wreckage so vast and swift, that the Admiral, still afloat in a _Queen
Mary_ pierced above-belt, is like a man stung by the tarantulas of
distraction: tries to signal flight--flags cannot be seen; fires
coloured pistol-lights: “Retire!”--and soon, all round, the circle is in
flight.
But hapless flight: the _Boodah_ is an octopus whose feelers reach far,
and they, within her toils, cannot escape her omnipresence. She sends
after them no guns: yet they are blown to atoms; the sea becomes a
death-trap thick with pitfalls and shipwreck; one by one they are
caught, they fly aloft like startled fowl, or they succumb, and lean,
and stoop, and sink: the sea, for mile on mile, proving a hell of
torpedoes-dirigible, automobile, mine.
For in the matter of mines the _Boodah_ had all the advantages of a
shore, and as to dirigible torpedoes more than all.
Her mines, whose weight was adjusted to the specific gravity of salt
water, sank till the pressure at ten fathoms arrested them, they,
electrically connected with the forts, reaching out twenty miles;
and the whole network, charted to an inch, was coordinated with the
range-tables.
The ordinary l8-inch Whiteheads, moreover, were replaced by a longer
design running 6,000 yards, the added length being occupied by the
flask, whose compressed air runs the engine, they not sinking on
finishing their course: so, if they missed, there they lay, a trap of
380 pounds of gun-cotton in the course of the numerous moving foe.
With these three forms of the same plague the _Boodah_ hunted the
fleeing ships, and drove them stumbling through complicated miseries,
amazed and thunderstruck: so that seventy-three only, several of them
half-wrecks, reached her twenty-five mile limit; and, there, over the
mines of the _Solon_, reassembled.
Amid the throng on his ruined roof Hogarth watched their flight and the
ever-coming boatloads of blue-jackets through a mist of smoke and the
after-smell of war, while under the sea wide eyes in hosts were a-gaze
at a windfall of 2,400 bodies.
About half-past four captains and commanders of the survivors were in
the ward-room of the Second-in-Command on the _Orion_--the _Queen Mary_
gone--when he, with splendid infatuation, proposed a return to the
attack, with a change of tactics to concentration upon one side only of
the _Boodah_; but the foreigners pointed out the obvious added dangers;
and in the midst of a wrangle a dispatch-boat from the _Solon_, eleven
miles south, arrived, demanding the usual sea-rent, by draft, if not in
gold; so out, at this unlooked-for incident, broke a new quarrel, the
British for a whole hour resisting the inexorable; till the _Solon_
Lieutenant, his eyes moist with pleading, explained their helplessness,
adding that war between the four Powers had been declared that day at
noon from the Stock Exchange steps: and only then the Vice-Admiral,
breaking into tears, yielded to destiny.
Hogarth, meanwhile, was like a wild man, imprisoned, till his yacht
returned at dusk with her excursionists; and without delay he was on
her, and away for England.
XXXVII
THE STRAITS
In England, meantime, was nothing but dismay.
The Government, whose defeat was accidental, on being hurriedly patched
up, threw itself passionately into the work of defence, calling up every
enrolled man, while at regimental centres the enlistment of volunteers
went forward, Weedon alone turning out 7,000 rifles a day.
But on the night of the Declaration the Under-secretary announced in the
House that the Russians were moving down the Baltic, the French toward
the Straits: and the next morning dawned with the dreariness of last
mornings and days. However, soon after 1 P.M., the Lord of the Sea
landed at Bristol, his yacht being one of the swiftest things afloat;
there heard the known facts; and thence wired to Beech's London house,
to the London Foreign Office, to Cadiz and to Frederikshavn, where he
had wireless for the _Mahomet_ at the Straits, and for the _Truth_ in
the Cattegat.
His wire to the Foreign Office was as follows:
“I have come to England hoping to avert European war by fiscal means,
not knowing that the passage of ships into open water was of first
importance. Since this is so, accept my assurance, there will be no
war, except on the part of Britain, which I should much resent. British
Government, I suggest, should forthwith allay national anxiety.
“RICHARD”.
But the Foreign Office did not publish this telegram, not knowing what
to make of it--unless Hogarth were vehemently the friend of England,
while every British being regarded him not so much as the enemy of man,
as the special Anti-Christ of England. And how came he to be in England,
when he should be at the bottom of the Atlantic? The telegram was passed
through the agitated departments, but kept dark....
So the afternoon passed without news: and tension grew to agony.
Hogarth spent the evening in his Berkeley Square house with the Manager
of Beech's, examining office-books and specimens of some new Sea-coins,
till near eleven, when, being alone, he put on a mackintosh, shaded
his face well with hat and collar-flap, and went out into the drizzling
night.
Even his Berkeley Square was peopled, and, as he strolled toward Pall
Mall, he found it ever harder to advance, till he became jammed. Never
had he seen such a crowd, all in the air a sound, vague and general,
which was like a steam of thought-made-audible; till presently, while
trying in vain to get away, he was startled by a tumult that travelled,
a rumour of woe that noised and swelled, terrifying, the voice of the
people, the voice of God: and though he did not know its meaning, it
keenly afflicted him.
The fastest of the survivors from the battle with the _Boodah_ had
wirelessed: on that commonplace bulletin at the War Office the news
stood written...
But the rumour of that despair had not yet attained its culmination,
when another rumour roared after and over it, roar upon roar, like
tempest poured through the multitudinous forest, joyance now overtaking
sorrow, and a noise of roistering overwhelming lamentation. And all at
once a great magnetic hysteria seized them all, and the many became as
one, and the bursting bosom burst: men weeping like infants, laughing
foolishly, grasping each other's hand, and one cried “Hurrah!”, and
another, catching it, cried “Hurrah!”
For the French, German, and Russian fleets, in attempting to pass the
two narrows north and south of Europe, had been stopped by the two
sea-forts there; and though they had been so eager to pass, that they
had even offered to pay sea-rent, this, too, had been refused. They had
then, at five and at five-thirty in the afternoon, offered battle to
the islands: with the result that half their weight had been annihilated
before they took to flight. So said the bulletin....
And Hogarth in the midst of the jubilee saw the man who jammed his left
shoulder, a broker in spectacles, grip the hand of the man on his right,
a ragamuffin, to cry out: “That scoundrel Hogarth! Isn't there good in
the damned thief, after all?”
And the other: “Aye, he knows how to give it 'em 'ot, don't 'e, after
all! Thank God for that!”
Three weeks later peace was proclaimed by a procession at Temple Bar
between England, Austro-Germany, France, Russia, and the Sea.
XXXVIII
THE MANIFESTO
The last effort of Europe to resist the Sea was made on the afternoon of
the 14th of October, when the British Prime Minister refused to conclude
a treaty of peace.
“Your master is only a pirate--on a large scale”, he said to a Minister
of the Sea.
That was on the 14th.
On the 15th there was a stoppage of British trade nearly all the world
over.
On the 20th England was in a state of _émeute_ resembling revolution.
On the 28th the Treaty of Peace was signed.
Its principal conditions were: (1) The undertaking by the Sea not to
raise sea-rent on British ships without certain formalities of notice;
and (2) The undertaking by Britain not to engage in the making of any
railway or overland trade-route, or of any marine engine of war, without
the consent of the Sea. And similar treaties were signed by the Sea with
the other nations.
Then followed the rush of the Ambassadors to the _Boodah_, and the
frivolous round of Court-life revolved, _levée_, audience, dinner,
drawing-room, investiture; the Lord of the Sea descended from the throne
before the Court to pin a cross upon the humble breast of his best shot
and give him the title of Præceps, gave fanciful honours to emperors,
received them of them--wore when throned a brow-band of gold with only
one stone, the biggest of the meteor octahedrons, that glanced about his
brow like an icicle in whose glass gallivanted a fairy clad in rags of
the rainbow.
Now the old gaieties recommenced, but more Olympian in tone, as befitted
the ruler of rulers, terrible now being the lifting of Hogarth's brows
at the least lapse in ritual; and only the chastest-nurtured of the
earth ever now stalked through gavotte or pavane in those halls of the
sea.
The world now lay at his feet. The dependence upon him of England, of
France, of that part of Austro-Germany called Germany, was obvious: he
could starve them. But over Austria proper, Russia, Italy, his sway was
no less omnipotent: for the panic cheapness of scrip which followed the
destruction of the _Kaiser_ had, of course, been foreseen, and used by
him; Beech had bought up, easily ousting the Rothschilds from their old
financial kingship: by tens of millions the process had gone on; and
still it continued increasingly, for the wealth of Hogarth now, as
compared with that of other rich men, was like a ship to a skiff. If he
threw upon the market, the bankruptcy of several nations might follow:
it was doubtful if the United States could survive; certainly, Austria,
Russia, South America must go under.
Nor was the East less his slave: Japan a mercantile nation, China and
Turkey in his fiscal net. So, looking round the globe toward the middle
of November, he could observe scarcely a nation which he could not, by
scribbling a telegram, crush out of recognition.
It was precisely then that Richard Hogarth revealed himself.
On the 15th of November appeared his Manifesto.
This Charter, which everlastingly must remain one of the Scriptures of
our planet, simple as a baby's syllables, yet large like the arch of
Heaven, has left its mark on the human soul.
On the morning of the 16th its twenty clauses occupied in _pica_ a page
of every newspaper, and it was posted up big in the streets of cities.
The document ran:
Richard, by the Will of God....I do hereby discern, declare, and lay
down: That:
1. What is no good cannot be owned: only goods can be owned.
2. “_Good_” is _well_, or pleasant; goods is _well_th (wealth) or
pleasures: thus, a coal-mine, being no pleasure, cannot be owned.
3. Coal _becomes_ goods after being moved, or taken. Moving does not
make it good; its nature does not make it good: moving-_plus_-Nature
makes it good, ownable. At the pit-head, already, it is a pleasure,
fewer pains being now needed to move it to a fireplace. Thus, Nature
apart from motion cannot be owned, being no good, as a cave is no good
to a caveman outside it: rain is wetting him; if he takes it, moves in,
it is good.
Animals and plants, by taking things from the planets presented to them,
by moving things, raise Nature into wealth, and own things.
4. For Jack to _own_, have a thing for Jack's _own_, Jack must by his
_own_ force have subdued Nature, must have taken the thing by moving
the thing's atoms, or moving something relatively to the thing, or,
negatively, by not evading, but accepting, the thing in motion--a wind,
tide, light-wave; else Jack must have taken something (by as much work)
to purchase the thing from its (true) owner, or accepted it as a favour
from Nature in motion, or from its (true) owner. To say “own” is to say
“take”; to say “take” is to say “motion”, i.e., the doing of work: “work
done” being FD, i.e., Force used into Distance moved-over. I cannot own
the air: it is no good; I own the air in my lungs, having taken, moved,
it, done FD on it: it is very good; and I own the air which, doing FD,
moving to my face, I do not evade, but accept, take: it is very good.
I say to Jack “take a cigar”; he loudly says “yes!”, but does not move
it to his mouth, nor moves his mouth to it; instead, he moves a pen to
his mouth; this makes me laugh: he has not taken a cigar.
Jack is catching fish in a boat; Tom owns the boat: so Jack gives fish
to Tom, until Jack's FD done on the fish is equivalent to Tom's FD done
on the boat; and now Jack owns the boat. If “the law” says that Tom
still owns the boat, this makes me laugh: for how can Tom come to own
two boats' good by the FD done on one only?
Jack is ploughing the sea with a ship: just there he owns the sea, has
taken, is moving, it for his good. He does not own the sea before, nor
the sea behind, him: for the motions behind made by him have ceased to
do good.
Jack is ploughing soil: he owns the soil ploughed, has taken it, and
will own it while the motions he has made do good: so that, if Tom who
has not moved it says “I own the soil, for 'the law' declares that I
have taken it by moving a pen two inches”, this makes me laugh. Or, if
Jack says “I own it for ever”, this makes me laugh. Or, if anyone says
“I own both the soil and the site” (relative position), this makes me
laugh: for what can one man move to make a relative position good? He
can neither move a field toward anything nor move much toward a field.
If many men move railways that way, or move things to rear towns round
the field, this makes the site good, moving it from outside a community
to inside a community; and the many who make it good own it.
5. The site is the field's chief good: so the plougher owes something to
those who, making it good, own it, This something is named “rent”.
6. Suppose that the plougher, or dweller-on, is an Englishman: he owes
rent to the English. And, since the site of England is made good by
movements made in America, he owes rent to the Americans.
7. This the mind readily descries to be true: it is a “truism”, and
is necessarily the Fundamental Principle of Society throughout the
universe. So that, summing up, we may define: “Rent” is “right”, based
on truth when paid to those by whose movements a site is made good.
8. One might readily guess (if there were no example of it) that any
violation of a Principle so fundamental would be avenged by Nature upon
the planet which violated it.
9. Our planet is such an example: for here Two Separate Violations of
the Principle appear; each great in itself; but one small in comparison.
10. Accordingly, for the small violation Nature has not failed to send
upon Man a small penalty; and for the great violation great penalties.
11. The small violation consists in the claim by nations to have taken,
without having moved, sites called “countries”.
12. For this Nature has sent upon man the small penalty of War.
13. To abolish War men must remove its cause.
Therefore let the site-rental of England (i.e., the excess of English
goods over what English goods would be, if no other country existed) be
handed over to a World Council; and the site-rental of America to the
same; and the World Council shall disburse such funds for the majesty
and joy of Man: and War shall terminate.
14. This way the Lord of the Sea indicates to the world, though with its
initiation he is not personally concerned.
15. Beside the small violation of the Fundamental Principle of Society,
there is a great on the earth.
16. The Great Violation consists in the claim by individuals to
have taken, without having moved, sites and soils called “estates”,
“domains”, “plots”: for, as rent tends to rightness when paid to the
fifty millions of a nation, _fifty-millionfold_ is its wrongness when
paid to one; and as rent is right when paid to the thousand million
inhabitants of a planet, _a thousand-millionfold_ is its wrongness when
paid to one.
17. For this Great Violation of the Fundamental Principle of Society
Nature has sent upon Man great penalties: poverties, frenzies,
depravities, horrors, sorrows, lowness, dulness.
18. Lowness, dulness: for by far the greatest of these penalties is a
restraint on Man's development. Man is an animal, Man is a mind: and
since the wing of mind is Pride, Assurance, or Self-esteem, and since
the home of an animal is a Planet, and an animal without a home is a
thing without Assurance or Pride, so Man without Earth is a mind without
wing. Even so, a few, having Assurance, make what we call “Progress”,
i.e., the discovering of truth--a crawling which might become flight,
had all minds but the wing of Pride to co-operate in discovering truth.
But Man lacks assurance and foothold, founded home and domain: his sole
heritage, though he is neither fish nor fowl, being sea and air.
19. This is a great violation.
20. And with this great violation of the Fundamental Principle of
Society the Lord of the Sea is personally concerned. In the name of
Heaven and of Earth he urges upon the nations of men to amend it in
the month of the promulgation of this Manifesto: and this summons he
strengthens with a threat of his resentment.
As the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, I will see to it.
RICHARD.
XXXIX
THE “BOODAH'S” LOCK-UP
Three days after the Manifesto the marriage of Miss Stickney of New
York with Lord Alfred Cowern was to take place, this having been put
off owing to the _Kaiser_ tragedy; and so, on the day of the Manifesto,
Baruch Frankl, the Jew, was crossing to a wedding which, even in
the midst of great events, had stirred up a considerable rumour and
sensation, since the American guests were to consist of the _coterie_
known as the “Thirty-four”, all millionaires, while “the cake” was to
weigh three-quarters of a ton, each guest's grub to cost $500, and for
that breakfast the Neva had been ravished for fish and Siamese crags for
nests.
Frankl, however, was never destined to taste those five hundred dollar
mouthfuls. It happened in this way: as the _Boodah's_ searchlights,
destroyed in the battle, were not yet repaired, in the interval
some lawless ships took the chance on dark nights to skulk past with
extinguished lights; now, the captain of Frankl's chartered steamer
had that bright idea (being of adventurous turn), when night fell forty
knots east of the _Boodah_, so he came to Frankl, and broached the
scheme.
“Not for Joe”, was Frankl's answer: “pay the Pirate his taxes and be
done”.
“It could be worked as sweet as a nut, sir!” persisted the skipper, with
a watering mind.
“Well, so long us _you_ take the risk, perhaps--but no, sir, I'd rather
not”.
On which the skipper winked self-willed to himself, and, putting out
nine miles from the _Boodah_ his three lights, went dashing past.
And the attempt would have succeeded, had it not been for the fact that
the night was pitch-dark, and that _another_ ship was trying that very
venture with extinguished lights. And these two ships met, bow to bow,
with such an energy of adventurous smartness, that both sharply sank.
The sea, however, being smooth, all hands were saved; and now, since the
boats lay forlorn on the vast, with nothing but the _Boodah's_ swarm
of moons to move to, for the _Boodah_ they started, while Frankl cast
twinkling fingers to the sky, and cursed that night, as the oars with
slow wash journeyed through turgid murk toward the very den of the
devil.
When they reached the _Boodah_ they were conducted down to a
police-court, and there shivered an hour in a dreary light, till three
officials in peaked caps and frock-coats came, sat on a Bench, and,
after hearing evidence, pronounced sentence of seven months against the
captains, and one against Frankl.
These were led away by police blue-jackets, and Frankl groaned through
the night in a box as cold as the cells of Colmoor.
The next morning Quilter-Beckett, making a report in Hogarth's _salon_,
mentioned the incident, saying: “Here are the names, with the sentences;
I shall send the sailors home...” and Hogarth's eyes, resting on the
document, chanced to catch that name of Frankl.
At once he turned pale, for his first thought was: “Frankl must have
been going to the wedding, in which case _Someone Else_ may be with
him”.
But her name was not there....
He rose and paced; and he said low: “No one else on either of the
ships?”
“No, my Lord King”.
Then up lifted Hogarth's brow, alight with fun, and he muttered: “All
right, Caps-and-tassels”.
He said aloud: “Quilter-Beckett, this Frankl I know. Did you never hear
anything about Caps-and-tassels at Westring? _He_ is Caps-and-tassels.
Now tell me, which is your biggest blue-jacket?”
“Man called Young, my Lord King”.
“Then, have a suit of Young's sea-clothes put upon this Frankl, and
let him be brought before me in the Throne Room this morning after the
Audience. He was fond of liveries....”
Accordingly, by half-past eleven Frankl entered the Throne Room, where,
as soon as its rosy translucency broke upon his gaze, an “Oh!” of
admiration groaned from him, in spite of his weight of misery, he
not walking, but being lifted forward in successive swings by his
armpits--up the first steps to the outer circle of balustrade, forward
to the second steps and the inner balustrade, within which shone the
throne, and Hogarth, crowned and large in robes, on it.
The two warders, intent upon portering Frankl, and not noticing the cap
which still covered his eyebrows, one now in sudden scare whispered:
“Off with your cap, you...!” on which Frankl snatched it off, grasping
through superabundant sleeves, he at the same moment a fury and a
dazzled man, the throne before him incredible, like a dream which one
knows to be a dream, in structure not unlike the Peacock Throne of
Akbar, its length fourteen feet, seating thirteen persons in recesses,
standing on a gold platform with three concave steps set with rings
of sapphire, and consisting of a central part and two wings, the wings
being supported on twisted legs (one had been broken), and made of
fretted ivory mosaicked with cabochon emerald, ruby, topaz, turquoise,
chrysoberyl, diamond, opal, the large central part, with its recesses,
being also of ivory, gold-arabesqued, its mosque-shape canopy (of
Hindoo enamel-work on the outside) being supported by eleven pillars of
emerald; at the top of each pillar a dolphin (hence the name “Dolphin
Throne”) made of turquoise, jasper, pearl, sardius, and at the bottom of
each pillar a _guldusta_, or bouquet, of gems; the concave ceiling one
mass of stones, representing a sea in which sailed three Dutch galleons,
and seven dolphins sported.
But all that Frankl saw of it was its opulence: for his terror lest the
warders should let him go occupied his mind.
And precisely the thing which he feared came upon him, for Hogarth said:
“Warders, retire”.
And now Frankl, all unsupported, stood in unstable equilibrium, anon
stooping to his finger-tips, then straining doubtfully forward with
struggling arms from a too backward poise: for not only did the trousers
lie a twisted emptiness far below his feet, but the feet themselves
were lost in Young's boots, so he stood like Scaramouch, a mere sack,
a working of his chin wobbling down his beard, and there was a blaze in
his stare which Hogarth, unfortunately, did not well estimate.
They faced each other, alone, save for the body-guard at the
circumference of the room.
“Was it _you_ that sent me to Colmoor?” Hogarth suddenly asked in a low
voice, stooping forward.
“_Me_!” shrieked Baruch Frankl, pointing a hanging sleeve-end to his
breast: “as Jehovah is my witness--”
“Were you about to _swear_? For ever the same?--tyrant and worm? It
_was_ you. Now tell it me right out: you have nothing to fear: for you
cannot be vain enough to imagine that I would harbour enmity against
you”.
“It wasn't me, I say again, my Lord King!”--Frankl trampled a little
backward, then stooped over-poised to his finger-tips: “with what
motive? Oh, that's hard--to be accused. They have already given me
a month--my God! a month! And only because I am a Jew. But it wasn't
me--that I'll swear to God--”
Hogarth rose to his height, descended, put his hand upon Frankl's
shoulder. “Well, leave that. But--_my sister_!”
His hand felt the shoulder beneath it start like fits.
“Your sister!” Frankl screamed with a face of scare: “Why, what of her
now?”