The Sign of the Four (Grades 9–1) York Notes

Conan Doyle creates a sense of excitement and suspense in the extract as it is about two boats that are chasing down the river.

The boat is described as ‘flying down the stream, near in to the shore, going at a tremendous rate.’ I think the boat is going very fast if it is described as flying as it would be almost as fast as a plane. So this creates excitement and some tension at the beginning of the extract. Sherlock Holmes says that the Aurora is ‘going like the devil’ which means it is going very fast and they will struggle to catch it up.

In the first paragraph Sherlock Holmes creates excitement as he shouts at the other characters. This is shown by the quote, ‘‟We MUST catch her!” cried Holmes, between his teeth.’ He uses capital letters to show that he is shouting. He might not be able to catch the Aurora as we find out that she is very fast and he seems very worried at this point, so sthis adds to the tension.

The boat is going very fast and this is shown by the language used as Holmes says ‘Full speed ahead.’ The writer also uses a long list, ‘past barges, steamers, merchant-vessels, in and out, behind this one and round the other.’ This shows how quickly the boat is moving to pass all of these things. Sherlock Holmes is still shouting at this point, like he was before, so we know that it is exciting: ‘‟Pile it on men, pile it on!” cried Holmes.’ He uses an exclamation mark as he is shouting at the men on the boat to make them work harder to make the boat go faster. We know that this story is set in Victorian times as the boat is described as having a ‘furnace’ and the men are shovelling coal, so therefore we know this is not a modern setting.

In the rest of the novel there is also lots of excitement because this is a mystery and a detective story. They find the dead body of Bartholomew Sholto and that is exciting but also scary for the characters and the reader. At the time that this was written detective stories were very popular as the readers liked them to be scary and shocking, so this story would have worked well. The description of the face of the dead body would be very shocking for the Victorian reader. They also chase the murderers by following them from the house with the dog and then chasing them on the boat. I thought the most exciting part was when they caught up with the boat and Sherlock Holmes was almost killed by the poison dart.