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 a
_plaza_ of 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 name _BOODAH_ boomed itself.
By eleven some seven hundred people stood and sat on the roof--the
_élite_ of 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 the _Boodah_?” 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 the _Boodah_ from 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; the _Boodah_, 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.
XXXIII
REEFS OF STEEL
Nothing was ever so scrutinized as the movements of the _Boodah_ during
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-Leghorn _route_, six steamers
then towing the _Boodah_, 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 hired
_speronare_, put to sea, and joined the _Boodah_ twenty 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
their _motif_ could only be one thing, resistance to ocean currents,
this meant that the _Boodah_ was 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 the _Boodah_; 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 the _Boodah_: for _another Boodah_, called the
_Truth_, 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. The
_Boodah_ finally 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: a _route_ covered 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, the _Boodah_, 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 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 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 the _élite_ 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 balls, classic
concerts, theatrical functions by _troupe_ or amateur, costume-balls,
children's-balls, banquets of the gods, 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 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 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 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 the _Mahomet_,
to the 55th of latitude, 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
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.
XXXIV
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 spyglass 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 Sabæans. There is hope”....
It was known that on that day, at half-past eleven A.M., the _Kaiser
Wilhelm der Grösste_ would pass on her second voyage within some
miles of the _Boodah_, 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 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 space.
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 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 the _Boodah_--ship'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 passengers 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 of _Law_! 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 the _Kaiser Wilhelm's_ whistle 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, the _Kaiser_ only four hundred yards from the _Boodah_;
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 the _Kaiser_, 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 the _chef_ is 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 the
_Kaiser_.
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”.