The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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An hour afterwards they were bending over a sheet of paper, Hogarth
in his shirt-sleeves, writing, Loveday overlooking, suggesting, when
two men were announced, and in stepped O'Hara with bows and polished
hesitations, followed by his shadow, Harris; and, "Ah, O'Hara..."
cried Hogarth, still writing, "who is that with you?"

"A friend of mine", said Loveday, for O'Hara had introduced Harris
to him, and he had adopted Harris as a human study, horrid, but
amusing.

The moment O'Hara saw the face of Hogarth, he started, muttering:
"He has the diamonds back! God! is he a magician?"

And Harris drawled nasally: "Of course, you wouldn't know me now,
Mr. 76! Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine, it
_is_".

Hogarth was silent--had not yet decided what to do with Harris.

"This is my tenth call here, Hogarth", said O'Hara, "in the hope of
seeing you, and the streets, you know, are no small risk. You see
how I am muffled up, and this gentleman, too. By the bye, I have
selected a cargo of books for you--"

"No study for a month", said Hogarth, "but I shall want you all the
same. Just come over here and watch me write this thing. You,
Harris, sit right over there".

Harris cursed, but obeyed, while O'Hara came and bent under the
golden glow of the silk shade a brow puckered with a care of
puzzlement, as he read.

Then he fell into the work, and was soon the director of it--
invaluable! knew everything! remembered forgotten points;
explained technicalities; the proper person in each little State to
whom the document must be directed, the style of addressing him. Of
one sentence he said: "That will never do--lacks formality"; and of
another: "Tut, they will laugh at that--it is provincial and
insolent", distracted between the work and his brandy glass. At
last, about eleven, the three brains had produced a letter.

Hogarth laid claim to the sea as his private property, and warned
the nations.

XXIX

PRIORITY OF CLAIM

A gentleman--a Permanent Under-secretary--stood one noon, his back
to a fireplace in a bright-carpeted room at the Foreign Office,
letting his eyes move over some opened letters submitted to him, and
presently came upon the following document, its crest a flag,
containing in blue the letters "R. F.":

"17 LEADENHALL STR., E.G.

"To the Most Hon.,

"The Marquis of Hallam, K.G.,

"Foreign Office,

"Westminster, S.W.

"MY LORD MARQUIS:

"I have the honour hereby to make formal announcement to Your
Lordship that I am on the point of setting up in the midst of the
world a new Power, whose relations with the King's Government will,
I trust, be relations of friendliness.

"It is my desire that Your Lordship forthwith convey to the King's
Most Excellent Majesty the announcement which is the subject of this
Memorandum.

"My purposes and policy in the establishment of the new Power will
hereafter appear; and my properly accredited Ministers will, in due
course, present themselves at the Chancelleries of the world.

"Hitherto a British subject, it is my will to acquire diplomatic
recognition--as soon as such shall comport with the dignity of the
Great Powers--as an Independent Sovereign, under the title of: 'Lord
of the Sea'. (Address: 'Your Lordship's Majesty', or 'My Lord
King'.)

"The domain of my Power will be the sea: and to the sea I hereby set
up claim as far as such points of latitude as have been attained by
Man, and over all degrees of longitude. Provided only: that nothing
in this claim shall be held to infringe upon the prior claim of any
nation to a 'three-mile limit' round its coasts, nor to any national
fisheries whatsoever, nor to any claim of the Kingdom of Denmark
with respect to the Sound.

"The validity of my title to the sea must be considered to rest on
the same basis as the title of any private owner to any area of the
earth's crust: namely, Priority of Claim. If one is valid, so,
necessarily, is the other, this title to land, based on _Priority of
Claim_, being admitted in the Law of all civilized Nations.

"This my claim will come into operation on this day three years
hence.

"I have the honour to subscribe myself

"Your Lordship's

"Obdt. Servant,

"RICHARD HOGARTH ".

The Under-secretary, a pale, distinguished man, read this letter
with a little lift of one eyebrow, then let it drop from him into a
waste-paper basket.

At the German, the Turkish, capitals it met much the same reception.
Nowhere did it reach the eye of a Departmental Head. It went to
Siam, to the Prince of Monaco, to Ecuador, and was tossed to cumber
a basket, or moulder on a file.

But Hogarth, who knew that it would be instantly forgotten, had
written it so as to be able to say that he had written it.

At that time he was lodging in a top room in Bloomsbury, and had an
underground den in Leadenhall Street, on its doors the words: "R.
Beech & Co." Thither in a brougham he drove daily, lying very low,
but holding in that den interviews with all sorts and conditions of
men, and feeling his way toward operations of dimensions so immense,
that their mere project had a modifying influence upon industry.

XXX

MR. BEECH

During six weeks Hogarth lived that life of daily passage between
Keppel Street and his office, unknown to the general world, but
spreading a noise of rumour through certain circles of the business
world. All day in the den the gas-jets brawled upon him, he not for
minutes casting a glance, if a clerk brought a caller's name. And
here was no novice modesty in the tackling of affairs; as O'Hara,
who would be there, said: "You must have been _born_ in the City;
you have the airs, the very tricks, of Threadneedle Street, you--
Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen
telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer,
polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank,
Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco,
Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash
to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat
swotting till morning broke, sustained by gin and soda-water. The
priest lived with wide eyes at the easy fleetness with which Hogarth
rolled off him the greatest affairs: as when on the day after his
return from Holland he stood, his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes,
with quite the right air of serene City-king, his tallness
possessing considerable natural courtliness, and the De Beers'
Secretary sat before him, saying, "Well, Mr. Beech, I have spent the
morning with your brokers, and have felt that I must see you
personally before calling a meeting. This proposition is so
tremendous--"

"I only wish I had some time", said Hogarth, "I would invite you to
dine upon the matter; but it is really so simple--everything at
bottom is merely twice two are four. And you are not obliged to turn
over Kimberley to me: only, in that case, as I have said, I shall be
compelled to flood the market with diamonds as cheap as cat's-eyes--"

When De Beers stared, Hogarth shrugged, saying: "I suppose I must
convince you--" and, unlocking a safe, he took out an _ecrin_ which
contained three stones. De Beers appeared to see Titania peering in
their fairy painting.

"Of stones of this water and carating", said Hogarth, "we have two
hundred and eleven in the Bank of England, two hundred and thirty-
eight in other English and Continental banks, and seventy-five in
safe-deposit. The carating of these three is 111-1/2; and in the
sixties, such as this one"--he took a stone from among coppers in
his pocket--"we have three hundred odd on hand, all flawless, and an
equal number cutting. When I point out, what you know, that our mine
is as yet without the delicate plant of Kimberley, the stones being
simply picked from the blue-earth by three inexpert friends of the
firm on the spot, you will recognize that the wealth of a mine can
no further go...."

He was rid of the visitor within six minutes, and within three
weeks, by knack and organization, had gathered into his hands most
of the reins necessary to the control of the world's trade in
diamonds.

In an outer room sat O'Hara, writing, reading Theocritus, or a
little book on mediaeval embroidery, forefinger on cheek; and anon,
absolutely without motive, he would rise, creep, and peep through a
keyhole at Hogarth, then on stalking, bowing tiptoe, grinning a
rancid grimace of stealth, get back to his seat, and read--the tutor
falling over head and ears in love with his pupil: one of those
passions that end tragically.

One day, as he so sat, the bell _pinged_, the door opened, and
O'Hara jumped to find himself face to face with--Frankl, who had
come to see the new diamond king, in the firm belief that Mr. Beech
was none other than O'Hara; and, "I thought as much!" said he.

"_Sh-h-h_", went O'Hara bitterly--"for God's sake! he is _in
there_--!"

"Who is?"

"_Hogarth!_"

"Well, but--"

"Outside--in the passage--"

They stepped out; and Frankl, his eyelids red, said: "I have only
this day crawled from bed with the blow you struck my temple, or I
should have had you before this--"

"_Sh-h-h_. Your own fault, sir. _You_ played false first--"

"Played false with my own diamonds? You hand me over this day one-
half those stones, or I bring a civil action for the whole, hound
you to beggary, and drag you back to your convict-cell where you
come from".

"Don't lift your voice, I beg of you. Tut, you rave. You can't bring
a civil action against a great millionaire who doesn't care to
defend; and as for me, I do assure you, I haven't fifty pounds to-
day. _It is Hogarth who is Mr. Beech!_"

"_Who?_"--Frankl obtruded a startled ear, frowning his eyes small.

"Hogarth. He has the diamonds back!"

"Which diamonds? How did he get 'em?"

"He is--_in_--_there_: better go and ask him! He got them by black
art--by the aid of the legion of mediaeval witches which wait on
him--_God_ knows how he got them! _You_ gave them to him! _I_ gave
them to him! but he's got them--_in--there_! Better go and ask him--don't
be afraid--just for the roaring fun of it--"

"Hogarth?"

"Yes--Hogarth, Hogarth".

"Cheated the gallows? And out of prison? And rolling in my wealth,
my riches, my diamonds? Oh, no!--is that fair? A dog? Is that how
the world is run? God of Israel!"

"There is this to be said for him: that he _deserves_ to be rich--"

"Who? So you are taking his part now?"

"Tut--!"

"There is no _tut_ about it! You confess that you are nothing more
than a penniless hanger-on: well, then, I have _you_! back to
prison you go this hour---!"

O'Hara's cheek trembled; but he said: "A sufficiently vain threat,
sir: I am Hogarth's tutor: he won't let me be taken. Don't waste
your time, you impotent Jew--"

"Tutor? That's good! What you teaching him?--murder? _outrage?_ He
_ought_ to have a tutor, he! That's good! Tutor! Well, suppose I
drop a line first post to your nice _pupil_ to let him know that it
was his _tutor_ who stole his diamonds--"

At this threat O'Hara felt himself outflanked; and though his eyes
surveyed the Jew unflinchingly during a silence, inwardly he had
succumbed.

"A man in Hogarth's situation", he slowly said, "is always liable to
attack. Why should two sharp old fellows like you and me, whose
interests are identical, quarrel?"--and instantly Frankl took note
of that surrender, that weak spot, and knew that the man was his.

"Well", said he, "so true--two old gaol-birds like you and me, eh?
So true, so true. But what beats me--who runs Beech's? Hogarth is
only a young farmer: he can't operate all the big things I hear
about this Mr. Beech--"

"Tut, you do not conceive the man as he is at all", said O'Hara:
"perhaps you cannot. High finance, the first day he looked into it,
ceased to mystify him, for he goes always to the ground of things,
touches bottom, where first principles lie, and first principles are
simple as two and two. It was because he had discovered a first
principle that he escaped from Colmoor. And he is as nimble as six
twisting minnows: what you or I learned in a year he learns in an
hour, and if he does not know the usual way, not an instant does he
hesitate to invent a way. You know about Owthwaite's: how the recent
shake-out of the market threatened their collapse, like so many
others'. Owthwaite's, in fact, had already declared, when Hogarth
decided to help them over. And how? Not Bills! He filled up a call-
in of two millions and a half by the India Council, resettled loans
and short-discount business, cheapened money, and in twelve hours
his _proteges_ were off the rocks. And now I hear--"

"But why not buy a chapel, and preach about him? I hate--"

"Stop! O Lord--he is calling--"

"Here's my card; I want to see you to-night at that address at
eight".

And that night at Frankl's town-house in Hanover Square Jew and
prelate conferred, O'Hara for some time resisting, but finally again
taking sides against his saviour. He disclosed that Hogarth, beyond
doubt, kept a few diamonds in a goat-hair trunk in his room--enough
to make two ordinary fortunes, and also carried two or three, with
some hundred-pound notes on his person; and this was made the basis
of a scheme for bringing about the arrest of Hogarth, the first step
being to get from Hogarth the sum he carried about him, leaving him
in a situation where he would find himself powerless to bribe.

This Frankl undertook; and O'Hara promised to lend Harris, and some
friends of Harris.

Now, during these weeks Hogarth was living in some fear, haunted by
insecurity and a vision of Colmoor; and, remembering the theft at
Thring, with a consciousness of Frankl somewhere in him, he went not
only with diamonds on his person, but a revolver as well, and a
_punal_ of Toledo.

But three evenings after the conference in Hanover Square, he
received this letter:

"Dearest Richard:

"It is long since we have met. This is to let you know that I have
heard of your getting out, and your coming into great things, which
has made my heart rejoice. I, alas, am just the other way about. I
am staying for the next two days at Woodfield Cottage, Wylie Street,
Finchley Road, N. I understand that you are lying low, so better not
come to see me perhaps, but send me something.

"Your loving

"Margaret".

And at sight of these words such a whirlwind transacted itself in
the brain of Hogarth, that he hardly awoke to sense till he found
himself in a railway compartment, going northward. It was only then
that, reading the letter again, he started.

The handwriting was hers! he was sure. But the words...?

"I, alas, am _just the other way about_"--"better not come to me
perhaps, but _send me something_". There was a tone here not in
character. But her handwriting! This was no forgery. If she had
written _from dictation_ that might explain it.

In this uncertainty he left the train, and took cab, scenting
trouble ahead.

The difficulty was to find Wylie Street, which was a half-built
street of five cottages in a new neighbourhood of brick, and when
what was supposed to be Wylie Street was discovered, the cab had to
stop, for across it lay bricks, hods and barrows in mud. So Hogarth
alighted, and, peering, stumbled forward: no lamp; above, a
labouring half-moon riding a sky of clouds, like a poor ship riding
the bleak morning after a hurricane, her masts all gone by the
board: and Hogarth could just see that three of the five cottages
were roofless brick, the fourth unfinished, so the fifth, alone on
the other side, must be--"Woodfield"

"Woodfield" was unlighted: and the moment he ascertained this, he
felt himself the victim of a plot; but not all the whispers of
prudence could hold him now from seeing the adventure through.
Loudly he flung back the little gate, with rash precipitancy
entered: and as he sprang up the three steps to ring, he was seized.

They were five, three being big fellows, two masked.

His main sensation was gladness that none, apparently, was a
policeman; and he set hilariously to work with his knuckles. This,
however, could not save, soon he was on his back, striking his head;
but when he saw that the object was to rifle his pockets, letting
be, he managed to steal out the _punal_ from his breast, and
presently with a sudden upheaving and scattering rage, was
staggering to his legs. Before he could be stopped, he was making
for the gate, but close upon him ran one of the five--a slim man,
masked--who fired Hogarth's own pistol at his legs, but missed:
whereupon, Hogarth, with a backward twist, struck at random with the
dagger, which entered the man's breast. But at the same time a
whistle shrilled, and from an opposite cottage rushed out at last
what he dreaded--three policemen.

These had been placed there on the understanding that it was thither
that Hogarth would go, the object of the plot being to rifle his
pockets before he was officially taken; and it succeeded to the
extent that his pockets _were_ rifled: but he knocked down one
officer, and dodged the other two, reaching his taxi; and, having
previously arranged with the cabman, got off racing.

But the masked man whom he had struck down was Harris, who for weeks
lay raving in fever--an ill-fated stroke, for Harris had a memory.

As for Hogarth, he rushed home to Keppel Street, hurried down the
trunk, and was off to Cheyne Gardens.

"Well", he cried, breaking in upon Loveday, "this phase of our life
is up! Look at my clothes: I have had a fight--Frankl, I suppose. I
wanted to live a simple life for two years: but they won't let me,
you see. Ha!--then the other thing. From this night we bury our
identity under mountains of splendour. It is disgusting to me, this
life, skulking, thinking to bribe honest men. Meantime, you must
find me some room to hide in with the trunk--mustn't stay here to-
night. And to-morrow you buy me a boat to take us off from some
point of the coast--Come--"

XXXI

THE HAMMERS

Within six months Hogarth, as distinct from "Beech", had risen upon
the consciousness of Europe, say like the morning sun: and the
wearied worker, borne at evening through crowded undergrounds, might
read his name with a listless incomprehension.

He impressed the popular fancy, especially in Paris, where he was
best known, as erratic: as once when, by a stroke of financial
sleight-of-hand, he got the young Government of Russia into a tight
place, then refused them a loan, except on condition of the lease to
him of the Kremlin: and for three months squalid old Moscow was the
most cometary Court anywhere--acts savouring of a meteorite
waywardness which impressed him, more than anything, upon the
everyday world; and he won a tolerant wonder.

However, an outcry, led by the _Intransigeant_, denounced his
acquisition of the site of royal St. Cloud for his Paris residence
on the ground that he was a Jew, betrayed by his face--an accusation
which caused the buying up of hundreds of thousands of his
photographs--and on the ground that his design was to familiarize
the people with the idea of his sovereignty, and by a _coup_ to
seize the Government; at which Paris was in a ferment, and a
midnight mob traversed the _Bois_ and demolished some of his mason-
work. The next day, however, the Minister of the Interior announced
from the Tribune that Hogarth was no Jew, but an Englishman _pur
sang_; and, on the whole, Hogarth had his way: the noise died down;
and where parterres and avenues had stood on the old palace site,
there arose one of those enchanting fabrics, which, from the
Bosphorus to London, bore the name of "The Beeches".

At this time he had dependent upon him a retinue, serving him in
multifarious ways from electrical adviser to spy, and from
chancellor to recruiter, numbering many hundreds. He knew five
thousand faces by sight; in England had two armies--a small one
collecting data as to acreages, tenures, trades, scales, wages,
prices, crimes, mines, and a large one, numbering five thousand,
doing gun-practice in Westring Vale: for, England being for sale, he
had bought at thrice its market value that part of it called
Westring; and on the sea also he kept a little army of a thousand,
borne in old cruiser-hulks bought from the English Admiralty, hulks
whose crews, in rotation, changed places with drafts from the
Westring barracks.

Once he disappeared from Europe, and when he returned the President
of the Republic of Ecuador, thenceforth one of his closest friends,
was with him; whereupon, through newspapers in the pay of Beech's,
the rumour commenced to appear that the Ecuador Government was
giving orders for coast-defence on an unparalleled scale, in view of
probable hostilities with Peru.

In the midst of which activities O'Hara said to him one morning:
"You can now be called a mathematician".

"I have many admirers, and but one teacher, O'Hara", Hogarth
answered: "teach me".

O'Hara cut a secret grimace.

After the failure of the Finchley Road plot he had had another
repentance, and had set himself earnestly to the cultivation of
Hogarth's mind; but the priest's spirit was not "erect"; he had
"falls"; maintained a correspondence with the Jew, whose eye of
malice never slept; and once at Cairo, twice in Paris, Hogarth had
to use words like these: "I must tell you, O'Hara, that I have heard
of your recent behaviour. Naturally, there are those that see for
me, and I do not mean to be compromised by your low revels".

"Wretch that I am!" broke out O'Hara with smitten brow, and for half
a day was on his knees in an affliction of self-reproach. Yet the
same night he wrote a letter to Frankl containing the words: "You do
not know, _you cannot dream_, the high and slippery road which H.
has chosen for his feet: the future is _big_ with events. Wait: his
sublime path is not without pitfalls...."

Study with O'Hara was in the morning; at night, when possible, that
other study of the working world: and often then Hogarth would
withdraw from opera in the St. Cloud palace, or from some "crush",
to give an hour to the river of statistics with which he was
inundated.

Till these years he had never seen into the sea of things as it is:
his life so isolated--had not even read newspapers.

Now he saw and knew. There below him blazed some masque of beauty
and majesty, moving under a moonlight of blue-darting jets of
electric light all among colossal columns of alabaster robed in vine
and rose; or there below some Melba voice, all trembles and maze of
wobbly trebles, warbling: and the thronged hall sat tranced; but
before _him_--figures: parents killed their children for insurance-
money--keeping children in cellars till their flesh grew green,
keeping sore the stumps of children's legs; with some trades certain
comic-sounding names had got to be associated, "potter's rot",
"phossy jaw",--enormous horror; each day in England one million
people had to seek pauper-relief, many perished; of aged persons 40
per cent were permanent paupers; children were paid 2-1/2d. for
making 144 match-boxes; pretty girls (though pretty girls were
detestably rare) were allowed to work, nay _forced_ to--far harder
than any ten savages ever dreamt of working; in Glasgow 41 of every
100 families lived in one room: fathers, for weeks, did not see
their children, except asleep; girls took emetics to vomit up
cotton-dust--enormous horror, comic-opera in Hell: and below in the
"crush" the voice of the warbler, cooing, shook.

Sometimes he would mutter: "But that can't be true!" There, though,
the figures lay; and presently he would take heart, and say: "Well,
not for long now, God help me...."

Whether God helped him or not, certainly Man was helping him: ten
thousand and ten thousand hammers--from Spezzia to Belfast--in
model-office and mould-loft and rolling-mill--in foundry and yard
and roaring forge--were ringing upon metal for him, their clamorous
industry clattering over Europe and America carillons of his name.

XXXII

WONDER

Almost suddenly that noise of chiming hammers reached the general
ear.

First in the German Admiralty was wonder when a spy, engaged as a
workman at Birkenhead, sent to his Government information that the
British Government was up to something: something of a novelty so
extraordinary, that as yet he could form no conception as to its
object. That it was intended for the sea one must suppose: yet it
was evident that nothing of such odd draughtsmanship--of such
mastodon proportions--had ever yet taken the water.

He had been clever: had penetrated even the model-office, peered at
detailed draughtsman's-plans, developed from the original
specifications, as well as at orders for Krupp plates, frames, etc.;
had listened in the yard to the talk of four naval men acting as a
Board of Inspection; was able to give details of the machining of
enormous processed plates to sizes determined by templates, the
length of pan-headed rivets, the specific gravity of an average
cubic foot, the scarfing of edges, the accumulation of prepared
material. The wooden half-model, he said, was a one-ninety-sixth,
instead of the usual one-forty-eighth; yet, even so, it was 5 ft. 7-
1/2 ins. long, as much broad, and 1 ft. 3/4 in. high. This meant
that the structure would measure 180 yards square--over one-tenth of
a mile--with a depth of 34 yards. Already the far-reaching chaos of
scaffolding had run up eight yards, with stringers and frames to a
like level. There were no keel-blocks, for there was no keel--or
rather, the keel was a circular plate a yard in diameter, resting on
a single block, the shape of the structure to be a perfect square,
along the sides of which four battleships might lie like toy-boats:
the bottom, from circular keel to upward bend, having the same shape
as a battleship's seen in midship section, only with four faces
instead of two. From the knee-bend the sides ran up perpendicular;
but at the level evidently intended to be the water-line they struck
inward, so that the flat roof was smaller than the area below; the
position of this water-line giving a definite clue to the intended
displacement; and this again showing that the whole--roof, sides,
bottom, and all--would be one wall of Simmons armour--steeling and
backing--layer on layer--no less than 4ft. 9-1/4 ins. thick.

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