The primary antagonist of The Sign of the Four. A one-legged former soldier whose life was transformed by the 1857 Indian Mutiny, the Agra garrison conspiracy, and eighteen years of imprisonment on the Andaman Islands.
Background (from his confession, Chapter XII)
Small’s life in his own account:
- Soldier in India: served in the 3rd Buffs; lost his leg to a crocodile crossing the Ganges; became an overseer at the Agra fortress
- The Agra treasure: guards a Muslim merchant who reveals the treasure’s hiding place; killed the merchant along with Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar — the “Sign of Four” pact. Together they hid the Agra treasure
- Betrayal: handed over to Major John Sholto and Captain Morstan in exchange for a promise of freedom; the officers took the treasure and left the four to face justice
- Prison: transported to the Andaman Islands; served nearly twenty years
- Escape: befriended Tonga (an Andaman Islander); escaped together; came to London to recover what he saw as rightfully his
Motivation
Small does not see himself as a murderer in any simple sense — Bartholomew Sholto’s death (by Tonga’s dart) was not his intention, and he throws the Agra treasure into the Thames rather than let it fall to Mary Morstan or the police. His obsession is not wealth but justice: he wants what he was promised and was denied.
Tonga
Small’s Andaman Islander companion. Presented with Victorian racial otherness as a signifier of menace — he is the one who fires the fatal dart. This characterisation is one of the most problematic in the Canon from a modern perspective.
Significance
Small’s long confession (Chapter XII) is one of the Canon’s most extended villain backstories, humanising him considerably. He is not a mastermind but a man whose life was destroyed by colonial betrayal, and whose revenge went wrong.