-long hands which could be moved around the face, but instead of being marked with hours and minutes the face of the device had words on – ‘Ahead’, ‘Full Steam’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Slow’. It only took a few seconds before Sherlock worked out that it must be a communications device, allowing the Captain to give his orders to the engine room, far below the deck. The hands, as they were moved to cover particular words, probably rang different bells down in the engine room which the stokers would then respond to.
Further ahead, just before the bows, was a roofed-over enclosure, like a long barn. It even smelt like a barn. Sherlock took a look inside, through one of the openings that lined its walls, and was surprised to see animals inside, all penned together in a small space. It had been built up in three storeys, with cows, pigs and sheep clustered on the bottom, ducks and geese in the middle and chickens on top. Each animal was protesting against the vibration and the cold sea wind which whipped across the ship. Presumably they would provide eggs and milk, and even meat as their numbers were gradually whittled down. By the end of the voyage, the barn, like the coal-storage area, would probably be almost empty. Sherlock hadn’t expected there to be live animals on board, but he supposed it made sense. Fresh food could not be expected to keep for the period of the voyage, especially if storms or mechanical breakdown delayed them. Presumably, somewhere else on the ship, vegetables and fruit were either being stored or, perhaps, even grown, and somewhere else would be barrels filled with fresh water. And presumably several hundred bottles of wine, champagne, port, brandy and whisky for the First Class passengers.
Something flickered at the edges of his vision. He turned his head quickly. A dark figure faded back into the shadow of a lifeboat. Sherlock took a couple of steps forward, but the figure had vanished. He shook his head. It was probably just one of the passengers.
Moving further forward, Sherlock watched for a while as the coast slipped away on their right-hand side. The ship would undoubtedly hug the coast as it headed west, around Cornwall, and then strike out across to the coast of Ireland. Once past there, it would head out into open waters across the three thousand or so miles of ocean that lay between that coast and the harbour at New York for which they were bound.
He was surprised how stable the ship felt. There was barely any swaying from side to side. Perhaps things would be different out in the Atlantic, but the ship’s size and weight seemed to protect it against the relatively small waves here along the English coast. Sherlock couldn’t help remembering the small boat in which he and Matty had sailed from Baron Maupertuis’s offshore Napoleonic fort to the coast near Portsmouth. That journey had been grim, and he had no intention of experiencing anything like that again.
He suddenly felt very lonely. England, and everything that meant to him – his home, his family, even his school – was slowly falling away, and all that was ahead of him were surprises – a new world, a new set of people and customs. And danger. He didn’t know what the men who were keeping John Wilkes Booth captive wanted, but they obviously had a plan, and it