Part 33 (1/2)
The officer read it half through with flurried closeness; then, ”Well, but what is all this?” he broke out: ”is it a piece of comedy, or what, gentlemen?”
”It is serious; and the last clause comes into operation to-day: only such s.h.i.+ps being held authorized to pa.s.s on the sea as pay to the first-reached sea-fort on any voyage a tax, or sea-rent, of 4s. per ton on their registered tonnage, with an additional stamp-tax of 33s. 4d.
for receipt, and a stamp-tax of 1 16s. 8d. for clearance. You will see at a glance the clauses of the law, if you cast your eyes over this schedule--”
”Law!” the other broke in: ”you talk of _Law_! But doesn't the sea, then, belong by right to all men--?”
”Not more than the land. Ask yourself: why should it? But I do hope you won't argue: your time must be so precious”.
Out shrilled the _Kaiser Wilhelm's_ whistle of recall.
”I must go!” said the officer with a worried hand-toss: ”I must go. If you give me those doc.u.ments, I will show them to the Captain--but he is not the sort of man--this is mere piracy, after all! But, good G.o.d, gentlemen, if you only dare touch that s.h.i.+p, I shouldn't put myself in your place this day week for all--”
He s.n.a.t.c.hed the papers, dashed, and his men, in a pa.s.sion of haste, lay to the oars, the _Kaiser_ only four hundred yards from the _Boodah_; and the officer, shaking aloft the doc.u.ments, pitched up the stair, the centre of five hundred pairs of scared eyes, while the captain bored his way to him.
Two minutes of intense low speech, crowded with gestures: and suddenly the Captain's face, till now haggard, reddened; out went his shaken fist; with eyes blazing like lunacy, up he flew to the bridge; and now he is bending down with howling throat: ”Pa.s.sengers to their berths!”
Simultaneously, above the engine-room stair a bell jangled; round swung the pointer to ”_Full Ahead_”; and ere the decks were cleared of their bustle the _Kaiser_, like a back-kicking hen, scratched up under her p.o.o.p a spreading pool of spume, which tossed spasmodic spray-showers and spoutings: and she stirred, stretched like a street, churned the sea, and, wheeling to reveal her receding stern, was away.
By which time Hogarth was standing at a cubical cabin of steel on the roof, with him Loveday and Quilter-Beckett, his brow puckered with wrinkles, the sun troubling his eyes.
”I suppose the _chef_ is warned?”--he threw away his cigar.
”Oh, yes, my Lord King”, Quilter-Beckett answered.
And Loveday: ”She sweats like a thoroughbred”--haggard, but a.s.suming calm: ”few things could be more profusely expeditious”.
”Ah, make phrases, John,” murmured Hogarth....”Well, but hadn't you better be getting out the boats?”
Upon which Quilter-Beckett stepped into the little erection, touched a b.u.t.ton, and in a minute the water round the southern side was swarming with twenty-three boats whose blue-jackets began to row toward the _Kaiser_.
And presently, ”It's no use waiting”, said Hogarth, looking in upon Quilter-Beckett: ”I should mine and sh.e.l.l her at the same moment, if I were you; tell them to get it in well amids.h.i.+ps”.
Now a few seconds, full of expectation, pa.s.sed, the _Kaiser Wilhelm_ already two miles away: till suddenly s.p.a.ce opened its throat in a gulf to bay gruff and hollow like h.e.l.l-gate dogs; and, almost at the same moment, close by the _Kaiser_ a column of water hopped with one humph of venom two hundred feet on high: when this dropped back broad-showering with it came showering a rain of wreckage; and instantly a shriek of lamentation floated over the sea, mixed with another shriek of steam.
For the moment the s.h.i.+p, enveloped in vapours, could not be seen; but in two minutes glimpses of her hull appeared, shewing the bluff bulge of her starboard bottom: for she leaned steeply to port with a forward crank, her two starboard screws, now free, spinning asleep like humming-tops. A six-inch sh.e.l.l, beautifully aimed, had shattered her engines, killing two stokers, and a torpedo-mine had knocked a hole nine feet across in her port beam.
But as the _Boodah's_ boats, meanwhile, had been racing toward her, and as her own port boats were quickly out, all were got off; in fact, she floated so long, that her s.h.i.+p's papers with 270,000 in specie, and a few hundred-weight of mailbags were saved, and even after the boats reached the _Boodah_ she still stretched there motionless, until, with a sudden flurry, she determined to plunge.
Soon afterwards Hogarth had the Captain in his suite, to tell him that he did not wish any intelligence of the event to reach the world for four days, during which pa.s.sengers and crew would be his guests, and then be sent on to America, his object, he said, being to impress the loss of the _Kaiser_ upon the consciousness of all, by making all anxious as to her fate.
So that night her pa.s.sengers danced till late, for there was no resisting the hospitality of Hogarth, or the witchery of those vistas and arcades, grand hall and lost grot, _salons_ and conservatories, there in the dark of the ocean, or such an enchantment of music, and fabulousness of table; the host, too, pleaded prettily for himself; and now they pardoned, and now they pouted, but always they banqueted, kissed, lost themselves in visions, were charmed, and danced.
x.x.xV
THE CUP OF TREMBLING
It was by the merest chance that Baruch Frankl and his daughter were not on the _Kaiser_: for Frankl was the half-nephew of Mrs. Charles P.