Part 33 (2/2)

Stickney, a New York Jewess, and as the marriage of Miss Stickney with Lord Alfred Cowern was only fifteen days off, Frankl had made arrangements to accompany the bridegroom across, but had been detained by stress of business; happily for him--for Lord Alfred, the bridegroom, was a dancing prisoner in the _Boodah_.

Early, then, on the third morning thence, Charles P. Stickney, the bride's father, a natty little Yankee, hurried a-foot to the Maritime Exchange: for, to his infinite surprise, the _Kaiser's_ arrival had not been in the morning's paper: so the little arch-millionaire stepped toward Beaver Street, sure that the _Kaiser_ had come in too late for the press.

Early as it was, he found the place as thickly a-buzz as though it was that feverish hour between eleven and twelve.

He pushed his way to the bulletin-board, inscribed with the hours at which s.h.i.+ps are sighted and entered into dock: the Kaiser was not there: and with p.r.o.ne outlook he went seeking an a.s.sistant superintendent; but, sighting a fellow-operator, come, as usual, to digest the world, from barometer-reports to coffee-quotations at Rio, Charles P. Stickney cried to him: ”Funny about the _Kaiser_! Know anything?”

”It's the darndest thing...” mumbled the other, still star-gazing at a blackboard prices-current of American staples: ”raise h.e.l.l this day, I guess”....

And on through the rooms Stickney shouldered: all in the air here an odour of the sea, and of them that go down to it in s.h.i.+ps; pilot, captain, supercargo, purser; abstracts from logs, copies of manifests and clearances, marks and numbers of merchandise, with quant.i.ties, s.h.i.+ppers, consignees; here peaked caps, and the jaw that chewed once, and paused long, and, lo, it moved anew; Black Books, ma.s.sive volumes enshrining ancient wrecks; vast newspaper-files in every tongue; records of changes in lights.h.i.+ps, lights, buoys, and beacons, from Shanghai to Cape Horn; reports, charts, atlases, globes; the progress of the rebellion in Shantung, and the earthquake last night in Quito; directories, and high-curved reference-books, and storm-maps; every minute the arrival of cipher cablegrams, breathless with the day's Amsterdam exchange on London, or with the quant.i.ties of tea _in transitu_ via Suez or Pacific Railway; and the drift of ocean-currents, and the latest position of the _Jane Richardson_, derelict, and the arrival of the _Ladybird_ at Bahia; and the probabilities of wind-circulation, atmospheric moisture, aberrations of audibility in fog; and in the middle of it the pulse of the sun, the thundering engines and shooting shuttles of this Loom; a tiptop briskness and bustle of action; a scramble of wits; a _melee_ to the death; mixed with pea-jackets, and aromas of chewed pigtail, and a rolling in the gait.

Into this roar of life that word _Kaiser_ stole: and it grew to a chorus.

Charles P. Stickney, b.u.t.ting upon a tearing clerk who was holding aloft a bulletin of icebergs and derelicts, tried to stop him: upon which the clerk, who would not be stopped, cried with a back-looking face of pa.s.sionate haste: ”London message just received--_no intelligence of Kaiser_--”

But he had hardly disappeared, when another man from an inner room rushed, waving something: the Navesink Highlands lookout had wired the _Kaiser_ in sight! And while the Exchange rang with cheers, Stickney, a colour now in his sere cheeks, went boring his way outward.

The lookout had said it--those blue eyes that never failed there on his watch-tower, he knowing the s.h.i.+ps that sail the sea as the Cyclops his sheep, in his heart so knowing them all, that as that sea-gla.s.s detected a speck on the horizon, those sea-wise nostrils sniffed its name: for between the _Mary Jane_ and the _Mary Anne_, both off-sh.o.r.e schooners, is all the world of difference: if you would not see it, _he_ knows. And he had wired the _Kaiser!_--so expectant his outlook: and that day wept like a ruined man.

Swift upon his first wire a second flashed: and one of those c.r.a.ped days of the tragedies of commerce followed, the boding, the loss, flashed everywhere, pervading Europe and America.

The next morning the Exchange, all the exchanges, the Lloyds', the bourses, were crowded from an early hour, but subdued: no news, not a word; but still--there was certainty: for had the _Kaiser_ and her wireless been merely disabled, she would undoubtedly by now have been reported: she had foundered.

_Foundered!_--in the serenest weather in which s.h.i.+p ever crossed the water....

But at eleven the truth came: for the brig which had lain becalmed near the _Boodah_ at the moment of the tragedy, and now was nearer England, had flashed the news: ”many of the Kaiser's pa.s.sengers mutilated, many drowned”.

Death, then, was in the pottage of Life; the air tainted with specks of blood....

That day Man, as it were, rent his garments, sitting in ashes, and to Heaven sent up a howl of fear, of anguish, and of hissing hate.

Those who lacked the intelligence to feel the fear, felt the hate: every girl, the s.h.i.+rt-maker, the shopman, feeling himself robbed of his very own; the Duke in the centre of his oak-lands felt it; the burglar, the junk-dweller of the Yangtse, the pariah of the Hugli. Lamentation and a voice in Ramah, wail on wail. For G.o.d had given the sea to man, and it had been seized by a devil.

G.o.d had also given the sh.o.r.e; and it, too, had been seized: but, as that had been before their birth, they had not observed it--in such a numb somnambulism shambles humanity.

But the theft of the sea was new and flagrant, it, and the air, being all that had remained: and a roar for vengeance--sharp, and rolled in blood--rose from the throat of man.

Accordingly, when Mr. C. P. Stickney during the afternoon wired for information to the White House, he received the reply: ”Encourage calm on 'Change. Government in touch with Europe. Great naval activity. Await good news, seven P.M.”

It was about seven P.M. that what the White House would have considered specially good news occurred: for the _Boodah_ then telegraphed through to O'Hara's _Mahomet_ at the Straits:

”B. 7651. Begins. After to-morrow (Monday) you begin taxation, as per Order B., 7315, of 2nd inst. But if wars.h.i.+ps desire to pa.s.s out, (not in), permit, till further order. Richard. Ends”.

Which meant that if any Power, or Powers, desired to concentrate force upon the attack of any island, the Lord of the Sea granted them facilities.

The _Kaiser_ pa.s.sengers had now been sent off to New York, the _Boodah's_ halls seemed the home of desolation; and, as the night advanced, Hogarth and Loveday walked on the roof: for they could find no rest, the sky without moon or star, the sea making of three sides of the _Boodah_ a roaring reef, the wind blowing cold, they two wrapped to the nose in oilskins with sou'-westers, lashed by rages of rain and spray.

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