The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

M >> M. P. Shiel >> The Lord of the Sea

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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
_attache,_, seeing fit to stroll round the Caserne Pepiniere, beheld
in the yard an extraordinary crowd of limbers: and, pitching into a
cab, from the nearest _postes et telegraphes_ 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 L900 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.

Of forty-three ships fixed, thirty-nine are hit, eleven founder:
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 _emeute_ 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, _levee_, 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 Praeceps, 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.

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