The Lord of the Sea Part 32

Gradually, as the names "Beech", "Ecuador", ceased to be a.s.sociated with the islands, the name of Hogarth took their place; and Hogarth had engaged Wanda, sweetest of tenors, to a year's stay in the _Boodah_, whose orchestra was the most cultured anywhere; Roche, her _chef_, 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 the _Boodah_ such as most princes would consider Utopian.

Hardly anything in her interior suggested _the s.h.i.+p_: 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 princ.i.p.al 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 gla.s.sy 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 bal.u.s.trades, three feet high, hung with silks, the inner circle thirty feet across, higher than the outer, forty-five across: a roseate room, strewn with cus.h.i.+ons, colours, flushes; but that raised s.p.a.ce was empty: reserved for--a throne.

The throne, still unfinished, had been three years making in India.

And during nine months the _elite_ and joyous yachts arrived, not at the _Boodah_ only, 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 b.a.l.l.s, cla.s.sic concerts, theatrical functions by _troupe_ or amateur, costume-b.a.l.l.s, children's-b.a.l.l.s, banquets of the G.o.ds, grave receptions. By now there ran right across the _Boodah's_ roof, 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 pa.s.sing s.h.i.+p would see a bazaar, all b.u.t.terfly 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 Andra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed off. On the whole, they seemed mere whimsical castles-of-pleasure. The trains of industrious s.h.i.+ps grew habituated to their gaudy brightness by night, to their seething reefs, or placid ma.s.s, 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 pa.s.ser. 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 there _before?_"--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 G.o.d sent them for sovereign.

Meantime, the more thoughtful of men did not fail to observe, and never forgot, that no s.h.i.+p could possibly depart from, or arrive at Europe, without pa.s.sing 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 the _Mahomet_, to the 55th of lat.i.tude, where the _Goethe_ lay on the Quebec-Glasgow _route_: 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 j.a.panese-San Francisco, the Australian-San Francisco trades, and great part of the j.a.pano-Russo-Chinese. These were the princ.i.p.al 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 fas.h.i.+onable.

Richard Hogarth held back his hand.

x.x.xIV

THE "KAISER"

It was the habit of Hogarth, when in the _Boodah_, 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 spygla.s.s the fading light-beam of the _Goethe_ north, of the _Solon_ south; or they watched how the _Boodah's_ galaxy, 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 big _Boodah_ of 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 Sabaeans. There is hope"....

It was known that on that day, at half-past eleven A.M., the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosste_ would pa.s.s on her second voyage within some miles of the _Boodah_, this s.h.i.+p 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 gla.s.s 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 the _Kaiser 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 s.p.a.ce.

The officers on the _Boodah_ spoke 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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, p.r.o.ne, 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 the _Boodah_--s.h.i.+p's-surgeons and officers with them--jesting, as they munched or sucked.

But the Captain who had often seen the _Boodah_, 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 the _Boodah_.

And simultaneously with the hoisting of that ensign, and the striking of those clocks, the old-worn wheels of Roman Civilization stopped dead.

The _Boodah_ ran 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 pa.s.sengers saw his lighted eyes. He had some moments of indecision; then down he, too, rang that word: "_Stop_".

The engines left off; the _Kaiser's_ speed, as from heart-failure, gave in, died away.

By this time all the pa.s.sengers 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 the _Boodah_ is signalling: "_Let the Captain come_".

The Captain's hands were shaking; he could not speak, could only gasp to the first-officer: "By G.o.d, no; O, by G.o.d, no". Then, as great quant.i.ties of black-grey reek, wheeling all convolved, were now enveloping the vessel, resting on the sea, reaching away in thinner fog even to the _Boodah_, 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, the _Kaiser_ would 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 they _pay_ for it...?" so, with a painful face of care, the Captain questioned s.p.a.ce.

But he would be mild and patient as a lamb that day! His order went forth: the s.h.i.+p forged ahead; a longboat, hurriedly lowered to starboard, was manned for the first-officer to put off in her, while every heart of the pa.s.sengers thumped, every face an ecstasy of emotions.

Then a wretched, long interval...

The s.h.i.+p's-officers were received on the _Boodah_ in 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 doc.u.ments, while in the background stood Hogarth and Loveday, and, "Gentlemen, this is a most d.a.m.ned 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.