already 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 the _Kaiser_ a 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 the _Boodah's_ boats, 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 the _Boodah_ she 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 the _Kaiser_ upon 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, _salons_ and 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.
XXXV
THE CUP OF TREMBLING
It was by the merest chance that Baruch Frankl and his daughter were
not on the _Kaiser_: 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 the _Boodah_.
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, the _Kaiser's_ arrival had
not been in the morning's paper: so the little arch-millionaire stepped
toward Beaver Street, sure that the _Kaiser_ had 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 the _Kaiser_! 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 tea _in
transitu_ via Suez or Pacific Railway; and the drift of ocean-currents,
and the latest position of the _Jane Richardson_, derelict, and
the arrival of the _Ladybird_ at 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; a _mêlée_ to the death; mixed with
pea-jackets, and aromas of chewed pigtail, and a rolling in the gait.
Into this roar of life that word _Kaiser_ stole: 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 the
_Kaiser_ in 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 the _Mary Jane_ and the _Mary Anne_, both off-shore schooners,
is all the world of difference: if you would not see it, _he_ knows. And
he had wired the _Kaiser!_--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 the _Kaiser_ and 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
the _Boodah_ at 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 the _Boodah_ then telegraphed through
to O'Hara's _Mahomet_ at 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.
The _Kaiser_ passengers had now been sent off to New York, the
_Boodah's_ halls 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 the
_Boodah_ a 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 the _Boodah_, 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 the _Boodah_ a 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 world _versus_ the brain of Hogarth. “_Starve Him Out_”, was a
title in the _Contemporary:_ 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 before _rendezvous_ at 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 Legation _attaché,_, seeing fit to stroll round the
Caserne Pepinière, beheld in the yard an extraordinary crowd of limbers:
and, pitching into a cab, from the nearest _postes et télégraphes_ wired
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 of _Boodah_ boats, 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”.
XXXVI
THE “BOODAH” AND THE BATTLESHIPS
The ships had gone forth in two lines ahead at ten knots, Admiral Sir
Henry Yerburgh, K.C.B., being in the flagship Queen Mary, with the
capital-ships being nearly all of the five mosquito flotillas, and half
the Home submarine; though what was the object of the torpedo craft
(unless they were to go within 2,000 yards of the _Boodah's_ guns) was
not very evident.
At that news, Hogarth, putting on a wide-awake, and lighting a cigar
with rough perfunctory puffs, ran along a corridor to call Loveday,
whereupon the two went out to the ledge and up to the roof.
There, at the south edge, stood a marine trumpeting something at
Hogarth's yacht; and, just landing at the _Boodah_ from his gig, a
fretful Yankee skipper, register in hand with a bag of £900 sea-rent in
gold, while twenty yards yonder rode his smoking ship loaded with
grain for Rouen; and on the eastern horizon the armada, in crescent at
present, moving with fires banked at two knots, a glare hiding them from
the naked eye, but the glass revealing them like toys in the abstract,
ethereally hazy.
And now the yacht's cones shewed steam, three of her boats making toward
the _Boodah_; soon at the landing-place stood Wanda, some interpreters,
Mons. Roche (the chef), women, engineers, paymasters, civil servants,
waiters, etc.; and Hogarth, seeing them, approached, questioned them,
and, hearing that they had been ordered a day's pleasure-trip round the
_Solon_, with lifting hat shook hands all round.
By this time some fifty officers and blue-jackets were about the roof
and ledge, some discussing, others unfixing lanterns and festoons, with
shouted directions. Leaving which, Hogarth and Loveday descended to an
office of Loveday's, and Hogarth was just saying: “Quilter-Beckett could
destroy a quarter of those warships yonder--_now_, if he chose--without
firing a gun--” when in, with flushed face and stretched stalk,
hurried Quilter-Beckett, crying: “My Lord King, I thought you would be
here--just look--!”
He held out a Sea telegraph-form-from O'Hara:
“F. 39241. Begins. Almost certainty of war: Germany, France, Russia
against England. Three corps massing between Harfleur and Rouen,
two upon Petersburg, transports at Havre. England undefended on sea.
Ministry fallen. Toulon outfitting. Donald, Admiral. Ends.
Hogarth, with an all-gone gesture, handed the telegram to Loveday.
But with lightning energy he was at a desk, scribbling:
“F. 39242. Begins. To Donald, Admiral, Mahomet. Be in half-hourly
communication with Beech's Bank, Paris and Petersburg branches. Send
hourly bulletins of news. War to be averted by every means. Let Beech
threaten. Warn Cattegat. Richard. Ends.”
And “Quick, Quilter-Beckett”, he cried, “send that! What is the speed of
your quickest picket--?”
“Fifteen knots--”
“Then, go yourself to the British Admiral. _Make_ him fly back: he has
years to attack me in, tell him--I'll write a dispatch--”
On which Quilter-Beckett telephoned up for a picket, took the dispatch,
and was soon away, while Hogarth watched his flight over the Sea.
An anxious hour passed, and by then a line of ships had been sighted to
the west--the Americans at last; ten minutes later, the picket, too, was
seen returning.
“Well, now”, said Hogarth, watching her, “I wonder. The ships seem to be
coming on just the same. You have no idea, John, how the mind of people
in office becomes fixed, like hardened putty in a hole: I am sorry now I
didn't go myself”.
Some minutes more and Quilter-Beckett was pelting up the steps, his face
pink as prickly-heat, blurting out: “My Lord King! I have been grossly
insulted...!”
“Ha!” went Hogarth.
“I met a dispatch-boat coming to make summons of surrender, and,
in spite of my white flag, they took me prisoner! How I restrained
myself--and these people in the hollow of my hand! When I got at last to
the Admiral--it is Yerburgh on the _Queen Mary_--he 'pirated' me--but I
have no time Yonder, you see, are the Americans. British won't go back:
I doubt if they believe--'under orders', and so on. By the way, you
shouldn't stay there--no longer safe--”
He was away: for the moment was near, the _Boodah_ now surrounded with a
series of floating squares hanging deep torpedo-nets against submarines,
on both horizons effusions of smoke, the ships no more visions, but
middle-sized sea-things, seeming fixed in the thick of the sea, though
steaming quickly. Hogarth watched them through a hand-glass, while
Loveday, ghastly pallid, whispered: “Come, Richard, come”, but still
lingered a little, seeing them grow up--like the infant, the lad, the
hairy man--toiling at the bigness of the sea, looking stripped, prepared
for tempest They were six miles away--five.
Mute lay the _Boodah_; and, surrounding her, perniciously moved the
ships at forty-eight revolutions a minute, hardly a cable's interval
between the host of them, they seeming no more the playthings of the
sea, but its masters, each a travelling throne of power; and as they
pared so taciturn, with baleful aspect they trained their cannon upon
the sea-fort in their midst: not a soul visible on fort or ships.
A long while it seems to last, that noonday stillness, a noonday breezy
and oceanic, the sea sharp-edged, hard-looking, dark-blue, tossing spray
along its ridges, not rough, but restless, shewing against the ships
white foams a moment, which silently glide away.
But their Admiral is signalling: _Let her have it!_ and in some moments
more yonder to the far north the _Florida_ breaks into quick-flashing
ecstasy, like quick-winking Gorgon glances; and the north-east catches
it in a single boom; and in ten seconds more it is as if Nature, with
sudden yell, feels to her womb the birth-hour come and rueful throes:
and where ships had been appears in one minute nothing but a ring of
stagnant smoke, tugged into rays and out-sticking clouds, flushed with
glares and rouges.
And no question of missing: the _Boodah_ stationary and huge; every
shell told. But, the deluge over, that thunder-marred visage again
looked grimly forth, a face new-risen from smallpox, an apparition,
roof-houses gone, lighthouse tops, one of her great 19.5 inchers in
fragments, in her casemates seventeen dead.
But where now is the one-masted _Hercules_, which but a moment
since went trembling at the bale of her own bellowing barbettes? The
_Hercules_ is in a Nessus-shirt of flame. And whither the _Hercules_ is
going, thither is the _Idaho_ going, and the _Dante_ gone, and gone the
elongated length of the _Invincible_, and twenty destroyers, and the
bow-works of the old _Powerful_, which stoops woefully there, screws in
air, as the camel of the desert kneels and waits, while into her beam
comes crashing the ram of the poopless _Deutschland_.
Yet the _Boodah_ has not fired a gun!
But now she fires: as the broadsides drench her anew, she fires, the
hulk--all round the horizon--lowing in travail: and as there is no
question of missing on the one side, so on the other is assurance, the
_Boodah's_ broad-sides of 19.5-inchers and 9.5-inchers, ninety-two in
all, being fired by the hand of Quilter-Beckett, who sits at a table
grim with knobs, buttons, dial-faces, in a cabinet near a saloon where
Hogarth, Loveday, and five lieutenants are lunching; and where he sits
he can hear the band in an alcove rendering for the eaters Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony: hear, not heed: for two gunners in each casemate have
sighted a ship through pivoted glasses, whose fixing, disturbing an
electrical circuit, prints the ship's distance on an indicator before
the Admiral: whereupon he touches a button--many buttons--in intense
succession: the _Boodah bawls_: and the thrust-back of her resentment
becomes intolerable, the ships just like fawns under the paws of an old
lion whose grisly jaws drip gore; the sharks that infest her will fare
well of her hand.