The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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"You jest," Hogarth answered; "if I had the chance of escape, I
should never take it. I am here by due legal process".

"Tut, if I say that you will escape, it is not because I am a
prophet, but a man of the world, and know what happens in it".

Converse with this deep, world-wise, and fluent man had now become
to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those
grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of the
cobra's.

That day, a Saturday, outdoor gangs were recalled early, to "clean
up" for Sunday, and out across the heath rang the great bell,
Colmoor being famous for its bell, its tone and great size, larger
than even the eight-ton "Mighty Tom" of Christ Church, for though
its thickness was only six inches, it weighed, bell and clapper, ten
tons, and was seven feet high and seven in diameter.

A busy Saturday afternoon ensued, and whatsoever Hogarth's hand
found to do he did it with his might, though his face now seemed all
eyes--brown, bloodshot, imperially large, morbidly staring.

He was giving the finishing touches of order to his wooden spoon and
salt-cellar, his tin knife, plate, and pint cup for gruel, when a
Warder Jennings peeped in with, "No. 76--you are to follow the
assistant warder at once", and Hogarth descended to an ante-room
where an official handed him a letter, which had been read and
initialed by governor and chaplain.

An event!--a letter in Colmoor, like a shark's fin on the voyages of
old sailing ships.

It was from Loveday, and concluded with a reference to Hogarth's
"poor old grandmother".

So Hogarth, who had no "grandmother", propped his forehead to ponder
that thing; and presently said: "Oh, it is a cypher".

And by noting little peculiarities in the shapes of the letters, a
double cross to a t, a q like a g, etc., he soon had "flemecops-
leftquary"--which he took to mean: "flee to me in the copse to the
left of the quarry".

He smiled with tenderness at the dear heart planning and daring so
very much for him. But in his smile was a touch of disdain also, he
not intending to "flee".

XV

MONSIGNOR

Hogarth's first thought, as getting-up bell clattered reveille
through the gallery, was of Loveday's cypher, and by the time the
warder came to ask if he would see governor or doctor, a thought of
Monsignor O'Hara had somehow mixed itself with the thought of the
cypher; when an orderly handed in the day's brown loaf, he was
thinking, "Strange that he never told me what he has done"; eating
his pint of gruel, he thought: "If I will not escape myself, I might
perhaps let another."

"What!" said O'Hara on the march out, "you still here?"

"Where should I be?" answered Hogarth, dull and sullen.

"Where palaces stand open for you, and bank-notes--have you ever
realized something very charming in the Helen pallor of a bank-note,
Hogarth? And gold-yellow, sparkling gold! Hogarth, I--_love_ gold!
It is a confession--"

"Is it that love which brought you here?" Hogarth asked with his
sideward stare.

Whereupon the priest turned a cold gaze upon him--had regarded
Hogarth as a well-bred man, or would hardly have conversed with him.

"I had a motive for asking", said Hogarth, eyeing the face of the
prelate--a man of very coarse feature; a small head, made to receive
the tonsure, with a low brow; a stern bottom lip, and long upper; a
fat neck held majestically erect; and up stuck his double chin. In
profile, the part between the sharp edge of the bottom lip and the
chin-tip was divided, down near the chin tip, by an angle and
crease; and the lower face seemed too massive for the size of the
head.

Nothing could be more exquisite than the contrast between his air of
force, authority and importance, and the knickerbockers, the coarse
cap, the canvas slop-jacket, which he wore.

Outwardly calm, he was yet very excited by that "I had a motive"; he
said to himself: "Suppose this man has some plan! He could invent
ten, if he only knew it. And suppose he would tell me it, if I make
him believe me innocent! It would be like him!"

When the eleven o'clock dinner-bell rang, and they two were again
together, O'Hara said: "Hogarth, I have for some time been intending
to give you my story. Have I in your eyes the air of a guilty man?"

"God knows," answered Hogarth, with a shrug; "you talk nicely, and
you know much".

"So much for the hollowness of friendship!"

"Don't be sentimental", said Hogarth: "I never pretended to be any
friend of yours; but I do respect your talents, do pity your misery:
and if I knew the solid facts of, as you have said, your
'innocence', I might--"

"_What_?" whispered O'Hara with a thievish, fierce glance.

"Help you".

"_In God's truth?_"

"I might".

O'Hara said: "I don't find it so cold as it was this morning. You
must have observed a certain peculiarity of moorland climates--the
same being true of the Roman Campagna, and of Irish peat-lands--that
they are colder than elsewhere in the absence of the sun, and warmer
in its presence. This afternoon--_I will tell you_--"

They had reached the great gates, and were marched to parade-ground
for the second of the four daily searches; then, after three ounces
of fat mutton and forty minutes' rest, the third search, the second
march-out.

And immediately beyond the gates O'Hara began: "In order to paint
you my life, Hogarth, I must give you at once to understand what has
been its mainspring and secret: my passion for my Church--"

He paused, while his lips moved in prayer, and he crossed himself.

"From boyhood my dream was to see my Church supreme in the warfare
of the world, I being a King's College and Maynooth man, at twenty-
three was Senior Chancellor's Medallist, and seven years later, sent
to Rome was quickly received into the Vatican household. It was
recognized that I had a future: both gifts and graces; piety; a
versatile tongue; a powerful voice; some learning; could dine, I
could look august; above all, I knew my man and could talk him over.
My great day came when, one morning, in St. Gregory the Great on
Mount Coelius, I was consecrated Bishop Coadjutor to his Eminence
the Archbishop of Westminster. Now I was on the heights. My life
during the next ten years was a life of bustling action--and was led
always with one unselfish object. No man ever spoke a greater number
of words than I, Hogarth. I have breakfasted with the Prime
Minister, lunched with a President of the Conference, and dined with
the Bishop of London: between the three meals I have written a
hundred letters and pitched into ten cabs. Such a life is very
exhilarating, in comparison, for example, with quarrying. Oh, my God
what am I fallen! Most of that time I was running over Europe: from
Madrid to Vienna, from Rouen to Rome. It happened that the
Archbishop of Paris was organizing a scheme of Church-workhouses in
France, in the absence of municipal ones, such as we have here....
Well, it was a grand thing, but was falling through for lack of
funds: so I, on my way to Rome, undertook the mission to plead the
cause before his Holiness, and succeeded to this extent that, on my
return, I had with me a casket from the good old man containing
seven diamonds, which I might either dispose of personally, or hand
over to the Paris fund. Now, it was during my stay at Rome that that
series of events, culminating in the Jewish exodus from Europe,
occurred; and on my journey home I was seized with the mighty
thought that, since many of the Jews were perishing of want, _that_
was the moment to reach their spirit through the body, and add their
race to the trophies of the Church. Was it not a thought? You
yourself, who are a Jew--"

Hogarth's eyes opened in surprise."_I_ am not a Jew ".

"No? I should have said that there was a hint of expression
somewhere--But to resume. I retained those seven diamonds, and
disposed of them".

"Honest behaviour!"

"Perfectly honest! I acquainted the Pope--he sanctioned it! And now,
I, single-handed almost, threw myself into that task. I hired, I
built, I begged, I borrowed, I formed committees, I haunted
Religious Houses, I sweated, I ran, I wept, I visited dens, I smoked
opium, I drank gin, I framed memorials, I learned Yiddish, I read
the Mishna and Gemara, I interviewed Rabbonim, I wrote tracts: I was
busy. In the midst of it, I had to visit Rome ceremoniously, to
assist at an interview between the Duke of York and his Holiness--
arrived on the Monday, and on the Wednesday, I remember, attended a
Court Ball in the suite of his Royal Highness. That night, when I
returned to the Vatican, I found all the Piazza di San Pietro
crowded. I do not know if you were free at the time when my friend,
M. Tissot, startled everybody by predicting the collision of an
asteroid with the earth? Tut, the silly being--he should have known
from the body's response to the spectroscope that its condition was
too friable to resist our atmosphere. But I never yet knew an
astronomer not imbued with sensationalism they acquire a certain
megalomania from their intercourse with space. But, at all events,
the people, dreading the destruction of everything, had crowded
toward the Vatican. The Duke of Genoa, I, and some of the College of
Cardinals, stood watching from a balcony; and very imposing, I
remember, was the moment when a glare appeared--I must stop--"

They were at the face of the rock, and the "halt" and "set to work"
parted them.

But again on the final march back at 5.15 when nightshades were
falling fast like snow, and the arm now felt the pick a load, O'Hara
began his muttering:

"I was telling you about the asteroid", he said. "Now this body, it
was given out, contained diamonds in large evidence, and the mere
thought of such a thing bursting in mid-air, and scattering itself
about was, I--I confess, a little fascinating to my mind. A man
might let his soul gloat upon such a hope till he went lunatic with
lust! I--I confess, the thought was alluring to me. Diamond, my son:
lucid--But when the body burst, and none of it came my way, I drove
it from my mind: in fact, I never heard of a trace of it having been
seen--hissed itself into gases in mid-air. Except in one instance--
one instance.

"When I reached Calais on my homeward way, stopped there a day,
awaiting the coming of Rouen, for whom I had nuncio communications,
and in the evening went to visit a cottage where I had once been a
great favourite with an old fellow called Sante-you know those
Calais fishers, with painted sabots, and ochred trousers. And
'What!' said I to Sante, 'the nets already spread at this hour?'
'Nothing to be done to-day, my Father', he answered, and explained
that he had attempted to pick up a stone before his door, and--it
had burned him: he showed it me: it had the appearance of a piece of
ferruginous rock, stuck with pieces of dirty glass; and it had
burned Sante on the midnight of the asteroid's scattering.

"Imagine my excitement: 'The asteroid', I thought, 'may add fifty
thousand Jews to the Church'. I asked Sante for the stone--Do you
blame me?"

"Go on," said Hogarth.

"That day two months I had the diamonds lying polished in a casket
in my house. My evil destiny, Hogarth, ordained that the casket was
the one given me for Paris by the Pope, the number of the new
diamonds the same--seven: and one day, about that time, the Vatican
organ, the _Osservatore Romano_, published a dreadful article,
hinting that I had applied to my own purposes seven diamonds
entrusted me for Paris: the Pope, just dead, must have left some
record of his gift. My friend, before I had heard a whisper of the
attack upon me, the casket, whose lid was mosaicked with the Papal
fanon, was secretly searched by a secretary in my house: the seven
diamonds were seen.

"Imagine the horror of what followed: I was abandoned by all--
superior and inferior; the story of the meteor was received with
sneers. The scandal reached the public papers--the public
prosecutor. And here now is the wretch, Patrick O'Hara."

The latter part of this narrative was fiction! The Pope's diamonds
O'Hara had duly handed to the Archbishop! and though there was such
a man as Sante, no asteroid had ever fallen at his door. In fact,
O'Hara was "serving time" for an assault upon a lady in a railway
compartment between Whitchurch and Salisbury.

But Hogarth spent that night in meditating the pros and cons as to
O'Hara's escaping; and, in a moment of destiny, said at last: "If he
is undeservedly doomed--" and swooned to sleep.

The very next day was foggy....

On the march out O'Hara said: "Here is something like a fog. On the
Carinthian Alps, where you have dense woolly fogs, there is a race
of goats, which--"

"Would you like to escape?" whispered Hogarth.

"_Who?_"

"You".

"Hogarth--! My God--!"

A trembling seized the priest's leathery left cheek, he at that
instant seeing a vision of the world--Andalusian wines, hued ices,
the opera-house, and great greyhounds of the sea, and a snuff which
his gross nose loved at Gorey.

"Hogarth, you are not mocking me?" chattered the priest's jaws,
hurrying like a jarred spring.

"I am quite serious. You will have to run for it though".

"_Run!_ I am not such a young man! Have pity Hogarth".

"Bah! Be a man".

The priest approached his mouth to Hogarth's ear: "_I should die of
fright!_ My heart--"

"What would it matter? I thought you had more beans".

"But have you--a plan?"

"Yes. You must run to the copse--"

"I shall be shot!"

"Probably".

"I _could_ not--"

"Then, do not".

"Tell me, boy! Tell me, Hogarth..."

"Within the copse to the left of the quarry there is almost
certainly at this moment waiting a man who, as soon as you pronounce
my name, will help you--"

"You say _almost_ certainly".

"I can't see him, O'Hara. But I should say he is there on a morning
like this".

"_What_ a risk! _What_ a risk!" went the priest with lifted eyelids
each time.

"You cannot escape from prison without risk. But I, personally,
would venture upon ten times as much, if I thought it becoming.
There is, however, another risk: that you may not strike the part of
the copse where he is. But near the 1 middle it is high--"

"Why, it is nothing but risks!" whined O'Hara with opening arms.

"You are not bound to try it. By the way--can you swim?"

"Yes--I suppose so--yes".

"Then lift yourself to it, and risk it. I should, if I were you.
Think of liberty, activity. Prick your spirit, grip at it, and
spring it".

"Do you think I shall be shot?"

"No! It does not matter! Crush your doubts, martyr yourself to your
aim, and your aim will give you the crown of martyrdom".

"Well--God reward you--I will think of it--"

"_Do_ it!"

"I will!"

"In that case, don't trust to your own eyes--_I_ will give you the
signal with my handkerchief--so: you keep your eyes fixed on me.
Then run, zigzagging. And tell Loveday for me to look after you,
and not make any more plans for me. Good-bye, O'Hara! All this is
very unselfish of me, for I lose my old talky-talky O'Hara--"

They parted at the rock, and set to work.

As minutes, half-hours passed, the condition of O'Hara became
piteous, hideous. His knees knocked together. Like death he dreaded,
like life awaited, that signal. He said to himself: "This Hogarth
will be my ruin...God deal not with me after my sins...!"

Hogarth was waiting that the warders' morning watchfulness might
yield to the influence of use and time; but near nine, when the
morning fog showed signs of thinning, he approached the water-can to
ask for a drink, O'Hara being then two yards from him, wheeling a
barrow.

As he stooped to the water, his huge stare ranged the moor, took in
the truth of it, and, after waiting ten, fifteen seconds, he upset
the can. As two officers, at the outcry, ran toward the spot,
Hogarth, his eyes fixed upon them, waited--and all at once, with a
flourish, drew his handkerchief.

O'Hara, with a heavy but impassioned run, was away...

He had not run five yards when a chorus of whistles was shrilling.

And quick, that monotony reels into a very frenzy of sensation: it
is no more the same world, the same men. Lo, in the Palace of
Continuity is an Event.

33 was off.

Five hundred pairs of eyes lit up, and the flurried warders ran in
random dismay to see to it! How if all the five hundred should do
the like, simultaneously?--a possibility underlying, through all its
breadth, the little social "system" which has produced Colmoor.

But the five hundred, exhorted, stamped at, shouted at, remained
quiet, though restive, only the wild eye showing the wild thought,
while two of the warders pursued O'Hara who had also to run the
blockade of two pickets of the civil guard.

The escaping convict, however, has this advantage: that his mind is
strung to a far higher pitch than his pursuers'; and, given a
certain ecstasy, everything can be accomplished.

So O'Hara separately dodged the two pickets, and was making bolt for
the copse before three rifles, aimed at a large vague ghost, rang
out, and did not hit. He plunged madly into the brambly bush.

Immediately a bleating like a child's trumpet was heard from its
midst; and in a few seconds, not one, but _four_, men were seen to
rush toward the river, all in convict knickerbockers, stockings,
caps, all in black overcoats: and one carried a bundle.

Beyond the river one was shot in the leg--a black sailor, who, with
two roughs, had undertaken the risk for lucre. The rest escaped.

XVI

THE ROPE

Soon after this Hogarth was taken with vomitings, his heart retching
at Colmoor. His dark cheeks jaundiced; those mobile nostrils of his
small bony nose yawned, like an exhausted horse's; his face was all
a light of eyes.

Whether or not some suspicion of his complicity with O'Hara had
occurred to the authorities, he now found himself transferred to
another "graft": from quarrying was set to trenching.

Four things are inexhaustible in the earth: the hope of a gambler;
the sea; the lip of a lover; and the capacity of Colmoor to be
trenched and quarried.

And in Hogarth's new gang was--Fred Bates.

One day, Hogarth, intent upon his work, heard a sob and, glancing,
saw that Bates had dropped his spade and buried his face in his
hands.

"What, Fred, not giving in?" He went quickly and pressed his palm on
Bates' brow, saying: "Patience! Stiffen your back: look how _I_ slip
into it!"

"Ah, Hogarth, you don't know. I am an innocent man".

"So am I."

"Yes, but _I_ was certain in my own mind to be out within anyway,
six months; _you_ wasn't. That makes a difference, don't it? That
touches the nerve, don't it? Ah!"

"And how did you expect to be out?"

"I had a brother-Bob-in the 9th Lancers in Punjab and his regiment
was ordered home just a week before I was arrested. Well, the
morning after the missus was killed, I went early--for I knew I'd
soon be arrested--to a stableman at Beccles--you know old Harris--and
I made him swear to give a letter to Bob the moment Bob put foot in
Southampton, and to nobody else. In the letter I told Bob where he
was to look for so-and-so, and how he was to prove my innocence--"

"But I don't understand a word of what you are saying", interrupted
Hogarth.

"I'll tell you. I did not kill my Kit. The burn on her face, and on
my hand, wasn't any red-hot poker. Did you ever hear such bosh? Look
here, you mind, don't you, the talk that week about the world
getting blowed up by some comet? Well, about 3 P.M. on the comet
day, as I was walking home through Lagden Dip, an old gent, the same
as took the farm over after you, he comes up to me, and he says:
'If you should happen to see anywhere in your travels', sez 'e,
laughin' and rubbin' his hands, 'a piece of hot iron after eleven
to-night, you bring it to me, and I'll put a cheque for One Thousand
Pounds there in the middle of your palm'. Well--I said it was a
Wednesday, didn't I? And Wednesday bein' the pay-day on the Eastern,
me and the missus had a drop o' beer that afternoon, and you know
'ow you come and catched me a-paying of her--dirty dog that I was
those days. But, Hogarth, you hadn't hardly gone when we made it up
between us, and the rest of that evening we was just like--well--two
bloomin', cooin' doves! kissin', blubblin', havin' drinks, and doin'
our week's shoppin' together. Well--stop, here's Black--"

They were interrupted, and for two days found no other chance.

Two days during which Hogarth received another letter from Loveday,
of which one paragraph was as follows: "The fifteen pounds which you
left in Lloyd's Bank I have managed to withdraw for you on the
authority of your aunt, Miss Sarah Hogarth", and at once he scented
a cypher, having no fifteen pounds, and no aunt.

When he had unravelled it as before, he had: "Why you failed?
Expect--Balloon--Rope".

He was astounded: and could only conclude that O'Hara had not
delivered his message.

And as the image of O'Hara had mixed itself with his thoughts of the
copse, so now the image of Fred Bates mixed itself with the balloon.

It was partly through _his_ evidence that Bates was here...!

On the third day Bates, as though he had just left off, resumed his
story:

"You know Seely's, the general shop, at Priddlestone", said he; "it
was there we always did our Wednesday-night marketin'--nobody would
believe what high old jinks those Wednesday pay-days was to us Great
Eastern blokes! By the time we reached Priddlestone, we had a quart
of four-ale down us, let alone what we'd had before, and, as the
saying is, one glass leads to another. By now we was feeling just
nicely, thank you, and instead of going to Seely's, we took a short
cut to 'The Broom', and it was going on for past eleven when we
found ourselves in--you know the beechwood between Priddlestone and
Thring--she singing all the time with her head thrown back, at the
top of her voice.

"Hogarth, it gives me the creeps to think of! Suddenly it looked as
if the whole wood was lit up: there was the sky all cut up with
streamers, I saw my Kit quite plain, then all at once there was a
whishin' and a rushin' among the trees, like steam--and I saw my Kit
drop smack. In two ticks my head was sober: but, as I ran to her, I
staggered sideways upon my left hand, and I let such a _yell_ out of
me--had put my hand upon something flamin' hot.

"The minute I bent over my old woman I knew she was a deader; and I
dropped down, and I called of her, and I shook of her, and it was
quite two hours before I come to myself properly, by which time the
affair what struck her down was gone out in darkness. Of course, the
first thing I thought of was the old gent at Lagden. 'This should
mean a cool thou', says I to myself. But I knew I should be arrested
first thing in the morning, except I told plain out what had
happened: and that, you bet, I didn't mean to do, for if once I
mentioned that there piece of iron before I had it safe off the
lord-o'-the-manor's land, I knew it 'ud be taken from me. But to
take it off before another day or two was out of the question--it
was too hot. So says I to myself: 'I'll _get_ convicted; and to-
night I'll write a letter to Bob, telling him where to find the
affair, how to get the thou, and _after_ he's got it, how to set
about gettin' the case retried '.

"Well, so said, so done. You know that old elm in the beech-wood? I
dug a grave at the foot of it, and managed to kick and roll the
affair into the grave, then I took up my Kit, carried her home, and
by the time I pegged out the letter to Bob, I saw day breakin'. So I
made paces for Beccles, knocked up old Harris, and gave him the
letter for Bob. By eight o'clock I was arrested--"

At this point the 5.15 recall-bell rang out, and there was falling
into line.

The next time that they had speech together, Hogarth said: "And were
you such a clown, Fred Bates, as to imperil your life for a paltry
thousand pounds?"

"_Paltry_ thousand pounds?" answered Bates, surprised: "Hark at
this! Didn't I peril my life ten times more in Egypt for a bob a
day? I tell you I was certain in my own mind of getting out in a few
weeks!"

"Well, what happened to prevent you?"

"Only this: Bob died on the troop-ship coming home; that's all".

"But you could write old Harris to open your letter to Bob, and act
on it, or else hand it over to your father".

"My word, but haven't I wrote? Old 'Arris is either dead and buried,
or gorn away, or somethin'. I've waited a year and nine months--good
God! and no answer yet".

"Poor Fred! I could weep blood for you. Believe in God!"

"More Devil than God about Colmoor, it strikes me".

"As though _you_ knew! Suppose I strike you blind--_now_--with a
flash of Him?"

"I don't take your meaning, sir", said Bates, with a strange heart-
bound and sense of awe.

"Do you remember 33 of the quarry-gang, Fred?"

"Yes".

Hogarth whispered: "It was _I_ who got him off".

Bates whitened to the lips. "I--I thought as much".

"There is yet another chance, which _you_, if you like, may take".

Bates saw heaven opening; but with this vague hope was left two
days.

On the third, Hogarth explained what he assumed to be the new plan
of Loveday.

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