Chapters 9 to 11 — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Chapters 9 to 11
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The wait for news, Holmes's disguise as an old sailor, the chase down the Thames and Tonga's death, Small's capture,
and the empty treasure box that frees Watson to declare his love to Mary.
Key quotations: 'Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them', 'the keenest reasoner may occasionally be deceived', 'You would have made an actor and a rare one', 'A strange enigma is man!', 'this mad, flying manhunt down the Thames', 'Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty', 'more sorrow than anger in his rigid and contained countenance', 'I would have thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar', 'which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it', 'The box was empty!', 'the golden barrier was gone from between us', 'Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one'.
Structure: the river chase as the action climax, then the empty box as a twist that turns the treasure plot into a love story.
Small's first words in Chapter 11, and how they prepare the reader to judge his own story.
