Part 32 (2/2)

”Is that she?” Loveday asked him.

”Yes, poor boat”.

She was nine miles away; in four minutes she was less than seven, and now distinct:--her three staysails; her four funnels; the stretched-out s.p.a.ce between her raked masts; her host of cowls and boats; her high victorious hull, silently running.

And all along her lines were lines of faces thick as dahlia-rows in June--globe-trotters; captains of industry; children; the Wall Street operator who plotted a stroke in Black-Sea wool, and to him time was money--I guess; commercial travellers, all-modern, spinning, p.r.o.ne, to whom the sea was an insignificant and conquered thing; engineers; capped enthusiastic Germans, going forth to conquer; publishers, ladies, lords, all the nondescript prosperous: and all ran there blithe, sublime, and long drawn-out; and they toyed with oranges, nuts; and they looked abroad to see the _Boodah_--s.h.i.+p's-surgeons and officers with them--jesting, as they munched or sucked.

But the Captain who had often seen the _Boodah_, was log-writing in the chart-room...

As her ensign of greeting ran up her main, her clocks struck twelve, the full noon--like an omen--come; she not then three miles from the _Boodah_.

And simultaneously with the hoisting of that ensign, and the striking of those clocks, the old-worn wheels of Roman Civilization stopped dead.

The _Boodah_ ran up the signal: ”_Stop!_”

Those who understood rubbed their eyes: it was like a vision at high noon; they could not believe.

At that news the Captain, a handsome fair-bearded man, rushed like a madman from pilot-house to bridge, and the startled pa.s.sengers saw his lighted eyes. He had some moments of indecision; then down he, too, rang that word: ”_Stop_”.

The engines left off; the _Kaiser's_ speed, as from heart-failure, gave in, died away.

By this time all the pa.s.sengers knew, in a state of tremor saw confused runnings to and fro, and face caught from face dismay; the voyage was spoiled, the record! What, then, had happened to the world? And now again the _Boodah_ is signalling: ”_Let the Captain come_”.

The Captain's hands were shaking; he could not speak, could only gasp to the first-officer: ”By G.o.d, no; O, by G.o.d, no”. Then, as great quant.i.ties of black-grey reek, wheeling all convolved, were now enveloping the vessel, resting on the sea, reaching away in thinner fog even to the _Boodah_, and as, the day being calm, there was a difficulty in reading the flags, the Captain gasped: ”Take the trumpet--ask them--But don't they pay for this...?”

So out brayed the trumpeted query, and back the inexorable trumpeted answer: ”_Let the Captain come_”.

So, then, the _Kaiser_ would never reach Sandy Hook? To put out boats!--to parley!--while the earth span with quick-panting throbs, every second worth seven thousand pounds!

”But don't they _pay_ for it...?” so, with a painful face of care, the Captain questioned s.p.a.ce.

But he would be mild and patient as a lamb that day! His order went forth: the s.h.i.+p forged ahead; a longboat, hurriedly lowered to starboard, was manned for the first-officer to put off in her, while every heart of the pa.s.sengers thumped, every face an ecstasy of emotions.

Then a wretched, long interval...

The s.h.i.+p's-officers were received on the _Boodah_ in a deck-room containing a number of boats with castored keels, capable of being quickly launched down an incline, where Mr. F. Quilter-Beckett, the Admiral, with some lieutenants, awaited them at a bureau on which lay doc.u.ments, while in the background stood Hogarth and Loveday, and, ”Gentlemen, this is a most d.a.m.ned wild piece of madness!” broke out wrathfully the first-officer, as he dashed up wild-eyed to the level: ”in consideration of the guns you have in this thing--”

”But your Captain?” asked Quilter-Beckett, a courtly man, with a dark-curling beard, a star on his breast.

”The Captain won't come!” whined the officer in perfect English: ”I suppose you realize the terrible consequences of this stoppage, gentlemen?”

”But you are wasting time, sir. You represent your Captain?”

”Of course, I represent--!”

”Then just cast your eye over this”--that so slighted letter, sent years before by Hogarth to Foreign Offices, claiming the sea as his private manor.

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