An Ensuing Evil and Others (27 page)

“Our local minister, Mr. Neal,” explained Sir Jelbart under his breath. Then aloud: “I fail to see what business it is of yours, sir. You have abrogated your responsibility to your flock by not demonstrating that what is happening on the Tribbens Rocks is not the Devil’s work. Now my brother and I must take matters into our own hands.”

Mr. NeaFs face was distorted in anger. “As your minister, I forbid it. You have no right to interfere with matters of the otherworld. It is God’s wish that these vessels be stricken down, for their crews must be debauched. They are being punished for their sins; otherwise God would intervene and save them from their doom! I tell you, it is God who drives those ships on the Tribbens Rocks! Their vines are vines of Sodom, grown on the terraces of Gomorrah; their grapes are poisonous, the clusters bitter to the taste….”

“Deuteronomy!” snapped Holmes suddenly, the sharpness of his voice causing the minister to stop, blinking. “But hardly appropriate. God would surely not waste his time organizing shipwrecks, Mr. Neal, in order to punish those souls who have met their fate on those rocks.”

“I warn you, sir,” cried the minister, “do not attempt to interfere or you, too, will be doomed—the way of the wicked is doomed….”

“But the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,” replied Holmes solemnly, quoting from the same psalm.

The minister turned toward his governess’s cart. “You have been warned!” he cried as he climbed into his pony and trap and disappeared down the driveway.

Sir Jelbart bade us come inside for refreshment while he sent for the local fisherman whom he trusted. Holmes suggested that only he and myself, together with the boatman, need set out on the expedition to examine the rocks. The boatman’s name was Noall Tresawna, a simple, thickset man. Holmes explained what he wanted, and the man made no demur. When Holmes asked him if he had heard about the supernatural phenomenon, Tresawna nodded.

“Are you not a little apprehensive, my friend?” asked Holmes. “We must rely on your nerve and experience in a little boat out there among’the rocks.”

“I do be a Godfearing man, master,” Tresawna replied. “I say my prayers and keep the commandments, and I place my fate in God’s hands. For it is written in the Good Book:

Happy is the man

who does not take the wicked for his guide

nor walk the road that sinners tread

nor take his seat among the scornful…

Holmes broke in:

…
the law of the Lord is his delight

the law his meditation night and day
.

Tresawna looked impressed. “Aye, master, that do be so, and thus I be not afear’d of specters.”

Toward midnight, Tresawna met us at the kitchen door of the house and led us by the light of a storm lantern across fields to a cliff top, which was a point overlooking the Tribbens. The point was called Pednmendu, which Holmes afterward told me meant “the head of black stone.” A dangerous stairlike path descended to where he had moored his boat. The night was a dark blue velvet. Bright white stars winked in the sky, and the moon was only in its first quarter and thus shedding little illumination.

Once inside the boat, Tresawna extinguished the lantern, for he knew the seas around the coast better in what little natural light there was than by artificial means.

Holmes bent close to me as we sat in the stern. “Have you brought your revolver as I requested, Watson?”

“I have. But do you expect me to shoot at a twelvefoothigh naked dancer?” I inquired sarcastically.

“Not quite, old fellow. I expect a more tangible, fleshandblood target to present itself.”

The little boat rocked its way through the calm, dark seas along the tower cliffs of Pednmendu, out to a point where we could see the line of white surf breaking along the stretch of Whitesand Bay.

“There be the Tribbens now, sir,” called our boatman, pointing toward the black shadows that were looming up ahead of us. We could hear the whispering seas sighing and crashing gently against them.

“They don’t look so menacing,” I ventured.

“Not to us in this small boat, sir,” Noall Tresawna agreed. “But a large vessel with a lower keel could be ripped open by the hidden jagged rocks that be just a few feet below us.”

“Is that what happened to the vessels that have been sunk here?” asked Holmes.

“That’s about it, sir. A good skipper can take his vessel up between Talymen and Kettle’s Bottom to the west or between Kettle’s Bottom and the Peal on the east. After that, it is a straight run between Shark’s Fin and the Tribbens and out across the bay. But I hear tell from those who have survived that the curiosity to see the dancing lady caused them to steer too close to the rocks on their starboard and before they knew it, the ship’s keels were sheared away, like a knife going through butter.”

“Is it a deep bottom here?”

“Not too deep as happens, but deep enough.”

“What do you think is the cause of these vessels foundering? Do you think it is wreckers?”

“Not for me to say, sir. I wouldn’t say so. If it were wreckers, why choose a place where the ships aren’t driven ashore so that you could pick up the cargoes? That’s what they did in the old days. But here, the ships go down and lay on the bottom. There’s no currents to bring anything ashore.”

The rocks were now closer. The one closest to the cliffs was almost an island in its size, and this, Tresawna told us, was called Cowloe. Beyond these rocks were two other large pinnacles jutting from the sea.

Holmes glanced at his pocket watch. “Nearly midnight. The
Torrington Lass
should be approaching here soon, if Sir Jelbart’s timing of her sailing is correct.”

Tresawna rested on his oars. Everything was silent except for the incessant whispering of the sea.

Then suddenly a curious white light seemed to illuminate the waters between the rocks.

A cold fear seized me such as I had never known.

I have been in some pretty tight spots, I can tell you. Not even when I received my wound at the battle of Maiwand, facing the hordes of Afghan tribesmen, thinking that I was about to breathe my last, did I feel such fear.

I gripped Holmes s arm in a vise.

“God, Holmes! Look there! Tell me that it is an illusion! Tell me that you don’t see it?”

On the farthest rock, a cold white light bathed.

And in that white ethereal light stood the figure of a giant woman, nearly twelve feet high. It was a strange flickering; one which had a transparent quality, for I could see the rock through the image. The figure was that of an attractive woman. Quite beautiful. She was naked. She moved in voluptuous contortions, dancing in such provocative poses that I have never seen before; seductive, alluring, moving as an enchantress to ensnare weak souls.

The hairs on the nape of my neck rose. I could not draw my attention away from the figure. I felt like a rabbit before a snake.

“Fascinating!” muttered Holmes at my side.

From a distance there came a sound of a ship’s horn.

“Come, Watson, old fellow, get a grip of yourself.” Holmes nudged me. “That’s the
Torrington Lass
approaching.”

I stared at him in bewilderment. “But, Holmes, don’t you see her… God help us, it is a phantom!…”

Holmes had turned sharply to Tresawna. “Have you brought the rockets ready, as I asked?”

“I have, Mr. Holmes.” The man had kept his gaze averted from the rocks while muttering some prayer.

“Then we must send them up at once. There is no time to get nearer the rocks before the
Torrington Lass
will be down upon them.”

Tresawna had three rockets of the sort carried by ships as distress signals. He placed one in the bow and struck a match. Within moments it took off into the night sky.

About half a mile away, we could see the lights of the steam packet heading in our direction.

Tresawna set off the remaining two rockets and eventually we saw the ship turn westward and move on its northerly course.

“Now,” cried Holmes triumphantly, “make for the rocks.”

Even as we turned and Tresawna began to row with all his might toward the rocks, there came a crack much like a rifle shot. The ethereal white light suddenly vanished, and all was dark and quiet.

“ “Vast rowing,” snapped Holmes.

We sat in silence. There was no sound except the whispering sea again.

Holmes gave a deep sigh. “I don’t think there will be anything more we can do until daylight. We won’t see anything more tonight. Best take us back to Chy Trevescan and meet us there again tomorrow as soon as it is light.”

Holmes was in one of his infuriating moods, not answering any questions, not even when our host, Sir Jelbart, demanded to know what adventure had befallen us.

The next morning we had just finished breakfast when a tall naval officer arrived and was greeted familiarly by Sir Jelbart. He introduced the man as his brother Captain Silas Trevossow. The Captain had ridden over from St. Ives that morning. Holmes admitted responsibility for sending up the rockets to prevent the
Torrington Lass
being lured onto the rocks.

“Thank God you did. The skipper and his crew were petrified. They froze like ice as a fear gripped the ship. Only when we saw your danger signals was the skipper brought back to his senses, and he seized the wheel to alter course.”

“You are in time to come with us, Captain,” Holmes invited. “I think you might find this interesting, and I assure you, by this evening you will have apprehended the person behind these sinkings. A most evil genius.”

An hour later found Holmes, Captain Trevossow, Noall Tresawna and myself out by the rocks again, though they seemed less menacing in daylight.

“That is the rock on which we saw the dancing woman,” Holmes pointed. “Make for that.”

We came close to the rock on which the giant woman had been dancing.

“Look!” I cried. “Look at the angle of the face of this rock. No physical entity could stand on it, much less dance. It is almost a forty-five-degree-sheer angle.”

“Close to sixty degrees, Watson,” replied Holmes unmoved. “As smooth a rock face as ever you would see, and look at the covering on it.”

I frowned, examining it.

“Covering? That is only guano.”

“Exactly, my medical friend. The longaccumulated dung of sea fowl, a yellow white substance as if the rock, that flat, almost vertical surface, has been whitewashed.”

“I don’t see how that concerns us.”

Holmes merely shook his head sadly and glanced around. “Now, Tresawna, head for that other rock there.”

He indicated a large pinnacle raising itself above the water some fifteen yards away. This was easy to land on as the waves were not at all rough, and Holmes insisted on climbing onto it while we held the boat steady. He took with him a small canvas bag, which he had brought from Sir Jelbarts house. He spent some time examining a particular area, all the while glancing back to the first guanocovered rock as if taking measurements or alignments.

Eventually he turned to a third rock at an angle to both of these. He seemed to measure the distance to it. It was about another fifteen yards away, rising higher than the others and larger. Holmes scrambled back into the boat.

“What did you find, Mr. Holmes?” asked Captain Trevossow, for Holmes had put several items into the canvas bag. He handed it to the captain, who glanced into it.

“Be careful,” Holmes admonished. “They are sharp.”

“Why, they are only fragments of glass.”

“Only?” Holmes raised an eyebrow. “In fact, they are more than glass. They are fragments of a shattered concave mirror.”

He answered no more questions but instructed Tresawna to row toward the third rock that he had indicated.

This pinnacle had a natural sea pool at the foot of it, making an excellent landing place, and we could all climb out and follow a little circular path that went around the islandlike rock to a small cave. It was no higher than four feet at its entrance.

Holmes gave a cry of elation as he beheld it. He immediately bent down and entered. There was only room for himself in the cave, but we heard, almost at once, a further cry of exaltation. He reemerged pushing a large square glass container with some metal pieces in it, zinc and some other substance. This seemed to have been discarded at the back of the cave. Holmes brought it forward. There was a chemical smell to it which I hazarded was ammonium chloride.

“What do you make of that?” he announced.

Captain Trevossow and I exchanged a bewildered glance and shrugged.

Holmes sighed impatiently. “This is a Leclanche cell, and a pretty strong one,” he said irritably when he saw we were lost.

“An electric battery?” Captain Trevossow frowned. “What’s that doing on this godforsaken rock?”

Holmes gave him one of his enigmatic looks. “I am sure that we will be able to find the answer very soon.”

He suddenly took his magnifying glass from his pocket and examined a flattopped rock that was in the center of the entrance. He went down on his hands and knees and seemed to take a sighting from the rock, gazing straight out across the sea to the smaller pinnacle on which he had found the mirror fragments.

“You’ll notice the grooves here and the scraping of metal on this rock,” he inquired of us.

We both nodded, still confused.

Holmes stood up with a smile of satisfaction. “Excellent. I think that we will now pay a visit on Mr. Harry Penwarne at Tregriffian House.”

It took some time to row back to the shore and collect Sir Jelbart from Chy Trevescan. Leaving Noall Tresawna to attend to his boat, Sir Jelbart and his brother, Holmes and myself, climbed into the carriage and made the journey through Sennen along the road above Whitesand Bay to Tregriffian House.

Harry Penwarne was no more than thirtyfive. A young man whose boyish looks seemed to have a hardness to them. He smiled only with a movement of his facial muscles, but he bade us welcome to his house. I thought his eyes held a suspicious look in them. Then I realized that they were quite bloodshot. His manservant was a muscular man also with dour looks, who appeared less like a servant and more like a soldier or sailor. He spoke little, but I detected a French accent when he did.