“To Spezzia runs the Pullman train;The Follies soon their sense will teach;We've Beech, O dear, upon the brain,He brains upon the beach”.
Meantime, the question of the drawing-room was “Are you going to Spezzia?” and by the 7th so great a pilgrimage of tourists—experts, idlers, cinematographers, special correspondents, ministers of state, Yankees, officers, social stars—had flocked to the scene, that accommodation failed in the town and surrounding hill-country, from Le Grazie on the west, to Lerici on the east of the Gulf.
The morning dawned bright—Italian sky, tranquil Italian sea—and by nine the harbour was alive with small-craft and Portovenere steamboats, all gala with flags; on the land side, too, over the hills, up the old road called Giro della Foce, and before the villages commanding the town, spread a cloud of witnesses; while the multitude in possession ofpermessosfor the dock-region stretched across a hundred and sixty acres, perched on every coign, and murmuring like the sea.
And all in the air a fluttered consciousness of the to-come, the present nothing, an hour hence everything—like the suspense of nature before gales, and that greatness and novelty of marriage-mornings: for such a bride that day would rush to the brine as it had never embraced.
There lay the hulk, all nuptial in colours, her roof looking like aplazaof Lima or La Paz at Carnival, flags in mountain-ridges round her edges, flags in festoons, in slanting clothes-lines, in trophy-groups, on bandroled poles, bedecking her; some scaffolding still round her; and three running derricks, capable of wielding guns and boilers of 140 tons, craned their shears about her. A temporary stair under flags ran right up to a ledge above the waterline: from which ledge little steel steps led here and there to the roof; round the edge of roof and ledge running two balustrades, surrounding the hulk; and over that upper portion, four times repeated in white letters ten feet high, the nameBOODAHboomed itself.
By eleven some seven hundred people stood and sat on the roof—theéliteof Europe, invited to the luncheon after the launch, seeming to the tract of on-lookers quite dainty and visionary there, like objects mirrored in an eye. And they formed groups, of which some chatted, and were elegant, and some spoke the gravest words uttered for centuries.
“What, really, is theBoodah?” asked a Servian Minister of a French: “is she a whim, a threat, or a tool?”
“She is too heavy for a whim”, answered the French, “too dear for a threat, and too fantastic for a tool. Time will show”.
But this was no answer at all: something more to the point came from a multitudinous tumult of sledges below—the workmen “wedging-up”.
At last, soon after noon, Hogarth, with a considerable following, was seen ascending the steps, on his arm the Queen of the Ceremony—a little Bavarian Gräfin, famous for her face: he, princely now with that cosmopolitan polish picked up in Courts, bending above her with laughter, making her laugh also, as they paced up. And at once the invited, including the Board of Verification, entered the hull upon a tour of sight-seeing, conducted by a manager of the contractors.
Already the set-up wedges had raised theBoodahfrom her keel-block, and left her resting on the great braced ground-ways; and now down to the sea's brink the greasers were busy, prodigals in tallow, while, within, the seven hundred trooped from spectacle to spectacle, like a tourist group guided through the Louvre.
An hour, and they anew appeared on the roof, trooping toward that balustrade that faced the sea: upon which the throngs felt the impending of the event, and intently watched. But there seemed no hurry, Hogarth all gay chatter, anon lowering the lids a moment, as he looked over the water; till suddenly hundreds of glasses detected a champagne-bottle with ribbons in the christener's hand; and the consciousness of the moment come moved the hosts when Hogarth, even as he chatted, disengaged a flag, and let it fall: it was a signal; down it fluttered; and instantly, down there, bustle broke loose, as the call “Saw-off!” went forth, and the saws set flurriedly to fret through the timbers which bind groundways to slidingways.
“Now?” whispered Hogarth at the christener's ear: and, even as he spoke, the voice of a noising arose and droned from Spezzia, its hills, its villages, and its sea; theBoodah, only half-liberated, strained in travail; crashed from her bands; slipped down the greased gradient—plunged—and, gathering momentous way, went wading deep, deeper—like Behemoth run mad—amid a wrath of froths and a brawling of waters, into the sea.
There, deep-planted, she stretched: on the surface appeared a reef of steel; and the stirred-up water slapped vapidly upon those flanks, like waters upon the Norway wall.
Nothing was ever so scrutinized as the movements of theBoodahduring the next two months.
One morning three weeks after her launch three steamers took her in tow, with progress so slow, that at nightfall they were still visible from land; but the next morning had vanished.
Two days later they were met on the Genoa-Leghornroute, six steamers then towing theBoodah, their course S. by W.
Again and again it was met, that funeral of the sea: the prone, tearing steamers, the reluctant bulk. Sometimes a captain's glass might make out a few men lost on the roof like men on a raft, smoking, seated, leaning over a balustrade.
Southward and westward it swam. On the seventh day there arrived at Ajaccio from Marseilles twenty-five bluejackets; and these, in a hiredsperonare, put to sea, and joined theBoodahtwenty miles from the coast.
Thenceforth, a smoke would be seen at a point of the roof, indicating that she, too, was steaming: for it was known that she had a screw and a rudder; and so closely was she observed, that her now added rate could be fixed—two to three knots a day.
She must therefore have some small engines about 4,000 H. P.: and since theirmotifcould only be one thing, resistance to ocean currents, this meant that theBoodahwas intended to rest always in one spot: a startling conclusion.
Occasionally a Surveying Service warship would peep above the horizon, watching her.
As she passed through the Straits, seventy-five English blue-jackets put out from Trafalgar, and joined her.
With such reports passed the weeks. Occasionally five or six coal-ships would be seen about theBoodah; her number of tug-ships might be as low as two; sometimes nine, ten.
At night she made a fine display, and homeward-bound boats from Cape Horn, from Pernambuco, Para, Madeira, spoke highly of her two revolving-drum lighthouses: for these, from opposite corners of the roof, at the rate of a revolution per minute, poured into space two shimmering comets, like Calais and the Eddystone—rapt spinning-dervishes of the sea that hold far converse with the dark, till morning. And between these two ran a festoon of electric lanterns, Japanese and Moorish, cut in ogives; and festoons of coloured moons drooped round the balustrades, so that the blaze and complexity of it presented to ships a spectacle of speckled mystery, fresh to the sea.
After five weeks a hundred and seventeen blue-jackets put out from Portsmouth in a chartered barque and joined her, she still in tow, making now about N. by W.
But by the time this news reached Europe the eyes of Europe were no longer given up to theBoodah: foranother Boodah, called theTruth, was a-tow through the North Channel from Belfast; and she had not reached the Mull of Cantire, when a third was launched at San Francisco, so that the interest of the islands became complicated.
What would they do? What could they? Compared with this question, the riddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were going to batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. TheBoodahfinally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50° and East of long. 20°: and there—just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream where it divides, part toward Ireland, and part toward Africa—she remained, precisely in the middle of the trade-route between Europe and Boston, New York, Halifax: aroutecovered for fifty miles—twenty-five north, twenty-five south—by her 19.5-inch guns.
It is impossible to describe with how wild a heart, or thrilling a boding, the world heard this thing: eight days later the International Conference of Maritime Nations met at The Hague.
But nothing happened—or the opposite of what was feared: for, as months passed, theBoodah, planted there in the ocean, rapidly became the recognized gathering-point of the fashion and gaiety of Europe, thither flocking the socially ambitious and the “arrived” together, and to have been invited to those revels of taste and elegance became a superiority. Gradually, as the names “Beech”, “Ecuador”, ceased to be associated with the islands, the name of Hogarth took their place; and Hogarth had engaged Wanda, sweetest of tenors, to a year's stay in theBoodah, whose orchestra was the most cultured anywhere; Roche, herchef, had two years previously been put into a laboratory to devote his soul to the enlargement of his art; and he and that tenor lived in suites of theBoodahsuch as most princes would consider Utopian.
Hardly anything in her interior suggestedthe ship: no hammocks for marines, rolling-racks, sick-bay, lockers, steam-tables, wash-rooms, she being just a palace planted in the Atlantic, her bottom going down to a layer of comparative calm, so that hardly ever, in a storm, when the ocean robed her sides in white, washed abroad her slippery plateau, and drenched with spray her lighthouse tops, did the ballroom below know shock or motion. Into her principal hall, far down, circular, one descended by a circle of steps of marble, round which stood a colonnade of Cuban cedar, supporting candelabra and silks; and from atrium-pools sunk in the floor twelve twining fountains brandished spiral sprays, the floor being of a glassy marble, polished with snakestone, suffused with blushes at the coloured silks and at a roof gross with rose and pomegranates, hanging chandeliers; round the raised centre of the floor stood two balustrades, three feet high, hung with silks, the inner circle thirty feet across, higher than the outer, forty-five across: a roseate room, strewn with cushions, colours, flushes; but that raised space was empty: reserved for—a throne.
The throne, still unfinished, had been three years making in India.
And during nine months theéliteand joyous yachts arrived, not at theBoodahonly, but at others of the twelve which, one by one, were launched and towed to position; and a round of events transacted themselves in the fortresses: Marie Antoinette balls, classic concerts, theatrical functions bytroupeor amateur, costume-balls, children's-balls, banquets of the gods, grave receptions. By now there ran right across theBoodah'sroof, in the form of a cross, two double colonnades of Doric pillars, at the four ends being Roman arches: and here, some summer afternoon, the passing ship would see a bazaar, all butterfly flutter, feminine hues like flower-beds, cubes of coloured ice, flags, and a buzz of gaiety, and strains of Tzigany music—rainbow-tints of Venice mixed with the levity of the Andrássy Ut of Pesth. Sometimes a fleet of craft would surround the islands. Besides, to each was attached a yacht, and a trawler which continually plied for it between island and land.
At this time Hogarth was deep in debt, and Beech's living upon credit.
So, gradually, a good deal of the awe which the structures had inspired passed off. On the whole, they seemed mere whimsical castles-of-pleasure. The trains of industrious ships grew habituated to their gaudy brightness by night, to their seething reefs, or placid mass, by day. On foggy days the mariner was aware of the islands wailing weird siren-sounds of warning. The islands waved common-code signals of greeting to the passer. Trinity House sent them the usual blanks and instruments for recording meteorological observations. Their positions were marked in British Admiralty Charts, in American Pilot Charts, in “Sailing Directions”. The great greyhounds, racing to Sandy Hook, raved with jest past them. The islands began to seem a natural part of the sum of things. There they lay, stable, rooted, trite, familiar; and the question almost arose: “How came it that they were never therebefore?”—just that object, of that form and colour, seemed so old and natural in that particular spot. So the frogs hopped finally upon the log that God sent them for sovereign.
Meantime, the more thoughtful of men did not fail to observe, and never forgot, that no ship could possibly depart from, or arrive at Europe, without passing within range of some one of the islands' guns. A row of eight lay an irregular crescent (its convexity facing Europe) from just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, where O'Hara admiraled theMahomet, to the 55th of latitude, where theGoethelay on the Quebec-Glasgowroute: these commanding the European trade with the States and with S. America, as well as with W. and S. Africa, and with Australia by Cape Horn; another in the narrows of the Gulf of Aden, commanding the world's traffic by Suez with the East and with S. Africa; another in the middle of the narrows of the Kattegat, commanding all Baltic trade; another, fifteen miles from San Francisco, and another a hundred and fifty miles from Nagasaki, on the edge of the Black Stream, commanding the Japanese-San Francisco, the Australian-San Francisco trades, and great part of the Japano-Russo-Chinese. These were the principal trades of the world.
Like the despair of Samson awaking manacled and shaven, an occasional shriek would go up from some lone thinker, who perceived that the kingdoms of the world had lapsed into a single hand; and in the privy cabinet the governors drank to the dregs the cup of trembling. But their speech was bold, the matter hung long, the peoples ignored and wrought: there was seed-time and harvest; the newsboy brawled; the long street roared. Far yonder in the darkness and distance of the deep the islands flashed and danced, and were fashionable.
Richard Hogarth held back his hand.
It was the habit of Hogarth, when in theBoodah, to rise very early and ascend in flannels to one of the four doors opening upon the ledge—blocks five feet thick, moved by hydraulic motors—and sometimes Loveday would accompany these walks, they always seeing on the plane of the sea some sail, or by a spyglass the fading light-beam of theGoethenorth, of theSolonsouth; or they watched how theBoodah'sgalaxy, too, waxed faint and garish as some drama of colour evolved in the East; saw gulls hover and swing, fins wander: and marking that simple ampleness of the plan of sea and arch of heaven, their hearts felt enlargement.
One morning, the 3rd October, Loveday was up even before Hogarth, having started awake from a gory nightmare, this altogether not being a day like others: and when the two friends met on the ledge, they walked a long time in silence.
Only after the dayspring began definitely to dabble in its chromatic chemistries Loveday at last remarked: “Did you ever think why I took such pains to get you to come down with me to Lord Woolacot's last autumn two years?”
“Yes”, answered Hogarth: “you wanted me to see the model farms, and how the young ladies fed the poor, and how the tenants loved their lord, and everyone thought himself happy. Only, I didn't see what the pastimes of Lord Woolacot's daughters have to do with the process of the suns, and with the woe of Oldham. Ah, Lord, it is a job, I tell you, pulling this vile thing straight! Of course, the eagle doesn't blink: but I am only one man, and the world, and its stupid sins, are a tidy burden. Ha!—never mind. Look at that bigBoodahof a sun how he blooms: isn't he launched and handled all right? Let us of this desert bend the knee to him like the old Sabæans. There is hope”....
It was known that on that day, at half-past eleven A.M., theKaiser Wilhelm der Grösstewould pass on her second voyage within some miles of theBoodah, this ship being the greatest afloat, having a cargo-carrying deadweight of 45,000 tons, and travelling the waters like a railway-train at 37 miles (32 knots).
So toward noon Hogarth, in a peaked cap, jacket, and white boots, was again on the roof, a glass and book of Costonlights in his hand, while not far off a knot of five officers in frockcoats talked, and near one light-house, where a number of men stood, a flagstaff flew the ensign—blue letters “R. F.” on a white ground, looking Russian; on the northern horizon two fox-tails of smoke; on the western three diminutive sails; between the two, quite real and big, a brig becalmed; and now theKaiser Wilhelm: for that yonder could be only she, with so fervent a growth, from the first moment of her upward climb, did she approach. It was twenty minutes to noon, and she was somehow a little late, that punctual strong wrestler with space.
The officers on theBoodahspoke of her in low and stealthy voices; looked at her with queer and stealthy glances.
“'As a bird to the snare...'” muttered one.
“She comes all right, but will never go”, said another.
“She will be always near us”, said a third.
“Life is an earnest thing, after all”, said a fourth: “there are wrongs, it seems, which only blood can wash out: it comes to that at last”.
Now Loveday ran up, looking scared and busy, a quill behind his ear, Hogarth now having the glass at his face, while his eyes struggled with the reek from his cigar-end.
“Is that she?” Loveday asked him.
“Yes, poor boat”.
She was nine miles away; in four minutes she was less than seven, and now distinct:—her three staysails; her four funnels; the stretched-out space between her raked masts; her host of cowls and boats; her high victorious hull, silently running.
And all along her lines were lines of faces thick as dahlia-rows in June—globe-trotters; captains of industry; children; the Wall Street operator who plotted a stroke in Black-Sea wool, and to him time was money—I guess; commercial travellers, all-modern, spinning, prone, to whom the sea was an insignificant and conquered thing; engineers; capped enthusiastic Germans, going forth to conquer; publishers, ladies, lords, all the nondescript prosperous: and all ran there blithe, sublime, and long drawn-out; and they toyed with oranges, nuts; and they looked abroad to see theBoodah—ship's-surgeons and officers with them—jesting, as they munched or sucked.
But the Captain who had often seen theBoodah, was log-writing in the chart-room...
As her ensign of greeting ran up her main, her clocks struck twelve, the full noon—like an omen—come; she not then three miles from theBoodah.
And simultaneously with the hoisting of that ensign, and the striking of those clocks, the old-worn wheels of Roman Civilization stopped dead.
TheBoodahran up the signal: “Stop!”
Those who understood rubbed their eyes: it was like a vision at high noon; they could not believe.
At that news the Captain, a handsome fair-bearded man, rushed like a madman from pilot-house to bridge, and the startled passengers saw his lighted eyes. He had some moments of indecision; then down he, too, rang that word: “Stop”.
The engines left off; theKaiser'sspeed, as from heart-failure, gave in, died away.
By this time all the passengers knew, in a state of tremor saw confused runnings to and fro, and face caught from face dismay; the voyage was spoiled, the record! What, then, had happened to the world? And now again theBoodahis signalling: “Let the Captain come”.
The Captain's hands were shaking; he could not speak, could only gasp to the first-officer: “By God, no; O, by God, no”. Then, as great quantities of black-grey reek, wheeling all convolved, were now enveloping the vessel, resting on the sea, reaching away in thinner fog even to theBoodah, and as, the day being calm, there was a difficulty in reading the flags, the Captain gasped: “Take the trumpet—ask them—But don't they pay for this...?”
So out brayed the trumpeted query, and back the inexorable trumpeted answer: “Let the Captain come”.
So, then, theKaiserwould never reach Sandy Hook? To put out boats!—to parley!—while the earth span with quick-panting throbs, every second worth seven thousand pounds!
“But don't theypayfor it...?” so, with a painful face of care, the Captain questioned space.
But he would be mild and patient as a lamb that day! His order went forth: the ship forged ahead; a longboat, hurriedly lowered to starboard, was manned for the first-officer to put off in her, while every heart of the passengers thumped, every face an ecstasy of emotions.
Then a wretched, long interval...
The ship's-officers were received on theBoodahin a deck-room containing a number of boats with castored keels, capable of being quickly launched down an incline, where Mr. F. Quilter-Beckett, the Admiral, with some lieutenants, awaited them at a bureau on which lay documents, while in the background stood Hogarth and Loveday, and, “Gentlemen, this is a most damned wild piece of madness!” broke out wrathfully the first-officer, as he dashed up wild-eyed to the level: “in consideration of the guns you have in this thing—”
“But your Captain?” asked Quilter-Beckett, a courtly man, with a dark-curling beard, a star on his breast.
“The Captain won't come!” whined the officer in perfect English: “I suppose you realize the terrible consequences of this stoppage, gentlemen?”
“But you are wasting time, sir. You represent your Captain?”
“Of course, I represent—!”
“Then just cast your eye over this”—that so slighted letter, sent years before by Hogarth to Foreign Offices, claiming the sea as his private manor.
The officer read it half through with flurried closeness; then, “Well, but what is all this?” he broke out: “is it a piece of comedy, or what, gentlemen?”
“It is serious; and the last clause comes into operation to-day: only such ships being held authorized to pass on the sea as pay to the first-reached sea-fort on any voyage a tax, or sea-rent, of 4s. per ton on their registered tonnage, with an additional stamp-tax of 33s. 4d. for receipt, and a stamp-tax of £1 16s. 8d. for clearance. You will see at a glance the clauses of the law, if you cast your eyes over this schedule—”
“Law!” the other broke in: “you talk ofLaw! But doesn't the sea, then, belong by right to all men—?”
“Not more than the land. Ask yourself: why should it? But I do hope you won't argue: your time must be so precious”.
Out shrilled theKaiser Wilhelm'swhistle of recall.
“I must go!” said the officer with a worried hand-toss: “I must go. If you give me those documents, I will show them to the Captain—but he is not the sort of man—this is mere piracy, after all! But, good God, gentlemen, if you only dare touch that ship, I shouldn't put myself in your place this day week for all—”
He snatched the papers, dashed, and his men, in a passion of haste, lay to the oars, theKaiseronly four hundred yards from theBoodah; and the officer, shaking aloft the documents, pitched up the stair, the centre of five hundred pairs of scared eyes, while the captain bored his way to him.
Two minutes of intense low speech, crowded with gestures: and suddenly the Captain's face, till now haggard, reddened; out went his shaken fist; with eyes blazing like lunacy, up he flew to the bridge; and now he is bending down with howling throat: “Passengers to their berths!”
Simultaneously, above the engine-room stair a bell jangled; round swung the pointer to “Full Ahead”; and ere the decks were cleared of their bustle theKaiser, like a back-kicking hen, scratched up under her poop a spreading pool of spume, which tossed spasmodic spray-showers and spoutings: and she stirred, stretched like a street, churned the sea, and, wheeling to reveal her receding stern, was away.
By which time Hogarth was standing at a cubical cabin of steel on the roof, with him Loveday and Quilter-Beckett, his brow puckered with wrinkles, the sun troubling his eyes.
“I suppose thechefis warned?”—he threw away his cigar.
“Oh, yes, my Lord King”, Quilter-Beckett answered.
And Loveday: “She sweats like a thoroughbred”—haggard, but assuming calm: “few things could be more profusely expeditious”.
“Ah, make phrases, John,” murmured Hogarth.... “Well, but hadn't you better be getting out the boats?”
Upon which Quilter-Beckett stepped into the little erection, touched a button, and in a minute the water round the southern side was swarming with twenty-three boats whose blue-jackets began to row toward theKaiser.
And presently, “It's no use waiting”, said Hogarth, looking in upon Quilter-Beckett: “I should mine and shell her at the same moment, if I were you; tell them to get it in well amidships”.
Now a few seconds, full of expectation, passed, theKaiser Wilhelmalready two miles away: till suddenly space opened its throat in a gulf to bay gruff and hollow like hell-gate dogs; and, almost at the same moment, close by theKaisera column of water hopped with one humph of venom two hundred feet on high: when this dropped back broad-showering with it came showering a rain of wreckage; and instantly a shriek of lamentation floated over the sea, mixed with another shriek of steam.
For the moment the ship, enveloped in vapours, could not be seen; but in two minutes glimpses of her hull appeared, shewing the bluff bulge of her starboard bottom: for she leaned steeply to port with a forward crank, her two starboard screws, now free, spinning asleep like humming-tops. A six-inch shell, beautifully aimed, had shattered her engines, killing two stokers, and a torpedo-mine had knocked a hole nine feet across in her port beam.
But as theBoodah'sboats, meanwhile, had been racing toward her, and as her own port boats were quickly out, all were got off; in fact, she floated so long, that her ship's papers with £270,000 in specie, and a few hundred-weight of mailbags were saved, and even after the boats reached theBoodahshe still stretched there motionless, until, with a sudden flurry, she determined to plunge.
Soon afterwards Hogarth had the Captain in his suite, to tell him that he did not wish any intelligence of the event to reach the world for four days, during which passengers and crew would be his guests, and then be sent on to America, his object, he said, being to impress the loss of theKaiserupon the consciousness of all, by making all anxious as to her fate.
So that night her passengers danced till late, for there was no resisting the hospitality of Hogarth, or the witchery of those vistas and arcades, grand hall and lost grot,salonsand conservatories, there in the dark of the ocean, or such an enchantment of music, and fabulousness of table; the host, too, pleaded prettily for himself; and now they pardoned, and now they pouted, but always they banqueted, kissed, lost themselves in visions, were charmed, and danced.
It was by the merest chance that Baruch Frankl and his daughter were not on theKaiser: for Frankl was the half-nephew of Mrs. Charles P. Stickney, a New York Jewess, and as the marriage of Miss Stickney with Lord Alfred Cowern was only fifteen days off, Frankl had made arrangements to accompany the bridegroom across, but had been detained by stress of business; happily for him—for Lord Alfred, the bridegroom, was a dancing prisoner in theBoodah.
Early, then, on the third morning thence, Charles P. Stickney, the bride's father, a natty little Yankee, hurried a-foot to the Maritime Exchange: for, to his infinite surprise, theKaiser'sarrival had not been in the morning's paper: so the little arch-millionaire stepped toward Beaver Street, sure that theKaiserhad come in too late for the press.
Early as it was, he found the place as thickly a-buzz as though it was that feverish hour between eleven and twelve.
He pushed his way to the bulletin-board, inscribed with the hours at which ships are sighted and entered into dock: the Kaiser was not there: and with prone outlook he went seeking an assistant superintendent; but, sighting a fellow-operator, come, as usual, to digest the world, from barometer-reports to coffee-quotations at Rio, Charles P. Stickney cried to him: “Funny about theKaiser! Know anything?”
“It's the darndest thing...” mumbled the other, still star-gazing at a blackboard prices-current of American staples: “raise Hell this day, I guess”....
And on through the rooms Stickney shouldered: all in the air here an odour of the sea, and of them that go down to it in ships; pilot, captain, supercargo, purser; abstracts from logs, copies of manifests and clearances, marks and numbers of merchandise, with quantities, shippers, consignees; here peaked caps, and the jaw that chewed once, and paused long, and, lo, it moved anew; Black Books, massive volumes enshrining ancient wrecks; vast newspaper-files in every tongue; records of changes in lightships, lights, buoys, and beacons, from Shanghai to Cape Horn; reports, charts, atlases, globes; the progress of the rebellion in Shantung, and the earthquake last night in Quito; directories, and high-curved reference-books, and storm-maps; every minute the arrival of cipher cablegrams, breathless with the day's Amsterdam exchange on London, or with the quantities of teain transituvia Suez or Pacific Railway; and the drift of ocean-currents, and the latest position of theJane Richardson, derelict, and the arrival of theLadybirdat Bahia; and the probabilities of wind-circulation, atmospheric moisture, aberrations of audibility in fog; and in the middle of it the pulse of the sun, the thundering engines and shooting shuttles of this Loom; a tiptop briskness and bustle of action; a scramble of wits; amêléeto the death; mixed with pea-jackets, and aromas of chewed pigtail, and a rolling in the gait.
Into this roar of life that wordKaiserstole: and it grew to a chorus.
Charles P. Stickney, butting upon a tearing clerk who was holding aloft a bulletin of icebergs and derelicts, tried to stop him: upon which the clerk, who would not be stopped, cried with a back-looking face of passionate haste: “London message just received—no intelligence of Kaiser—”
But he had hardly disappeared, when another man from an inner room rushed, waving something: the Navesink Highlands lookout had wired theKaiserin sight! And while the Exchange rang with cheers, Stickney, a colour now in his sere cheeks, went boring his way outward.
The lookout had said it—those blue eyes that never failed there on his watch-tower, he knowing the ships that sail the sea as the Cyclops his sheep, in his heart so knowing them all, that as that sea-glass detected a speck on the horizon, those sea-wise nostrils sniffed its name: for between theMary Janeand theMary Anne, both off-shore schooners, is all the world of difference: if you would not see it,heknows. And he had wired theKaiser!—so expectant his outlook: and that day wept like a ruined man.
Swift upon his first wire a second flashed: and one of those craped days of the tragedies of commerce followed, the boding, the loss, flashed everywhere, pervading Europe and America.
The next morning the Exchange, all the exchanges, the Lloyds', the bourses, were crowded from an early hour, but subdued: no news, not a word; but still—there was certainty: for had theKaiserand her wireless been merely disabled, she would undoubtedly by now have been reported: she had foundered.
Foundered!—in the serenest weather in which ship ever crossed the water....
But at eleven the truth came: for the brig which had lain becalmed near theBoodahat the moment of the tragedy, and now was nearer England, had flashed the news: “many of the Kaiser's passengers mutilated, many drowned”.
Death, then, was in the pottage of Life; the air tainted with specks of blood....
That day Man, as it were, rent his garments, sitting in ashes, and to Heaven sent up a howl of fear, of anguish, and of hissing hate.
Those who lacked the intelligence to feel the fear, felt the hate: every girl, the shirt-maker, the shopman, feeling himself robbed of his very own; the Duke in the centre of his oak-lands felt it; the burglar, the junk-dweller of the Yangtse, the pariah of the Hugli. Lamentation and a voice in Ramah, wail on wail. For God had given the sea to man, and it had been seized by a devil.
God had also given the shore; and it, too, had been seized: but, as that had been before their birth, they had not observed it—in such a numb somnambulism shambles humanity.
But the theft of the sea was new and flagrant, it, and the air, being all that had remained: and a roar for vengeance—sharp, and rolled in blood—rose from the throat of man.
Accordingly, when Mr. C. P. Stickney during the afternoon wired for information to the White House, he received the reply: “Encourage calm on 'Change. Government in touch with Europe. Great naval activity. Await good news, seven P.M.”
It was about seven P.M. that what the White House would have considered specially good news occurred: for theBoodahthen telegraphed through to O'Hara'sMahometat the Straits:
“B. 7651. Begins. After to-morrow (Monday) you begin taxation, as per Order B., 7315, of 2nd inst. But if warships desire to pass out, (not in), permit, till further order. Richard. Ends”.
Which meant that if any Power, or Powers, desired to concentrate force upon the attack of any island, the Lord of the Sea granted them facilities.
TheKaiserpassengers had now been sent off to New York, theBoodah'shalls seemed the home of desolation; and, as the night advanced, Hogarth and Loveday walked on the roof: for they could find no rest, the sky without moon or star, the sea making of three sides of theBoodaha roaring reef, the wind blowing cold, they two wrapped to the nose in oilskins with sou'-westers, lashed by rages of rain and spray.
Yonder, to the north-west, appeared a ghost, a thing, a derelict brig, driving downhill on the billows, like a blind man gadding aimless with a crazy down-look, the rags of her one sail drumming on the gusts; and near, nearer, within a stone's-throw of theBoodah, she swaggered wearily, drab Arab, doomed despondent Ahasuerus of the deep, nomad on the nomad sea; and on into the gloom of the south-west she roamed, to be again and again re-created by the rolling light-drum, while Hogarth with a groan said: “If I were only dead! I feel to-night like a man abandoned by the Almighty”.
Loveday muttered those words so loved by Hogarth:
“....this is my favoured lot,My exaltation to afflictions high”....
And Hogarth: “Do you know what is burdening me tonight? It is the curses which the world is at this moment hurling upon me: as when one man, thinking evilly of another, sticks needles into wax, and needles of pain pierce the other...” a sense of evil which was deepened the next day by an ominous little accident, when one of his old gunpractice hulks arrived from Bombay, bearing the throne: for as this was being conveyed into theBoodaha front leg was broken.
Meantime, the world's trade went on as before: only, night and day, its ships lay-to, to pay rent with threat and curse: in all only thirteen ships being sunk ere sea and earth had learned the new conditions.
And from the very first day of this taxing a deeper sense of pain and hardship pervaded the world, the Lord of the Sea now taxing at 4s. per ton a world's tonnage of 29 millions, 7 1/2 millions in sailing-ships, 21 1/2 millions in steamships, once in a voyage—a little less than the revenue of Britain.
So one night he received message from O'Hara that “British Mediterranean fleet has passed through the Straits, homeward”.
It was not for nothing that the nations had allowed three weeks to pass before avenging the Kaiser: soon enough the Cabinets had been in intercommunication; but in the “Concert” had occurred—a hitch.
Britain had proposed the destruction of the islands in detail, the Powers to contribute weights of metal proportionate to their mercantile marines: as a basis for calculation she had offered her force in Home and Mediterranean waters; and, this having been accepted, by the 5th ships were under the pennant, and outfitting.
Now, all this time, things had been in a pretty whirl: oratory from pulpit, platform, stump, eyes on fire, mobs that went in haste, shrieks of newspaper passion, organized burglary, and a strange epidemic of fires: for the modern nations lived by the sea, and it was seized. Moreover, on the 6th, after a meeting at the Albert Hall, organized by the Associated Chambers of Commerce, our Government—“Liberal”, under Sir Moses Cohen—suffered a defeat of thirty-four votes on a division.
And it was during the turmoil that ensued upon this that the German Foreign Office (on the 9th) sent to the new Russian the wireless “Bion”-meaning—“Let us meet to discuss the subject of-England”.
That meeting took place at Konigsberg.
It was now that a fort-man—formerly a Nottingham shoemaker—landed from the Truth's yacht at Frederikshavn, and thence wrote to the Daily Chronicle, to say, briefly, this: That, supposing the European navies joined to batter away with l5-inch guns and torpedoes at five feet of steel, they might finally succeed in mining a hole in it; but if the thick steel happened to have still bigger guns, “and other things”, with which, meantime, to batter back at the thin ships, then it would be the ships, probably, which would get holes in them: it was a question of Time. Also he said that the islands were defended by devoted men, every one of intelligence and high principle, who knew what they wanted, and meant to have it—their shooting average being 97 per 100. He advised his country not to try it, especially in view of certain political rumours which he had picked up in the Cattegat.
This letter, although badly spelled, aroused a sensation The “high principle” of the fort-men, indeed, met with bitter laughter; but its hearty patriotism, simplicity, technical knowledge, were so remarkable, that now a doubt as to the battleship arose—and with it a gnashing of teeth. The service-clubs, the “experts”, wrote this and that; the publics poured forth letters, schemes, plots, inventions—like the brain of the worldversusthe brain of Hogarth. “Starve Him Out”, was a title in theContemporary:but the reply was bitterly obvious. And into the midst of this racket burst the news that the negotiations with Germany, Russia and France were at a deadlock.
These Powers had raised this question: “In case of the capture of the islands—what shall be done with those most powerful engines?”
Here was a riddle. For whichever nation took even one would score a vast advantage.
If, now, Britain had had the greatness of mind to declare for the sinking, in any case, of all the islands, the difficulty was solved, but the new-Government brooms would score a point and gain a trick, and they proposed the division of surviving forts in the proportion of fighting-power contributed.
The Continent objected: Britain was “firm”; whereupon the French Ambassador sent to Downing Street his withdrawal from the crusade.
And so when—on the 22nd—the fleets assembled at Portland and Milford Haven beforerendezvousat the Lizard, the whole original proposal had fallen through: for here was neither tricolour nor saltire, only three German ships, only five Italian; the “probability”, moreover, of the capture of a sea-fort by England was imminent: and on the evening of the mobilisation of the squadrons feverish activity was reported from Toulon; a British Legationattaché,, seeing fit to stroll round the Caserne Pepinière, beheld in the yard an extraordinary crowd of limbers: and, pitching into a cab, from the nearestpostes et télégrapheswired to London the word: “Angleterre”.
Too late: the British fleets were gone, leaving the Channel and Western Mediterranean desert.
Now the nation awoke to a consciousness of dark skies: cloud of the west rushing to meet a yet lurider eastern—with probability of lightning.
The fleet could hardly return in less than five days—if it returned! Would the hostile nations be good enough to await its return? The lightning would be “near”.
A day of fear, in which flash tracked flash: till at 11.30 P.M. the rumour pervaded the crowd round St. Stephen's that the new Ministry had suffered defeat: and the drifting ship was captainless.
And early the next morning a number ofBoodahboats, out running a regatta, came tearing back, all fluttered; soon after which Quilter-Beckett was hurrying into Hogarth's presence, who was at coffee, to say: “Well, my Lord King, here they come at last—and enough of them, I think”.