The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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Yet this stupendous ark, or citadel--so simple was its plan--would
be turned out in less time than a second-class cruiser; and its
cost, apart from yard-modifications and groundways, small in
proportion.

This, and much else, the spy reported: but the new fact was obvious
as the sun; the British and French Intelligence Departments, too,
were soon conning it; and a week later it was established that, not
one, but at least eleven, such structures were a-building in the
world.

There went the rumour: "It is the Government of Ecuador's order...."

This was at the end of April; Hogarth, obeying some instinct which
continually drew him toward Asia, then loitering alone in Trebizond
tea-gardens and bazaars, buying a braid-bag, mule-trapping, or
silver sword of the Khurdish cavaliers; while Trinity House gave the
alarm that if ever the steel monsters, whatever their object, were
launched, "they would constitute, in the absence of proper
precautions, a serious danger by night to the world's mercantile
marine ", and while Lloyd's, the Maritime Exchanges, the
Hydrographic Offices, lived in a species of amazement, and were
already putting the steel islands into the gazetteers and manuals;
the newspapers, too, inundated with the views of the public, took
sides, maintaining, some of them, that it was the part of
Governments to ascertain the objects of the new works, others that
any tampering with their progress at this late stage might even mean
revolution, so profound was their intimacy with industry. Hogarth,
meanwhile, having come to El Khiff, the camp of the Bedouin
pilgrims, there spent some days, and then, passing between Jerusalem
and Jericho in a caravan of Moabite sheiks, went visiting the holy
places of Israel, everywhere examining the country, especially its
agriculture, with great minuteness. It was only on his return to
Jerusalem that he heard of the agitation in Europe: and at once set
off Westward from Joppa.

From his arrival at Paris toward the end of May the wildest legends,
originated by him, began to be printed, the most persistent relating
to the diamond and banking House of Beech, which, it was given out,
had discovered diamonds within the crust of a Pacific rock-island:
the new structures, ordered by them, being designed to blast the
coast-wall with dynamite guns. Cavillers pointed out that diamonds
never occur in nature in this fashion, and that, even so, it did not
need a fort made of armour five feet thick to fire off dynamite
guns; but so continuously was the thing repeated, explained, and
puffed, that when the London manager of Beech partially admitted it,
the most incredulous acquiesced; though at the very same period it
was proclaimed that the President of the Ecuador Republic, Hogarth's
friend, had admitted to the Great Powers that the forts were to his
order (as, in fact, they nominally were); and anti-climax was
reached when a naval expert, asked to do a hurried article for the
Times, made some error in calculation, and came out with the
statement that the fort-things would sink of their own weight. This
article was headed "Beech's Folly"; and even when the error was
detected, the roar of merriment retained its momentum and rolled: so
that, to the hour of the first launch, the enterprise was commonly
referred to as "Beech's Folly", and scarf-pins, ink-stands, etc., in
the shape of the forts, were sold with that superscription: "Beech's
Folly".

This, translated into French, became that horrible gallicism: _la
betise Biche_.

Gradually, however, the Ecuador-Beech rage died down the hammers,
heard for nine days through the turmoil of the world, were again
drowned in it. The scarf-pins ceased to sell. The 'buses rolled, the
Bank cashed notes, the long street roared--and all was as usual.

Only, in the valley of Westring there was drill and target-practice
and barrack-life routine, the Westring-eccentricity being associated
with the millionaire, Hogarth, the island-eccentricity with the
House of Beech: and in the popular mind Beech and Hogarth were two
notions. Islands were building in Italy, France, Germany, Russia; in
England, Scotland, Ireland; at Maine, Baltimore, Newport News: but
the Governments, lacking the machinery, and also the initiative, and
judging to-morrow by yesterday, gave no sign from their Olympus.

In June, John Loveday being then at Westring, one morning O'Hara
arrived, he, too, having left mediaeval chasubles to grind at war,
and though he no longer taught Hogarth, a relation persisted between
them; and always not far from O'Hara was to be found Harris, living
now on the pinnacle of dandy bliss, twisting a dandy stick.

It was on the last night of this visit to Westring that O'Hara at a
late hour went with stealth and hesitations along a corridor of the
Hall, and finally tapped at Loveday's door, who, detesting the
priest, and reading in bed, disgustedly dashed off his cigarette
ash, as he called: "Come in".

And a long time they spoke of things other than the real object of
O'Hara's visit, till O'Hara said: "But--may I ask you something?"

"Do".

"Well, now, you are a fellow more in the counsels of Hogarth than
another. I want to ask you right out frankly--is it a fact that
Hogarth is choosing Admirals for the islands?"

"I believe it is", answered Loveday with his long-bow smile of
amusement: "I already know, for example, that Saltoun will admiral
the _Homer_ in the Indian Ocean, Vladimir the _Ruskin_ in the
Atlantic Crescent, and the young Marquis of Erroll the _Justice_ in
the Yellow Sea".

"Those all?"

"All I know of. I believe, however, that Hogarth is in the throes of
decision as to the rest".

"I see".

There was a silence full of Loveday's smile.

"But", said O'Hara, "what I meant is this: you know what I have been
to Hogarth; without me, what could the poor fellow have done, after
all? I have taught him to think, to dance, and to dine. Now, then, I
ask you right out frankly--am _I_, my son, in the list of Admirals?"

Loveday, flushing, started upright, and sank back. "No, I don't
fancy that your name is among those entertained, O'Hara".

"We will see about that. Woe to Hogarth, and to his advisers, if he
dare slight O'Hara, my son! What! after preparing myself with
toilsome zeal for this post? and after two promises from Hogarth's
own lips--?"

"I deny the promises on Hogarth's behalf".

"Oh, you! Hogarth looks upon you as a plaything. I do assure you,
you are not taken seriously, Mr. Loveday. How should such as you
know what Hogarth promises or designs? "--his cheeks trembling.

And, Loveday, smiling again, though pale: "Well, if we admit the
promises...but--have you accurately acquainted Hogarth with your
past, sir?"

"Most decidedly, sir!"

"If you have not, I think he should know it".

"Your threats do not affect me, sir! In three days I shall be in
Petersburg with Hogarth, and shall take a pleasure in writing you
the name of the island to which I am appointed".

"In three days I also--!" He stopped: but O'Hara understood.

Now the door rushed open, and in looked Harris in under-vest and
drawers, beneath his arm a bundle of walkingsticks, which he had
been caring and telling.

And "'Ere", he drawled, "when are you coming to 'ave that bit of
cold mutton? It's past twelve o'clock as it is".

"I am coming, boy", said O'Hara, rising with brisk obedience.

"Then, come, why don't you! There were shepherds watching their
pretty little flocks by night, but to leave a man watching the cold
animal is a bit out. Come along!"--and O'Hara went.

He reached Petersburg twelve hours before Loveday, his reason for
choosing that time being his knowledge that Frankl was in
Petersburg, and with him Rebekah, Frankl being in a deal with the
new-regime Minister of Finance.

For, as O'Hara had been asking himself the agonized question: "By
what absolute _finesse_ can I, _just now_, win Hogarth?" the mere
presence of Rebekah in the same city with Hogarth drew him thither.

But the next day, when Loveday came, nothing had been done--no
chance of _tete-a-tete_ with Hogarth: and that day was O'Hara an
anxious and tremulous man, living on the tip-toe and _qui vive_ of
lynx-eyed keenness.

The same night at a masque at the Palace of Peterhof Loveday got a
chance of dialogue with Hogarth, they seated amid greenery and
coloured gleams, Hogarth groomed to the glittering glass of his
shoes, his legs stretched, arm akimbo; and presently Loveday led the
talk to things of the sea. "What an extraordinary activity! The
British Government launches the _Peleus_ next Monday at Deptford--
the first 28,000-ton war-boat; and seven cruisers on the slips. Then
the French, Austro-German, Russian--"

"Ha!--I know. They won't build long".

"Still the confidence?"

"You can only ask, my dear boy, because you do not yet see what a
thing the battleship really is--much more than half a sham. The
march of invention is from the complex to the simple: for simplicity
is strength; but to the moment when I began to construct, naval
construction had not followed this law: for from the old smooth-
bores, aimed with tackle and quoin, to the present regime of
electric wires, you have had a continual advance in complexity--
always within the same little arc of thought--till now the most
complex of things is a battleship; and if you ask me which is the
weaker, a battleship or a watch, I answer a battleship--_weak_
meaning liability to the injuries which they were built to resist.
In such a case as that of the _Maine_, sunk at Havana, one might
fancy that the task of naval constructors is to turn out a thing to
sink with a minimum of trouble; and you remember the _Camperdown_
and _Victoria_, how, playing about together, one happened to touch
the other, when down plunged that other. These ships are a
compromise between three _motifs_--speed, resisting attack, and
attacking: and the first is so antagonistic to the second, and also
to the third, that the net result is almost a Nonentity, or No-
Thing. Nothing, in fact, could be more _queer_, unfounded, than
these ships; and the future will look back upon them with pity.
Hence the simple islands, following the law: and don't think t hat
their efficacy is a thing riskier than arithmetic itself"

"Good", went Loveday. "But, Richard--captain your islands with
decent men".

"You have something on your mind: what is it?"

"It is--delicate. Have I your permission to speak?"

"Why, John, yes".

"Well then--is O'Hara to be an Admiral?"

"Old Pat? Hardly, I think. He may. But no--I don't think. Poor old
talky-talky. He has worked hard for us, John: and his fund of
experience, in one way and another, has been invaluable. Well, I
don't know: I have had the idea, but I don't suppose that, in
reality--Still, I am fond of him, John. Such a tongue, and such a
versatile brain, is he! He was my comfort for many a sombre day in
prison--"

Listening near with rancid grin behind some greenery, O'Hara kept
nodding emphatic assents of satisfaction to Hogarth's praise.

"But, stop", said Loveday: "do you know why he was in prison?"

"He was innocent".

"Of what?"

"Of stealing some diamonds entrusted him by the Pope".

"Bah! he lies. His trial was a _cause celebre_, and hence the false
name he gave me at first: the moment I heard you say 'O'Hara' I knew
the man. He had committed an assault upon a lady in a train--"

"Beast that he is", went Hogarth, while O'Hara's eyes started from
his head: "and liar, too, it seems. Ha!--he gave me the most
circumstantial story. Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"It was delicate--"

"Beast that he is. Yet how complex is character! the man's
tenderness for his Church is so charming--"

"Fiddlesticks! Look here, Richard, I am come all the way from
Westring to tell you this thing. Don't you give vast powers to that
man: it isn't decent; and I have a feeling that it will be a baleful
piece of weakness. And don't get easy, and tolerant, and fat in the
eyes, Hogarth. That is a very significant Bible-story--the
implacable disaster sent upon old Eli for no greater crime than a
_bonhomme_ indolence. And in order to arouse your wrath against this
O'Hara, I am going now, against my will, to tell you something: the
name of that lady in that train".

"Someone whom I know?"

"Yes".

"Who?"

For a moment Loveday's answer hesitated: and in that moment, O'Hara,
with lightning decision, had his mouth at Hogarth's ear: "Come with
me quick--then fall down and worship me for a month! _Someone is in
the Malachite Hall!_"

Like sudden death Hogarth's colour fled his face; in another instant
he was a blind, oblivious wight...had known that she was in
Petersburg; but not that she was at the masque.

In a moment shrubbery, lights, all life, rushed into transformation
for him: and with an excitement of the eyes, the bloodshot left
looking bloodier, he went after O'Hara, tossing back at Loveday that
fatal saying: "_To-morrow_...."

A little previously O'Hara, having got from Frankl details of
Rebekah's dress, had spotted her in primrose silk, black mask and
domino, and soon with Hogarth refound her in the crush: whereas
Hogarth went about prospecting over the crowd, with that excitement
of his red-veined eyeballs, once even entered into talk with a group
of four diplomatists, but all the time with eyeballs absent in
hankering tracking, out prowling after one morbid form, as the
stallion's prowls after his Sally.

After an hour she said in French over her shoulder: "Why follow me?"

And as he bowed compliance, she added: "Are you well?"

He said: "Yes", and bowed, and she nodded twice, smiling a little,
as they parted.

He, on the wings of exaltation, made haste to salute the Throne and
leave the palace, rushing toward solitude to brood upon that smile,
those familiar nods, and the gentle "Are you well?"--in his landau
with him O'Hara, who persecuted him even to his bedroom; and when,
after an hour, the priest at last reappeared in a corridor, the
night-lights there shone upon an exultant visage, like a climber's
who, after long clamberings, at last stamps on the Matterhorn, and
looks abroad.

When he entered his own room, he stood with a hung head, till,
sharply looking up, he ejaculated with amazed, realization and
opening arms: "Well, it's done!--I've got it!" Now he put forefinger
to nose, and cut a beastly face at himself in the mirror-wall.

The next day Hogarth rather guiltily said to Loveday: "Well, I have
promised old O'Hara the _Mahomet_ for the Straits. Don't frown--I
owe him something, and the clever beast got over me in crazy
moment".

"Quite so", Loveday coldly said: and thenceforth, the thing being
done, was mum as to the name of the lady connected with O'Hara's
crime.

He returned immediately to England, having there many occupations,
which multiplied as the islands everywhere neared completion, the
first of the launches taking place at Spezzia on the 7th of
February.

A fortnight before this event the Beech-fever had revived, the
coming launch being no secret, and the doubt whether "Beech's Folly"
might be no folly, and the question what, on the whole, Beech's
Folly might really bode, filled once more the consciousness of the
Western world. By the 1st of February a drop was recorded in many
general securities, in "governments", rentes, and consols; in Berlin
the bank-rate rose one per cent.; it was stated that specie was
accumulating in European vaults; while up leapt futures-cotton in
the Liverpool market. At last the First Lord of the Treasury, in a
speech at Manchester, gave sign of the Government's consciousness of
the new fact, saying that he could only repeat the answer given by
the First Lord of the Admiralty to the recent Deputations of the
Chamber of Shipping and of Merchant Shippers, that Britain and the
other maritime nations would know how to protect the seas from any
nuisance. He anticipated no nuisance. The structures popularly known
as "Beech's Folly" (prolonged laughter) would be provided with
lighthouses: and until they proved a nuisance on the ocean's
fairways, the Governments must permit to private enterprise that
free hand which was the characteristic of our age; moreover, a
recognized Government had avowed its association with these
structures.

Nevertheless, the fever heightened. The light-system of the
_Boodah_, now included in the usual alphabetical lists of derelicts,
was conned by thousands of mariners, while in the crowded captains',
underwriters', and committee rooms at Lloyd's discussion buzzed and
speechified in every tone of gravity. Suddenly in the F. G. and S.
clause marine insurance underwent a profound modification; and it
was then that the millionaire, Schroeder, at that time a German
clerk in the City, managed to borrow five thousand pounds, and
quickly cleared his pile by underwriting on larger F. C. and S.
terms. And again raged the sale of the islands as penny salt-
cellars, finger-basins, etc.; in broker's and sub-editor's office
the tape-machine clicked the hourly progress of preparations at
Spezzia; while every by-street was dreadful with that music-hall
chorus:

"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 of _permessos_ for 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 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
_elite_ 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 Graefin, 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 deg. and East of long. 20 deg.: 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.

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