Lord of the Sea

by M. P. Shiel

  XXXIII

  REEFS OF STEEL

  Nothing was ever so scrutinized as the movements of the _Boodah_ duringthe next two months.

  One morning three weeks after her launch three steamers took her in tow,with progress so slow, that at nightfall they were still visible fromland; but the next morning had vanished.

  Two days later they were met on the Genoa-Leghorn _route_, six steamersthen towing the _Boodah_, their course S. by W.

  Again and again it was met, that funeral of the sea: the prone, tearingsteamers, the reluctant bulk. Sometimes a captain's glass might make outa few men lost on the roof like men on a raft, smoking, seated, leaningover a balustrade.

  Southward and westward it swam. On the seventh day there arrived atAjaccio from Marseilles twenty-five bluejackets; and these, in a hired_speronare_, put to sea, and joined the _Boodah_ twenty miles from thecoast.

  Thenceforth, a smoke would be seen at a point of the roof, indicatingthat she, too, was steaming: for it was known that she had a screw anda rudder; and so closely was she observed, that her now added rate couldbe fixed--two to three knots a day.

  She must therefore have some small engines about 4,000 H. P.: and sincetheir _motif_ could only be one thing, resistance to ocean currents,this meant that the _Boodah_ was intended to rest always in one spot: astartling conclusion.

  Occasionally a Surveying Service warship would peep above the horizon,watching her.

  As she passed through the Straits, seventy-five English blue-jackets putout from Trafalgar, and joined her.

  With such reports passed the weeks. Occasionally five or six coal-shipswould be seen about the _Boodah_; her number of tug-ships might be aslow as two; sometimes nine, ten.

  At night she made a fine display, and homeward-bound boats fromCape Horn, from Pernambuco, Para, Madeira, spoke highly of her tworevolving-drum lighthouses: for these, from opposite corners of theroof, at the rate of a revolution per minute, poured into spacetwo shimmering comets, like Calais and the Eddystone--raptspinning-dervishes of the sea that hold far converse with the dark,till morning. And between these two ran a festoon of electric lanterns,Japanese and Moorish, cut in ogives; and festoons of coloured moonsdrooped round the balustrades, so that the blaze and complexity of itpresented to ships a spectacle of speckled mystery, fresh to the sea.

  After five weeks a hundred and seventeen blue-jackets put out fromPortsmouth in a chartered barque and joined her, she still in tow,making now about N. by W.

  But by the time this news reached Europe the eyes of Europe were nolonger given up to the _Boodah_: for _another Boodah_, called the_Truth_, was a-tow through the North Channel from Belfast; and shehad not reached the Mull of Cantire, when a third was launched at SanFrancisco, so that the interest of the islands became complicated.

  What would they do? What could they? Compared with this question, theriddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were goingto batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. The_Boodah_ finally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50 deg. and East oflong. 20 deg.: and there--just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream whereit divides, part toward Ireland, and part toward Africa--she remained,precisely in the middle of the trade-route between Europe and Boston,New York, Halifax: a _route_ covered for fifty miles--twenty-five north,twenty-five south--by her 19.5-inch guns.

  It is impossible to describe with how wild a heart, or thrilling aboding, the world heard this thing: eight days later the InternationalConference of Maritime Nations met at The Hague.

  But nothing happened--or the opposite of what was feared: for, as monthspassed, the _Boodah_, planted there in the ocean, rapidly became therecognized gathering-point of the fashion and gaiety of Europe, thitherflocking the socially ambitious and the "arrived" together, and to havebeen invited to those revels of taste and elegance became a superiority.Gradually, as the names "Beech", "Ecuador", ceased to be associatedwith the islands, the name of Hogarth took their place; and Hogarth hadengaged Wanda, sweetest of tenors, to a year's stay in the _Boodah_,whose orchestra was the most cultured anywhere; Roche, her _chef_, hadtwo years previously been put into a laboratory to devote his soul tothe enlargement of his art; and he and that tenor lived in suites of the_Boodah_ such as most princes would consider Utopian.

  Hardly anything in her interior suggested _the ship_: no hammocks formarines, rolling-racks, sick-bay, lockers, steam-tables, wash-rooms, shebeing just a palace planted in the Atlantic, her bottom going down toa layer of comparative calm, so that hardly ever, in a storm, when theocean robed her sides in white, washed abroad her slippery plateau, anddrenched with spray her lighthouse tops, did the ballroom below knowshock or motion. Into her principal hall, far down, circular, onedescended by a circle of steps of marble, round which stood a colonnadeof Cuban cedar, supporting candelabra and silks; and from atrium-poolssunk in the floor twelve twining fountains brandished spiral sprays, thefloor being of a glassy marble, polished with snakestone, suffusedwith blushes at the coloured silks and at a roof gross with rose andpomegranates, hanging chandeliers; round the raised centre of the floorstood two balustrades, three feet high, hung with silks, the innercircle thirty feet across, higher than the outer, forty-five across: aroseate room, strewn with cushions, colours, flushes; but that raisedspace was empty: reserved for--a throne.

  The throne, still unfinished, had been three years making in India.

  And during nine months the _elite_ and joyous yachts arrived, not atthe _Boodah_ only, but at others of the twelve which, one by one,were launched and towed to position; and a round of events transactedthemselves in the fortresses: Marie Antoinette balls, classicconcerts, theatrical functions by _troupe_ or amateur, costume-balls,children's-balls, banquets of the gods, grave receptions. By now thereran right across the _Boodah's_ roof, in the form of a cross, two doublecolonnades of Doric pillars, at the four ends being Roman arches: andhere, some summer afternoon, the passing ship would see a bazaar, allbutterfly flutter, feminine hues like flower-beds, cubes ofcoloured ice, flags, and a buzz of gaiety, and strains of Tziganymusic--rainbow-tints of Venice mixed with the levity of the AndrassyUt of Pesth. Sometimes a fleet of craft would surround the islands.Besides, to each was attached a yacht, and a trawler which continuallyplied for it between island and land.

  At this time Hogarth was deep in debt, and Beech's living upon credit.

  So, gradually, a good deal of the awe which the structures hadinspired passed off. On the whole, they seemed mere whimsicalcastles-of-pleasure. The trains of industrious ships grew habituatedto their gaudy brightness by night, to their seething reefs, or placidmass, by day. On foggy days the mariner was aware of the islands wailingweird siren-sounds of warning. The islands waved common-code signalsof greeting to the passer. Trinity House sent them the usual blanks andinstruments for recording meteorological observations. Their positionswere marked in British Admiralty Charts, in American Pilot Charts, in"Sailing Directions". The great greyhounds, racing to Sandy Hook, ravedwith jest past them. The islands began to seem a natural part of thesum of things. There they lay, stable, rooted, trite, familiar; andthe question almost arose: "How came it that they were never there_before?_"--just that object, of that form and colour, seemed so old andnatural in that particular spot. So the frogs hopped finally upon thelog that God sent them for sovereign.

  Meantime, the more thoughtful of men did not fail to observe, and neverforgot, that no ship could possibly depart from, or arrive at Europe,without passing within range of some one of the islands' guns. A row ofeight lay an irregular crescent (its convexity facing Europe) from justoutside the Straits of Gibraltar, where O'Hara admiraled the _Mahomet_,to the 55th of latitude, where the _Goethe_ lay on the Quebec-Glasgow_route_: these commanding the European trade with the States and withS. America, as well as with W. and S. Africa, and with Australia by CapeHorn; another in the narrows of the Gulf of Aden, commanding the world'straffic by Suez with the East and with S. Africa; another in the middleof the narrows of the Kattegat,
commanding all Baltic trade; another,fifteen miles from San Francisco, and another a hundred and fiftymiles from Nagasaki, on the edge of the Black Stream, commanding theJapanese-San Francisco, the Australian-San Francisco trades, and greatpart of the Japano-Russo-Chinese. These were the principal trades of theworld.

  Like the despair of Samson awaking manacled and shaven, an occasionalshriek would go up from some lone thinker, who perceived that thekingdoms of the world had lapsed into a single hand; and in the privycabinet the governors drank to the dregs the cup of trembling. But theirspeech was bold, the matter hung long, the peoples ignored and wrought:there was seed-time and harvest; the newsboy brawled; the long streetroared. Far yonder in the darkness and distance of the deep the islandsflashed and danced, and were fashionable.

  Richard Hogarth held back his hand.