The Lord of the Sea Part 48

"And you have sent your two hundred?"

"Yes, my Lord King".

"Have you received the two hundred from the _Mahomet?_"

"They had not arrived when I left the _Boodah_".

"So that you left only one hundred men in the _Boodah_, with instructions to receive two hundred others?"

"That is so, my Lord King".

There was silence.

"But suppose I tell you that I have given no such instructions: will your heart--_leap?_"

Hogarth clapped a sudden hand of horror upon Quilter-Beckett's shoulder.

"My G.o.d--!" Quilter-Beckett started like a gun's recoil.

"Be calm, Admiral: it may be only some mistake....From whence had you this order?"

"From--from the _Mahomet_, in the usual course--"

"Good night, Admiral; I would be alone".

At that very hour a world-tragedy was being enacted over the dark and turbulent ocean, and the immensest of Empires was sinking into the sea.

Darkly, quietly, with no mighty and mult.i.tudinous tumult of man.

That midnight the night-gla.s.s of many a mystified merchantman searched the murk for those coruscations with which the crescent of forts had constellated the Atlantic, the mariner's sea-rent waiting ready, with his ship's-papers, in his cash box: but no galaxy of lights glanced that night.

To some, before this, they had appeared, but, as the ship approached, had vanished, and it was as though the swarm of the Pleiades had been caught from the skies before their eyes. Long before dawn ships separated by three thousand miles had gained the a.s.surance that this or that sea-fort no longer rode the familiar spot-had been rapt to the stars, had sunk, had somehow pa.s.sed from being. Before this monstrous marvel the mariner stood dumb, and it was afterwards said that that wild night the terminals of heaven and earth were lost, that the storm-winds were haunted, in all the air lamentation, sobbings as for swallowed orbs, and the whisper: "It is finished".

Two days previously a telegram from Admiral O'Hara had gone to all the forts in European waters, commanding an interchange of 200 of their men with men of his own fort; and each officer in command, ignorant that the same instructions had gone to others, had complied: so that by the next morning, the 29th April, 1600 men from eight forts were converging in yachts upon the _Mahomet_. As the fort garrisons, originally numbering 500, had recently been reduced to 300, the others having been mostly drafted into the 2nd Division of the British Royal Marines, compliance with Admiral O'Hara's order left a garrison of 100 only at each of eight forts.

Toward five in the afternoon of that day, the 29th, 700 men, to the bewilderment of her officers, were in the _Mahomet_ two of the fort-yachts having arrived upon a troubled First Lieutenant who was in command, all attempts to see the Admiral since the morning having failed.

But near seven the Admiral summoned the Treasurer to his _bureau_ near the bottom, he being in dressing-gown and slippers, very slovenly, seeming either drunk or sick, his mouth gaping to his pantings, and anon his languishing eye shot dyingly to heaven.

"Well, you see how I am, Mr. Treasurer", he went, "seedy. Pain in this temple, trouble with the respiration, and a foul breath. Poor Admiral Donald, Mr. Treasurer, poor Admiral Donald. The fashion of this world pa.s.seth away, sir, and the Will of G.o.d be done! Sometimes, I pledge you my word, I almost wish that I was dead. There are things, sir, in this world--Ah, well, G.o.d help me; I feel very chippy. I wanted to ask you, sir, to let me see the books, and hand me over at once all unaudited and unsettled funds in your counting-house, though I'm not fit for affairs to-day, sir, G.o.d knows--"

"Sir!" cried the Treasurer, a hard-browed, bald-headed man with a fan-beard, savouring of banks and ledgers.

"Just pa.s.s them over, sir".

"Well, this is the most singular order I ever heard of!"

"Obey me promptly, sir, or, by G.o.d, I cashier you!" roared O'Hara, his raised lids laying nude the debauchery of those jaundiced juicy b.a.l.l.s.

"Be it so, Admiral Donald"--the Treasurer bowed: "but on the understanding that I formally protest against the irregularity, and report it to the High Chancellor".

He retired, and in half an hour returned with two clerks who bore books, himself a carpet-bag containing in cash-boxes 850,000, paper and gold, which he deposited on the Admiral's _bureau_, and, after again protesting before the clerks, went away.

Not far off by now were some of the other six fort-yachts, converging with their 200 upon the _Mahomet_, and as the Admiral had no intention of being put into irons as a lunatic in his own fort, at eight o'clock he stole from his apartments, dressed now, not in uniform, but in priest's robes and a voluminous cloak, bearing in one hand the bag, in the other a key.

Those lower depths of the _Mahomet_ were an utter solitude, lit with rare rays; yet the Admiral journeyed through and up peering, skulking, pausing, hurrying, and, if by chance a light caught his face, it showed a horror of convulsive flesh, his body a ma.s.s of trembling, like jelly.

Now, the forts had been built to fight; and (since nothing is impossible), if they fought, they might fall into an enemy's hand: to obviate which, there was in a little room on the third floor a handle which opened by hydraulics a door in the fort's side on the fifth floor below, the existence of this room being unknown save to each Admiral and to four of his lieutenants, and its key kept in a spot known to these.

This key O'Hara now had in hand; and as he pushed it into the lock, his jaw jabbered like a baboon's.

Night was now come; the sea rough; Spain lost to sight; the two emptied yachts on the way back to their forts; yonder the lights of the _Mahomet II_. lying-to; two officers in oilskins walking arm in arm, to and fro, on the roof; and said one: "Look at those waves there all of a sudden: they rather seem to be breaking on the wrong side of us".

Then they resumed their talk; and to and fro they walked, arm in arm.

Till now one with sudden hiss: "But-good Christ-just look-why, the roof's _leaning_--!"

At that moment an outcry and runners from below, shouts, a trumpet-call, were borne on the winds to them: for the Admiral had rushed up to the manned parts of the fort, all h.e.l.l alight in his eyeb.a.l.l.s, bawling out, "The boats! The _Mahomet_ is sinking!"

In spite of which many perished, the survivors afterwards declaring that the tragedy mesmerized their nerves with a certain awe not to be compared with the terrors felt on sinking ships, the _Mahomet_ affecting them like a being of life, like behemoth slowly dying, or some doomed moon. She gave them, indeed, plenty of time, though when the steel portals on two of her sides were opened, the sea washed up the steps, making the launching very delicate feats, and near the last the leaning was so marked, that there was difficulty in standing; and still in patient distress she waited while the waves like mult.i.tudinous wolves, trooped to prey upon her.

As the Admiral ran to the outer Collector's Office to embark, he was faced by the Treasurer, revolver in hand, and "Hand me over that bag, Admiral", he said pretty coolly, "or I blow out your brains".

O'Hara's mouth worked: he could not speak.

"Will you?" said the Treasurer: "no doubt you mean to hand it over to the proper authorities, but I prefer to do that myself. Be quick, you old dog!"

Whereat O'Hara, having no weapon, dropped the bag, and trotted wide-eyed forward to the thronged scene of the launchings.

There were more than enough boats, and though on the lowest side of the fort nothing could long be done, all had gone off, when the fort, having settled very low, looking for some time like a brawling cauldron and area of breaking waves coloured by her hundred lights, went down, and was not.

Whereupon the yacht, over a hundred yards away, was caught in the traction of her strong enthralment, and, like a planet, started into running round a region of sea which wheeled; while seven of the boats, rowing for life, were grasped, and dragged back, with a hundred and nine, into the deep.

"Toll for the brave...."

As to the other boats, they arrived at Tarifa the following evening, with 583; but the Admiral ordered the _Mahomet II_. to Cadiz, where soon after midnight he landed, and, by negotiation with a "_Jefe_", in an hour had a train for Madrid. As he was about to step in, the Treasurer touched his shoulder.

"What, Admiral, off by land?"

"Yes, sir, as you know", said O'Hara, "for you have been spying my movements for the last hour. How childish to imagine that I have anything to fear, or want to escape! Why, I am bound for England--my only object in the land journey being quickness. I even invite you to come with me."

"All right, Admiral, I will....If you be tempted to murder me _en route_, remember these"--a pair of pistols; and they set out at about the hour when the whole crescent of tragedies was over.

At six that evening a yacht, a copy of the _Mahomet II_., had come to the Cattegat sea-fort to land 200 men who wore the Empire's blue-jacket, the name "Mahomet" on their caps--nothing to show that they were not genuine Mahomet men, though some looked rather sea-sick; but in reality they were young lords, stock-brokers, Territorial Officers, men-about-town, park-keepers, undergraduates, secretly armed with knife and revolver, and knowing, too, where the armoury of the sea-fort lay.

Meantime, three other yachts, all named _Mahomet II_., were a-ply in the Atlantic, two containing 400 men each, one 600, each of the first two to land 200 at a fort at six, and her remaining 200 at the next fort by eight-thirty, serving four forts, the last to land 200 at each of three forts: so that by 10.30 P.M. each of eight forts, including the Cattegat, contained 200 enemies disguised as fort-men.

And punctually at eleven, in each, began perhaps the darkest ma.s.sacre of history--no quarter given--and when the alarm went forth, whichever of the unarmed fort-men rushed to the dark armoury found the door fastened against him. Of two men in bed, talking together through an open door, one arose at the stroke of a clock and killed the other; some perished in sleep--all very quietly accomplished: a few shots, a few lost echoes in the vast castles, a few daubs of blood. And in no case did a single one, either ma.s.sacred or a.s.sa.s.sin, escape alive: for, in every case, some one or other of the fort-officers--Admiral, Lieutenant, Commander--to prevent capture, opened the inlet to the flood in the very thick of the doom, went down with his muteness and his bubbling, and the sea, a secret in its bosom, rolled over the Sea.