The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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"I am going in now to him", said Loveday: "if you care to wait here,
I will see"--and passing through a palace pretty busy that night
with feet and a thousand working purposes, went to sit at the sick
bed, the doctors retiring.

"How is the pain?"

"The pain", said the Regent very weakly, "is nonsense: I am not
going to be bullied by doctors, but shall do exactly as I like".

"And what is that, Richard?"

"There is a Normandy village, John, called Valee-les-Noisettes--
white houses with an extraordinary sound of forest about, one of
Poussin's landscapes, with a smithy under a chestnut precisely as in
the poem; and the blacksmith is a charming man. I dare say someone
will find me money enough to purchase a share of his smithy: and
with him I shall work, starting for him before sunrise, with my
sister".

Loveday, wondering if he was delirious, said irrelevantly: "I have
to tell you that by five A.M. there will be 15,000 additional
infantry in London, with--"

"Ah, I wish they'd lend them me to send out to those poor Jews,
John. But, for myself--I was mad when I gave that order. It won't
do! the world is addicted to its orbit, and relapses. I don't say
that it will be always so, but it is now. As against the Empire of
the Sea arises--Pat O'Hara; as against the brushing aside of these
rebels arise--Germany, Russia, the hostile world. Consider the
rancour of the nations at Britain's late advantages in sea-rent, try
to conceive the scream of jubilation that rings to the sky to-night
against her, and against me. Do you think I could _now_ start a
civil war in England? for the satisfaction of my own pride? I call
God to witness that never for my own pride have I done aught, but
that the Kingdom of God might come. I know that bitter tears will
flow at the fall of the righteous man--many calling me 'traitor' for
abandoning those ready to die for me. Yet it shall be. I never
thought to fail, to fly, John Loveday, chased by such little
fellows: but God has done it. Well, then, the smithy. You and all,
therefore, will find enough to do to-night".

Loveday lifted a face streaming with tears to say: "The man, O'Hara,
waits to see you".

"Really? Well, come, we will see him...." and in some minutes O'Hara
was there by the bedside, the eyes of the two fixed together, over
Hogarth's face five oblongs of sticking-plaster, his head bandaged,
and at a corner of O'Hara's mouth a twitching.

"Pat, did you betray me?" asked Hogarth.

O'Hara nodded: "Yes".

"Well, you may sit and tell me, and ease your poor heart".

And a long time O'Hara sat, going into the mighty crime, torturing
details, revelling in the vastness of the horror, the sickness of
the self-inflicted filth, and pangs of the self-inflicted scalpel.

"And why did you do it, my friend?"

"Because I worship you...."

"Well, perhaps I understand you, crooked soul. But what will you do
now?"

"We shall see. What will you?"

"I am going to France to live as a private person".

"Tut, you remain as simple as a child: the earth's not large enough
to contain you, you couldn't now remain a private person for three
weeks. Come, I have discrowned you: I will give you another crown,
though I shall never see you wear it. Why not go to your own
people?"

"Which people?"

"The Jews".

"Don't talk that same madness".

"My time with you is short, Raphael Spinoza"--O'Hara glanced at his
watch--"in five minutes we part, never, I do assure you, to meet
again. Listen, then, to me: you are a Jew. I knew your mother--the
most intellectual woman, I suppose, who ever drew breath, the only
one whom I have loved; and I should have known you merely from your
resemblance to her at my first glance at you in Colmoor, though I
had more precise data: the three moles, the bloodshot eye, for
didn't I baptize you? haven't I rocked you in my arms? You know St.
Hilda on the hill over Westring, which you found me examining that
morning after our escape from the prison? I was priest there, three
years, and twice I have confessed her--ah! and remember it! for when
your foster-father wanted her to turn Methodist, she wouldn't stand
that, and since she must needs be a _meshumad_ (apostate), became a
Catholic. Well, now, I once saw at Thring, and once in the _Boodah_,
an old goat-hair trunk of yours: what is become of it?"

"I have it--" Hogarth was shivering, his eyes wide, and in his
memory a strange singsong crooning of _t'hillim_, heard ages before
in some other world over a cradle.

"Did you know that that trunk has a false bottom?" asked O'Hara.

"Yes".

"Oh, you knew...And have you never seen a bundle of papers under
it?"

"Yes--I assumed them to be old farm-accounts...."

"They are all the proofs you need concerning your birth; it is _my_
trunk by the way--Ah, I must go!"

At the door he fastened upon Hogarth a last reluctant gaze to say
good-bye, but Hogarth, staring wildly afar, did not turn his eyes,
and O'Hara, with a sigh, was gone.

He drove to Adair Street, and, as he passed by a mews, Frankl,
waiting there with two detectives, saw him by a street-light, but
made no remark.

When O'Hara entered the house, he looked about for Harris, but
Harris had gone to the lodging of a woman in James Street near, to
arrange a hiding-place for the bag, passing out through the Market
Street house; and O'Hara, opening the two locked doors, entered the
safe-room, where he stood waiting, his forehead low, resting on the
steel top; and now a sob throbbed through his frame, and his lips
let out "..._so lovely...so great_...."

Count a minute's stillness: and now the man's soul and being
foundered in a storm of sorrow, and half-words borne on shivering
puffs of breath, and choking groans, broke the stillness: "My Liege!
Richard! my King!"

This died to silence; and now he roamed the room with furious steps,
and lowering brow, and an out-pushed under-lip, until, deciding, he
drew from his pocket a penknife, opened it, leant now one elbow on
the safe-top, blade in hand, considered, considered, hesitating,
then with lifted chin and the thinnest whimpering like a puppy,
pretty pitiful, cut from under his left ear to the chin.

Certainly a hurt so shallow could never have killed, for the hand
had been cherishingly restrained, and the thing was no sooner done
than the priest, seeing that he did not die, ran horror-eyed,
streaming with blood, shouting a hoarse whisper: "Help! help! help!"

But at that cry he sighed, fell back, and effectually died, his
heart pierced by the knife of Harris.

And some moments later the face of Frankl, who bore a candle, looked
in at the door.

"Is that all right, Alfie?"--in the weakest whisper.

"Come on in, and don't ask any questions", said Harris.

Frankl entered, peered upon the dead visage of the priest; then, the
detectives being now behind the parlour-door below, with handcuffs,
rose to run to summon them: but, to his horror, Harris was now
before the door; he saw in the candlelight those eyes of Alfie fixed
upon him: and he knew: before the least threat or movement by
Harris, the Jew sent to Heaven a piercing shriek, his hour come....

"...dirty-livered Jew..." striking in the breast, and, as Frankl
fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with "Down, down to hell,
and sye _I_ sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one
in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it _is_": all in two
seconds' space; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl,
when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning
motionlessness--the Reality before him.

And instantly on the realization of that fact, he was submissive,
reverent, as before the very Helmet of Pallas, goddess of Blue; and
said he with sullen dejection, reverent of the Helmet, but easy with
the man: "All right: you've beat me...I suppose it's that Regent-
stabbing affair brought you: it was I did it all right".

When they went down, almost from the door a crowd gathered, pressing
close, Harris' hands and front all red from O'Hara's throat; and
when one policeman, big with the fact, whispered a gentleman: "You
may have heard, sir, that the Regent was stabbed to-day--it's been
kept precious dark, but the fact's so: this is the beauty as done
it", like loosened effluvia that news flew--but distorted, largened--
the stains were Regent's blood!--and beyond measure had the crowd
spread ere it reached the Edgware Road.

There at the corner, as the officers looked about for a cab, and one
blew a whistle, a man reached out and fiercely struck Harris on the
face, while another shouted: "Lynch the beggar!"; and now arose a
hustling, huddled impulses, and now in full vogue that grave noising
of congregations when the voice of God jogs them; while Harris,
excessively pallid, handcuffed, began to whistle; a number of other
police now seeking the crowd's centre, but with difficulty; a cab,
too, slowly making a way which closed like water round it: and when
this had nearly reached him, Harris, in his eagerness to get in,
sprang far toward it--and slipped. He never rose again: the crowd
rolled over his last howl, and in the midst of a great row as of
hounds, trampled him to a paste.

About that very time that better man whom he had stabbed, in tying
up in bed a bundle of old papers, was saying: "Yes, I will go to my
people"....

And by six A.M. he was up, in his study, dressed, looking quite
owlish with his excess of eyes, which, however, danced at the first
news of the morning--the arrival at Portsmouth of the _Boodah II_.,
which had raced like a carrier-bird since 8.30 P.M. of the 29th,
full of the news of the vanished _Mahomet_: on her being 200
marines.

After that he spoke through the telephone with various Government-
offices, early astir that morning, till the Private Secretary looked
in with the announcement that his train would be ready in ten
minutes.

His last act in the Palace was the sending to the Treasurer at
Jerusalem, for Miss Frankl, the telegram:

"Be surprised, but believe: I am a Jew."
"RICHARD".

Of the Household some fifty, catching wind of what was toward,
offered, even begged, to go with him; but in general he refused, and
set out with a suite of only seven.

They reached Hastings at twenty minutes to ten, where, to the
disgust of all, the region of Central Station was found crowded;
whereupon Sir Francis Yeames held a consultation with a local
rector, and a dash was made to a private hotel near the pier.

There, looking from behind window curtains at eleven, Hogarth saw
before a paper-shop:

FLIGHT OF THE REGENT

A minute afterwards he started backward from the splintered window.

Everything was known:

LIFE-HISTORY OF THE CONVICT HOGARTH MARVELLOUS DETAILS

The street, to its two vanishing-points, was one scene of hats,
mixed with upturned faces: and it was an aggressive crowd that gave
out a sound.

Not till noon did the _Boodah II._ arrive; and then there was no
setting out--all the front windows of the house now broken, and in
the town a row like the feeding-time of lions, which uttered
"coward", "murderer", "convict", "traitor". Hogarth had been put to
bed, the two ladies were in a state of scare, Margaret anon crying
on Loveday's shoulder, declaring that "_He_" (meaning Frankl) was in
the crowd, and coming, coming, boring his way: she had seen him.

At last, near four P.M., a portion of the yard-wall at the back was
broken down by the party, Hogarth was raised and dressed, and
through the breach the party passed into another back-yard, then
made beachward, Hogarth leaning on the arm of Sir Martin Phipps; but
they had no sooner come to the Esplanade than they were surrounded,
and when, on their attaining the pier, the pier-turnstile was closed
against the mob, it was impossible to conceive whence so many
missiles came. Once Hogarth stopped, faced round, looked at them,
but now a pebble bruised his left temple, and he dropped, fainting.

Caught up by Sir Martin, Loveday, Sir Francis Yeames, and Colonel
Lord Hallett of the body-guard, he was hurried, a hanging concave
with abandoned head, to the long-waiting boat, and it was in a
scurry of escape, out of stroke, that the oarsmen rowed away.

Yonder lay the yacht with her fires banked, and was soon under
weigh.

She had started, when a harbour-master's motor-boat was observed
giving chase, in her an officer from Scotland Yard who bore a bag,
found by means of the key in Frankl's pocket in the Adair Street
safe; on its clasp the name "Mahomet", and it contained L850,000: so
that the yacht went wealthy on her way.

LI

THE MODEL

The voyage to Palestine was marked by two events: one the stoppage
at Tarifa, where the five hundred from the _Mahomet_ were, these,
when taken on board the _Boodah II._, making an armed force of 700;
and then, toward sunset of the fifth day, a steamer exchanged
signals with the _Boodah II._, enquired after the whereabouts of the
Lord of the Sea, received the reply "on board", and when she stopped
it turned out that she had on board a Jewish Petition urging upon
Spinoza to come and throw in his lot with them. And here again was
that name of Rebekah, spelled now Ribkah.

For the news of his fall--the fact that he was a Jew--had created a
mighty stirring in Israel, of wonder, of the pride of race.

By the seventh day the yacht was off the Palestine coast, and Joppa,
seated on her cliffs, appeared over a foaming roadstead. But when a
landing was effected, they were to hear that there had been a
collision on the Jerusalem-Joppa railway, the line blocked, travel
suspended; so, as the filthy town was congested, the Royal party
took refuge in a great restaurant-tent, set up by a Polish Jew in
gaberdine and fur cap, who vociferated invitation at the door. All
was mud, beggary, narrowness, chaos, picturesque woe. Yet work had
commenced: between the upper and the nether millstone a woman ground
corn at a doorway; the camel passed loaded; the dragoman went with
quicker step. In the afternoon Spinoza, wandering beyond the
outskirts of the town, saw in an orange-grove, sitting before a
roofless hut, six diligent two-handed Jews exhaustively drawing the
cord of the cobbler; further still, and saw what could only have
been a Petticoat-Lane Jew ploughing with a little cow and a camel:
and he smiled, thanking God, and taking courage--had always loved
this land.

The next morning he procured a number of clumsy waggons, with
horses, asses, camels, and provisions; and his caravan set out, to
travel all day over a plain, a "goodly land," the almond-tree in
blossom, orange and olive, everywhere lilies, the scarlet anemone,
he considering himself so familiar with the way, that he was their
only guide, though the morning was misty; and through the plain of
Sharon they wended over the worst roads in existence, until, passing
into a country of rocks, they made out afar the mountains of Judaea,
whose patches of white stone look like snow in sunshine, on the
roads streams of wayfarers, tending all eastward to Jerusalem, lines
of camels and waggons, pedestrians with wine-skins, mother and
sucking child on the solitary ass, and the Bedouin troop; but
Spinoza was all solitary among fastnesses on the third forenoon when
he muttered nervously: "I must certainly have lost the way".

Thereupon he called halt, and the caravan turned back to re-find the
road, Spinoza prying on camel-back foremost, clad now in the caftan
and white robes of the Orient.

But all day the caravan wandered out of the track in a white sea of
mist: no farmstead, nor cot, but the wild vine, and the wild fig,
and twice a telegraph-tree, still with its bark on, and the
abandoned hold of a bandit-sheik. Finally, near six P.M., Spinoza,
finding himself in a valley-bottom, sent out the order to pitch
camp: upon which the tents were fixed near a brook, waggons grouped
around, and animals picketed to grass. Spinoza, the two ladies, and
Loveday, then ate together at the door of one tent; after which he
rose and strolled away, thinking how best to handle this crab of
Israel.

He noticed that the mist was lifting a little; and suddenly, as he
strolled, he stood still, listening: for remote tones of singing or
mourning seemed to meet his ear--from the west: and in some moments
more he saw the Mount of Olives--to the west, not, as he believed
that it must be, to the east, he having, in fact, in losing his way
from the coast, passed by Jerusalem to the north; and on the other
side of the Mount of Olives, from its foot to the Brook Kedron,
spread at that moment over the Valley of Jehosophat an innumerable
multitude, covered in praying-shawls, many prostrate, many with the
keen and stressful face of supplication lifted in appeal to God,
that He would visit His people, and turn again in this latter day to
His lost and helpless flock. Every child of Israel who could
contrive it, at whatever cost, was there, since it was the
prophesied day of--"the Coming".

But a bold woman, summoning her fainting strength, bracing her
trembling knee, stepped a little up the hillside to fling high her
hand as a sign--Rebecca Frankl, celebrated now through Israel as the
elect of the sibyl Estrella; and at that signal the congregation,
gazing keenly into heaven, lifted up their voice in meek song,
singing the sibyl's "Hymn to the Messiah":

"The oceans trudge and tire their soul, desiring Thee; and night-
winds homeless roam with dole, reproaching Thee; the clouds aspire,
and find no goal, and gush for Thee, reproaching Thee."

"Thou scrawled'st 'I mean' in rocks and men, in trends and streams;
the prophets raved, to sages' ken Thou shewed'st dreams; Thou
shrouded'st dark the How and When in starry schemes, and trends and
streams."

"The jungles blare, the glebe-lands low and bleat for Thee; the
generations rage and go, agaze for Thee; creation travaileth in woe,
with groans for Thee, agaze for Thee."

"Adonai, come! with crashing rote of chariots come; or moonlight-
mild, alone, afloat, Messussah, come; with floods of lutes, or
thundering throat, but come! O, come! Messussah come."

"The Arctics hawk-up their haunted heart, and raucous, spue; and
north-winds, wawling calls, outstart, to droop anew; the clouds like
scouts updart, depart, and truceless do, and droop anew."

"How long! They breeds have waited fain what sibyls ween; Thou
scribbled'st in their secret brain 'I scheme; I mean'; the
constellations stray and strain: Break out! be seen what sibyls
ween".

"The pampas stamp and, nomad, low, reposeless, lone; raging the
generations trow, and drudge, and drown; a anguished glance this
latter woe throws to Thy Throne, reposeless, lone"...

Before them, above them, as they sang stood--a man.

Hard by a wall of that Moslem mosque, once a chapel which marked the
supposed spot of "the Ascension", he stood, in an attitude of
suspense, astonishment, his body half-twisted--Spinoza.

An instant, and he was aware of Jerusalem lying "as a city that is
compact" before him--not to the east--to the west! Yet another
instant, and he realized that the whole tract of humanity--man,
woman, child--was on its face before him.

A faintness overcame him, shame, dismay; then, his blood now rushing
to his brow, his mouth sent out the passionate shout:

"Not to _me!_ Not to _me! I am the Lord of the Sea....!_"

But when the people heard this, saw him, knew him, they remained in
adoration....

By a special ship they had sent him a petition to come; here he was
weeks sooner than ship or airship could have conveyed him: and they
took him as the answer to their supplication, the answer which
Heaven willed, in the sure and certain faith that he would cure
their ache, and the ache of the world.

An acclamation like the voice of many waters arose and rolled below
him, and on the bosom of that tumult he moved among them into the
Holy City, as darkness covered all.

* * * * * * *

He took the title of Shophet, or Judge, and for sixty years ruled
over Israel.

It has been said that the initial "pull" over other nations
possessed by Israel (in respect of the sea-forts remaining in the
Gulf of Aden, Yellow Sea, Western Pacific) was the cause of his rise
as of some thrice-ardent Star of the Morning and asterisk dancing in
the dawn's dark: for the other nations, timorous of one another,
made never an attempt to build; but, for our share, we insist that
anyway Judaea was bound to become what she became--indeed, sea-rent
after the Regency collapse was decreased at the three forts, and
suddenly in the twelfth year of his judgeship Spinoza ordered its
stoppage.

By which period the University of Jerusalem had become the chief
nerve-centre of the world's research and upward effort: for in
creating a "civilized State"--"proud and happy"--Spinoza did it with
that spinning rapidity of the modernization of Japan, so that in
whatever respects it was not a question of months, it was a question
of not many years.

For, as in the soul of the Jewish people abode as before that genius
for righteousness which wrote the Bible, and as the soul of
righteousness lies even in this; Thou shalt not steal, therefore
Israel with some little pain attained to this: whereupon with
startling emphasis was brought to pass that statement:
"Righteousness exalteth a nation".

For the promise says: "I will put a new spirit within them"; and
this--very rapidly--found fulfilment.

Whereupon others fast, faster, found fulfilment, so that a stale and
bitter word was in Pall Mall, saying: "The lot of them seem to have
formed themselves into a syndicate to run the prophecies".

Again the promise has it: "I shall be with them"; and again: "They
shall be a cleansed nation"; and again: "They shall fear Him".

The transformation was rapid for the reason that it was natural,
seeing that it had been Europe only that, like a Circe, had
bewitched them into beastial shapes, "sharks", and "bulls", and
"bears", mediaeval Jews, for example, having been debarred from every
pursuit save commerce: so that Shylock was obliged to turn into a
Venetian; and, in ceasing to be a Hebrew, became more Venetian than
the Venetians, for the reason that he had more brains, ready to beat
them at any game they cared to mention; but the genuine self of
Shylock was a vine-dresser or sandal-maker, as Hillel was a wood-
chopper, David a shepherd, Amos a fig-gatherer, Saul an ass-driver,
Rabbi Ben Zakkai a sail-maker, Paul a tent-maker: so that the return
to simplicity and honesty was quickly accomplished.

And now, that done, behold a wonder: at the whirling of a wand the
swine of Circe converted back to biped man; whereupon without fail
whatsoever he does it shall astonishingly prosper: that succession
of wits, seers, savants, Heines, Einsteins, inspired mouths, pens of
iridium, brushes from the archangel's plumage, discoveries, new
Americas, elations, sensations--in therapeutics--in aero-nautics-
beyond-the-atmosphere--in the powers involved in sub-atoms--in the
powers, latent till now, involved in soul...for now each of
millions was free to think, free to manifest his own particular luck
and knack in discovery, having a country, foothold, not hovering
like Noah's dove, urging still the purposeless wing not to pitch
into nowhere: for the promise says: "Ye shall not sow and another
reap, ye shall not plant and another garner", but in a land of
gentlemen ye shall live, as it were to swellings of music, while a
noble height grows upon your smooth foreheads, and the sum-total of
the blending movements of your bodies and brains shall, as seen from
heaven, appear the minuet of a people.

Within forty years mighty works had been done: forts, irrigation of
deserts, reclamation of the Dead Sea, passionate temples clapped to
the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of
the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the
country would draw multitudes of foreigners to gape at so great
pomp, at Corinthian cities full of grace and riches which had arisen
to crown with many crowns that plain of Mesopotamia, and where
desolate Tyre had mourned her purples, and old Tadmor in the
Wilderness (Palmyra) had sat in dirt; to gape, too, at a Jerusalem
which in twenty years had crossed the Valley of Jehosophat, and
might really then be called "the Golden", a purged Babylon, a London
burnt to ashes and rebuilt somewhere else: for the Shophet proved
true Duke and Leader, born mountaineer, climbing from pinnacle to
wild pinnacle, becking his people after him with many a meaningful
gesture skyward and suggesting smile; and Israel followed his
thrilling way, hearing always the Excelsior of his calling as it
were the voice direct of Heaven. What no merits of his could give,
the land which he had chosen gave, Mesopotamia pretty soon proving
herself a treasury of mineral riches: here is bdellium and the onyx-
stone; and where the streaming Pison, dawdling, draws his twine of
waters over that happy valley of Havilah, there is gold--hoard
stored from before the Eozoic, as misers bury for their heirs, in
mine and friable quarry, rollick rain: "and the gold of _that_ land
is good".

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