Peter Wood

I have remarked that I was responsible for bringing two cases to Holmes's attention, and one of these, the "Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", I have chronicled elsewhere. In the years of our partnership there were several incidents to which, though they seemed of interest at the time, I judged it best not to call his attention, as they seemed likely to furnish little opportunity for the exercise of his remarkable powers of ratiocination. One in particular that I recall, from the early years of our residence in Baker Street, happened whilst Holmes was absent on the Continent in connection with a problem involving one of the minor Royal houses.

It was shortly before Christmas, and I had taken some much needed exercise in the form of a walk through London, in the course of which I called at the Criterion Long Bar to see if my old friend Stamford had been in. I was seated in my usual chair, and perusing the latest issue of the "Cornhill" magazine when a small elderly man in a chair adjoining mine caught my eye. He pointed to the magazine, and spoke, in a slight Northern accent.

"Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I believe that's the 'Cornhill'?"

I nodded.

"Isn't that the one which published something about the 'Marie Celeste' the other month?" he continued.

I am tolerant of the more relaxed manners of our provincial cousins, and he seemed not to be the kind of man who presumes upon acquaintance. "Yes. Quite a good story. A friend of mine thinks it was probably by Stevenson." I looked down again, but his snort of irritation drew my attention back to him.

"I take it you mean Robert Louis Stevenson?". I nodded again.

"Well, as sure as my name's John Habakuk Jephson, it wasn't him. He knows nothing about the 'Marie Celeste'. Now I can explain the mystery."

Startled, I raised my eyebrows. "You can? But your name ... You mean that it isn't a story? That it actually happened to you?"

"Certainly. It was a flat calm, in the middle of the Atlantic..."

"Wait a minute", I said. "You were on board?"

"Certainly I was on board. You want me to drown? Of course I was on board. Though I had, I admit, only just come up after being sent below to count the barnacles..."

"How many were there?" I interrupted.

"Barnacles? Oh, a fairish number," said the man. "That's what I told the captain. 'There's a fairish number of barnacles down there, Captain,' I said. He replied, 'What do I care as long as I have my strength?'"

"The captain of the 'Marie Celeste'?"

"Oh, bless you, no," said the man. "This was a friend of mine, a little fat fellow we used to call 'the captain' because he'd been an Army captain's batman in the Peninsular War, and wore an armlet to prove it. Quite a sense of humour; he used to call it a Spanish armlet."

I ordered another drink; the waiter brought the little man one as well. I paid the waiter, and the little man continued.

"As for the captain of the ship, I told him there weren't any barnacles, because if I'd said there were, he'd have had me down there scraping them off before you could say Marchbank and Westhouse. So he said 'Fine! Fine! I can't abide a barnacle.'"

"Really?", I asked.

"Well, I admit that what he actually said was 'I can't abarn a bidacle', but we were as loyal a set of men as ever sailed the seven seas and we guessed what he meant. Well, we went on in our flat calm, busying ourselves in various ways. I remember I busied myself with a scheme for stepping the mainmast out to starboard so that the wind would go on into the mainsail after leaving the foresail, instead of blowing away and being wasted. I explained it to the mate, but he very kindly pointed out that it wouldn't do, because when there was any wind it wouldn't be needed, and when there wasn't it wouldn't be any use. I saw his point."

I thought that Holmes might be interested in the idea for one of his warships of the future. As the little man had obviously not completed his tale, I asked a question that had occurred to me. "By the way, what were you on board?"

"I was a horse-slaughterer."

"But there weren't any horses on the 'Marie ..."

"No," said the man. "That's just it. Think of the confusion if there had been! It was my duty to get rid of any that might turn up. Bless me, how do you suppose the captain would have managed with a lot of beastly great horses cluttering up the place? Horses on a ship? Impossible, sir! I never heard of anything so ridiculous."

I found that I had finished my drink, and the waiter had brought another for us both and was waiting at my elbow. I tried to return the conversation to its original track. "Look," I said, "what about this mystery you were going to explain?"

"Ah, the mystery. I'll tell you. All of a sudden a stiff breeze got up, and we forged ahead. We bowled merrily along. Well, after we'd been bowling merrily along for a bit, a great clamour arose from the cook's galley. The cook was kicking up a fuss because he'd lost his best colander. 'I've been robbed!' he shouted again and again. So the police were called."

"The who?"

"The police. Of course they couldn't come because we were still in the middle of the Atlantic, so the captain called us all together in the third-class lounge. 'Men', he said, 'I have a grave duty. Our popular and efficient cook has lost his pet colander. I must ask the man who appropriated it to come forward frankly,' said the captain. Nobody moved. What was to be done?"

I looked at him. "Well, what was done?"

"Impatience," said the man reprovingly, "butters no parsnips. What, I repeat, was to be done? Well, none of us could think, and evidently the captain couldn't either, for he dismissed us to our various tasks with a heavy heart. From that day to this, nobody else has known what became of the cook's colander. But as it happens I know, and for a very good reason. It was I," said the man, "who threw it overboard."

"What for?" I asked.

"I took a dislike to it. All those silly little holes!" he said, and there was a long pause, during which the waiter brought another couple of drinks, for which I paid as my companion was lost in memory.

"And the mystery?" I asked at length.

"That was the mystery. Where did the colander go?"

"But the famous mystery - why the 'Marie Celeste' was found abandoned by her crew ..."

"Oh, that! That would have been after I left her. Ah, strange, strange!"

He stood up and raising his hat, bade me farewell.

I considered asking Holmes's opinion, but on reflection decided against it.