The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

We were the wedge of the armada, and within minutes flares had alerted the rest of the fleet that something had been spotted. We had no way to be sure it was Colonel Moran, but the fact that the ship had its running lights covered was more than enough to convince me.

Holmes stood beside me at the bow rail, his face a study in determination. “Now remember, Watson,” he said. “No one from that ship must be allowed aboard. All its crew will have been inoculated against the plague, but there’s no telling if any of them are infested with the fleas or lice that carry the disease.”

“Are we to kill them all, then?” The men were fiends, but it was not like Holmes to be so cold-blooded.

“No, no, we’ll shepherd them and their cargo of death to Goree, a small island in Dakar’s harbor which used to hold slaves waiting for transport. Captain Wagner knows the drill.”

“And then…?”

“And then Moran and his men can swim for it while we blow their ship out of the water. The salt water will leach away any vermin, and the men are all sailors — they’ll have no trouble finding work…”

He was about to continue when we heard a shot from somewhere behind us. I reached for my revolver and raced toward the sound, Holmes at my heels.

“Here! Up here!”

It was Jeffers, the first mate, staggering to his feet on the bridge, his hands to his bleeding head. At his feet lay a prostrate Captain Wagner.

“The captain…” Jeffers began.

I was there beside him, but there was nothing I could do. Captain Wagner had a bullet hole in the back of his head. The gallant sailor had completed his last command.

“What happened?” I demanded.

The mate appeared to be in shock. “I don’t know. I was hit from behind, and then…”

At that moment, the lookout shouted from above. “Enemy ship preparing to engage!”

We looked over our shoulders and there, its running lights suddenly lit, a ship was bearing down on us on a collision course. Our crew, at battle stations, waited for the orders, but Jeffers seemed incapable of movement, watching horrified as the vessel approached.

“We can’t let them engage.” Holmes spoke calmly to Jeffers, but his voice cut like a knife. “Think of your orders, man.”

On the deck of the enemy ship, we could see the crew manning their battle stations, with small arms and grappling hooks at the ready. These were the same men who had captured the deadly Boer pirates only two weeks before. Jeffers looked about in panic, like a caged rat, and then suddenly screamed to his own waiting crew: “Fire! Fire! Fire all guns!”

“No! Holmes yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the simultaneous roar of fourteen cannons. Moran must have kept a magazine below decks, for no sooner had we recovered from the shock of the first sally than the night turned into day as the enemy ship, less than fifty yards from us now, exploded in a huge fireball.

The force of the explosion knocked us off our feet, and we lay dazed for a moment in a shocking, deathly silence. And then, as though the brutality of what we’d just witnessed were not enough, a ghastly rain of burning timber and flesh began to fall and litter our deck.

The falling debris started several small fires, and Jeffers forced himself up to direct the crew. Holmes and I sat by Wagner’s body and watched the floating remains of Moran’s ship flare, then smoke, as they slowly sank into the ocean.

Holmes’s eyes were glazed over. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands limp between them. Glancing first at me, then at the fallen captain, he sighed aloud. “Wrong,” he muttered half to himself in a tone of pure anguish. “Where could it have gone so wrong?”