Front matter (continued 2)

And meanwhile van Rensselaer was kneading his hands and muttering, his eyes fixed upon the creeping clock, and the bottle of liquor on the table by his side. So the minutes passed by, and the hands passed the stroke of ten.

XXXI

It was worth going down into that seething crowd to see the floor of the exchange at that moment. A thousand men were swaying about one spot of it, and at the instant of ten they broke into a deafening chorus of yells.

Transatlantic and Suburban! Transatlantic and Suburban! There was no other stock thought of that day—there were many of the smaller firms that had closed their doors, not daring to do business on such a market. And those who hung over the ticker read nothing but T. & S.,—157¹⁄₄—157¹⁄₂—157³⁄₈,—and so on and on. The fluctuating of T. & S. was the swaying of two monsters that wrestled in a death embrace; and van Rensselaer, as he fed his eyes upon it, was himself a free man once more. Horror haunted him no longer; the excitement drove the fumes of the liquor from his brain, and he was drunk, but with the battle ecstasy. To him every figure meant a blow, as with a war-axe, at foes of his; he could fancy that this stroke was his father's, and that his own, and that Shrike's, and so on. He clenched his hands and muttered swiftly, as one watching a fight: "Give it to them! Down with them! Down with them!" And meanwhile the ticker raced on: T. & S. 100—157¹⁄₂; T. & S. 500—157⁵⁄₈; T. & S. 3000—157³⁄₈; T. & S. 10,000—157¹⁄₄; and so almost without a pause. Down below in the street shrieked a frantic mob; it was like looking into a huge well packed full of writhing bodies.

So half an hour crept by, and T. & S. still stood the onslaught; van Rensselaer had gotten help, but evidently so had the syndicate. It was as if Wall Street had divided into two armies, and vowed no quarter. And they fought on; the time crept along to 10.45; T. & S. was moving at last—it was 157³⁄₄, the highest mark of the day! Van Rensselaer took another great gulp of the liquor and pounded his bell.

"Listen to me," he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. "The crisis has come—go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the Arkansas legislature has doubled the freight rates on the T. & S. There'll be a dozen people doing the same. And then wait five minutes—not a second more, do you hear? and let it out that I am breaking T. & S., and that the Governor's with me, and Shrike, and the rest of them."

The man nodded and disappeared, and van Rensselaer turned once more to the ticker. There was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and stared out. Then it began again—T. & S. still holding. Van Rensselaer knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed with impatience. Then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he could, with his trembling hands.

He had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. That was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under Wall Street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of affairs. The fact that impressed him was that every point that T. & S. went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from the men he had been fighting. And if instead it went up, and stayed up the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. And then suddenly the ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and T. & S. still holding,—157⁵⁄₈—157³⁄₈—157¹⁄₂. He could bear the thing no more; he drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. In a few moments more he was on the street.

XXXII

There were thousands of men flying this way and that, wild-eyed and shrieking. Van Rensselaer caught a phrase here and there,—"freight rates—ruin them—the van Rensselaers—Shrike." And meanwhile he was hurrying on his way to the board-room. He was a member and was admitted to the bedlam, to the edge of that writhing, hysterical mass of men who were crushing each other, breathless in their efforts to reach the trading-post. Van Rensselaer gazed at the figure of the stock—it was 157! He heard the same exclamations here that he had heard outside,—"freight rates—the van Rensselaers,"—and all the rest; and then suddenly he saw near him a huge ox of a man, waving a paper in one hand and bellowing in a voice that rang above the whole uproar. It was one of van Rensselaer's own brokers, the best of them; and as van Rensselaer heard him his heart stood still. The moment had come!

"I offer twenty thousand three-day sellers! T. & S. twenty thousand!—one fifty-seven! one fifty-seven! Twenty thousand three-day sellers—one fifty-six and seven-eighths! one fifty-six and three-quarters!"

And then again the roar swelled up and drowned him. Men were screaming from a hundred places: "One thousand at one fifty-six and a half! Thirty-five hundred at one fifty-six! one fifty-six! one fifty-five and a half!"

And van Rensselaer, mad, drunk, and blind with passion, shook his hands in the air and screamed in frenzy, "Down! down with them! Down! Jump on them! Pound them! Go on! go on!" He knew now that it was victory; he could feel it in the air—the panic, the wild, raging, mad tornado that uproots all things on its way. It had begun—it had begun! There were no more takers—the enemy was retreating—the rout was on! And so he yelled and laughed in delirium; and the crowd, crushed tightly about the post, went mad likewise, with terror or joy, as the case might be. There were men there who were losing a million with every point—the millions that van Rensselaer was winning. And they saw defeat and ruin glaring at them with fiery eyes. So they raged and screamed for some one to buy T. & S.—to buy it at one fifty-six! to buy it at one fifty-five! to buy it at one fifty-three! And there was no longer any one to buy it at any price.

So it was that the hurricane burst, in all its fury; it was not a panic, it was chaos and destruction let loose. The stock was "turned" at last; its supporters beaten; and the public, the great terror-stricken public, plunged in to overwhelm it. The price went no longer by fractions, no longer even by points; it went by three points, by five points, by ten points. Its speed was regulated by nothing but the time it took electricity to spread the panic through the whole country, for messages to come in bidding brokers to sell at any price. And in the meantime, of course, there stood van Rensselaer's bull-voiced agent hammering it down by five and by ten points at a bound with his twenty thousand shares to sell.

The mad frenzy had gone on until van Rensselaer could no longer bear the strain, and backed out of the crowd and sat down and laughed and sobbed like an overwrought child. It was half an hour before he could command himself again; and then T. & S. was at seventy-six, and finding takers at last! That meant that the "shorts" were "covering," buying the stock they needed, and reaping their rewards; and so the awful panic at last was coming to an end. Van Rensselaer had estimated the true value of T. & S. at ninety, and so he sought out his brokers and bade them buy all there was to be had.

XXXIII

Our hero made his way out of the crush, jostling past men who were crying and men who were cursing, men who were tearing their hair and men who were shaking their fists at the sky—all of them men who had lost all they owned in the world and saw ruin and starvation ahead of them. It was a fearful, a hellish scene; but van Rensselaer did not heed it, he had emotions enough of his own. They were emotions not easy to describe—emotions of a man who has made seventy or eighty dollars a share upon a million or two of shares, and who has been made the wealthiest man in New York in half an hour. Van Rensselaer the elder came hobbling into the office a few moments later and flung his arms about his son. "Robbie!" he gasped, "Robbie!" and could say no more, for he was choking. Shrike and the other three were close behind him, and the five gentlemen went beside themselves with rejoicing—now singing, now laughing, now dancing about, now falling on each other's necks.

I have said five; for van Rensselaer the younger, strange to say, joined them but halfway. Now he would sit back in the chair and laugh nervously, while his father told over the unthinkable sums he had gained, and his heart throbbed with exultation; but then a few seconds later he would be sitting staring in front of him, his quivering hands wandering aimlessly about. "Poor Robbie!" said the fond father; "it's easy to see he's done up. Here, have a drop." He was surprised to see Robbie gulp down the contents of a flask at one draught.

For now the strain was over, the dreadful pressure gone; and Robert van Rensselaer's nervousness was suddenly coming back. While the others were still at the stage where it was possible for them to embrace each other, he arose and excused himself and went out.

He went down to the street, where men were still crying aloud in their grief, and staggered away. He went on aimlessly, bending his brows and clenching his hands, and wrestling in his soul to keep before him the fact that he was the richest man in New York. But he could not do it; and then suddenly, with a wild, desperate resolve, he sprang into a cab and shouted an address.

He was at the river-side in a few minutes, and there lay the Comet. It was a wild day on the river; a gale had been raging, and the waves were high even in the bay; but Robert van Rensselaer thought nothing of that as he rushed on board and called for the captain. "Steam up!" he shouted. "Put off the instant you are able."

The captain stared at him in consternation. "To go where?" he cried.

"To put to sea," answered the other.

"But the storm! Surely—"

"Curse the storm!" the man yelled. "Put to sea, I tell you, and get me out of this town. Do you understand? Why don't you start?"

"But half the crew is away, Mr. van Rensselaer; and provisions—"

"I told you to get ready!" yelled Robbie. "Get ready! Do as I tell you, and don't argue with me. Get on board what you can, only leave this place the first instant you have steam up. Now go on!"

And he turned and staggered into the cabin. While men rushed about on the deck, and the fires burned bright below, he sat with another bottle of liquor before him; and when at last the Comet slipped away from her dock, he was sunk against the table in a drunken stupor.

XXXIV

And he lay there, knowing nothing, while the engines throbbed and the vessel ploughed its way down the stormy bay. It was only when she plunged out into the open sea, and the giant waves smote upon her, that at least he gazed up again, brought to himself by a lurch of the vessel that flung him to the floor.

He staggered to his feet, clinging to the table. Everything was reeling about him; the yacht stood nearly upon her beam-ends as she climbed on the waves. The din of the sea was deafening, indescribable; for a moment the man knew not where he was.

Then the captain entered. "We are off, sir," he said grimly; "where do you wish to go?"

"I don't care," answered the other. "Go where you please—only let me alone."

"All right, sir," said the captain. "We shall keep on to the northeast, it is safest to face the storm. We shall be off the banks by to-morrow morning."

With those words he turned and left, shaking his head. He had heard that the owner of the Comet had made millions in Wall Street that day; but this looked as if he must have lost them.

Meanwhile van Rensselaer crouched by the table, alone with his horror.

The afternoon sped on, the sun sank, and darkness came, and with it a new fury to the storm. All the while he was either crouching in a chair and shuddering, or rolling about the cabin floor in his stupor. All through the night he knew nothing of what was going on; nothing of the seething billows that swept past them, tossing the yacht high up on their mountain crests, or crashing down upon her bow with deadly shock; nothing of the captain's vigil and fear, of the toil of the four men at the wheel who fought to hold the yacht's prow against the storm.

He heeded nothing at all until there came all at once a shock, and a grinding noise of something that tore through the vessel's heart. Then he gazed up stupidly, feeling that her motion had changed, that she was rolling from side to side, that the blows of the waves were fiercer.

Then the cabin door burst suddenly open, and the captain rushed in. "We've broke our shaft!" he panted. "The engines are wrecked!"

Van Rensselaer gazed at him out of his dull eyes. "Hey?" he asked.

"We've broke our shaft!" roared the other, above the noise of the storm.

"Well, what of that?" demanded van Rensselaer. "What do I care?"

"We are helpless!" yelled the captain, "Helpless! Don't you understand?—we are adrift—we will go on the rocks!"

Van Rensselaer stood clinging to the table, staring; he was repeating the words, half to himself, as if the meaning of them were not yet clear in his clouded brain. "Helpless! adrift! go on the rocks!" And then, suddenly seeing the wild look in the captain's eyes, he sprang at him, screaming: "We don't want to go on the rocks! No; you are mad! Do something! Stop her!"

The other saw that he was drunk; but fear was sobering van Rensselaer fast, as excitement had done once before. "Where are we?" he cried. "Where are we?"

An awful blow shook the vessel; she reeled and staggered, and the two waited in fright; then, as she righted herself, the captain answered: "We are off the coast of Maine—about fifty miles off. But we are drifting; and we can do nothing at all. If help does not come, we are lost."

"Help must come!" screamed van Rensselaer. He understood clearly at last. "You are crazy! It cannot be!"

And he started toward the companionway, the captain at his side. As he tried to open the door, however, he stooped, appalled at the wildness of the night. It was black outside; but the wind was a fierce living thing that smote him in the face, and the hissing spray stung like hail. Van Rensselaer stared out only long enough to see a rocket start out from the deck and cleave its way into the sky, and then he reeled back into the cabin.

The man was now aware of his situation, and every emotion was gone but terror. He staggered about, flung this way and that with the tossing of the yacht, raising his clenched hands in the air, and screaming in frantic fear: "My God, my God! It can't be! It's a lie! Save us! What shall we do?"—and so on, until the captain turned in sheer disgust and went back to the deck and his duty.

But that van Rensselaer did not even know—he raced on back and forth, crazed and raving. All was dead in him now but the wild beast—if, indeed, there had ever been anything else alive in him. He wanted to live—he wanted to get on the land—he was worth a hundred million dollars—he—he! and was he to be drowned like a prisoned rat in a cage? His cries rang above all the storm; he called on God—he wept—he prayed—he cursed; and all the while the mad storm roared on, howling outside like some savage beast that was fighting to get at him, and driving the little vessel on before it to its doom. There was no one to hear him, the prisoned rat in the cage, though he foamed at the mouth in his frenzy.

XXXV

So an hour or two went by; up above the dawn broke and the daylight came. Van Rensselaer was still howling, though so weak that he could scarcely stagger, when the cabin door was flung wide again, and the captain, white, and with set lips, came in. "It is all over, sir," he said. "We are lost."

The owner's eyes were glaring like a maniac's. "What do you mean?" he shrieked.

"Come up and see," was the reply, and van Rensselaer rushed blindly to the deck. Clinging to the companionway door, he stared about him, dazed at first, and realizing nothing but his own horror. A mad chaos was about him; the yacht was like a bubble tossed about by the gigantic seas; the waves were like mountains around her. Down into a great valley she sank, down—down—plunging, and van Rensselaer gasped in fear; and then a great rolling mountain came sweeping down over her, and up she rose—higher and higher—to the very crest, and sped along with the speed of an express train, the mad waters seething and hissing and roaring and thundering around her.

From the mountain top van Rensselaer gazed about him—and his cries died in his throat. Not half a mile away, right upon them, as it looked, was the shore—the wild, lonely, horrible shore—the shore with the jagged rocks and the merciless iron cliffs—and destruction, imminent and inevitable!

The sight took the last atom of the soul out of van Rensselaer. He whimpered, he wailed, he would have fallen down upon the deck and grovelled but that instinct made him cling to his support. To stand there alive and safe, and be swept thus to death, foot by foot! To be helpless in the grip of these grim, relentless forces; it was too much, it was too much! It made him hysterical, it turned him into a beast, into a fool. He screamed, he laughed, he sobbed; but the words he spoke no longer had meaning.

His eyes were fixed upon the black rocks before them; as they came nearer he heard the sounds made by the mountains of water hurled against them,—a sound far-reaching, all-pervading, elemental, cosmic. Only once he turned elsewhere, to see the crew flinging out their anchors in a last vain hope; to see the yacht whirl round as they caught, to see the waves lift her up, and sweep her on, and snap the cables like so many threads.

Then again he perceived that the crew was trying to get out one of the boats; and he bounded to the spot, and waited. He did not help, he clung to the davits. But the instant the boat touched the water, he struck one of the men out of the way and leaped in. Several followed, and there was a cry, "Enough!" and they pushed off, and were whirled away from the yacht. An instant later a breaking wave struck them a glancing blow, and over they went.

Van Rensselaer came to the surface, strangling and gasping, still in his frenzy of fear. The boat was near, and he struck out and caught it. There was another man close to him, a sailor, stretching out his hands to him; as the waves tossed them about he touched van Rensselaer's foot and gripped it. The other kicked at him madly, in frantic rage—kicked him off, and kicked him down. So he clung alone to the storm-tossed life-boat.

It was a fearful struggle: the waves choked him, stunned him, half drowned him; but he hung like mad, and fought to keep his head above the water, while the sea was sweeping him nearer and nearer to the iron shore. He was staring at it wildly, a monstrous enemy with open mouth, and huge jagged teeth that gaped at him. They were looming high above him now; the roaring of the breakers swelled in his ears, in his soul, dazing him, appalling him, poor shivering mite of life that he was. And then suddenly he felt himself sinking—downward, deep down in a valley; he felt himself tossed and rocked, swaying as if in a tree-top; and then upwards he started—higher—higher—right to the boiling crest, the hovering, poising crest. He screamed, he writhed, it was like some hideous nightmare, terrifying to the soul. But the wave seized him—he felt it seize him; and it started—slowly—then faster, then faster yet—with the speed of a cannon ball—and hurled him, smote him, upon the jagged rocks. It battered his face, it broke his limbs, it crushed his skull like an egg-shell; and so the last spark of his hungry life went out of him.

XXXVI

I share in Ruskin's distrust of the "pathetic fallacy"; and I have no intention of implying that the waves had any sentiments whatever in connection with Robert van Rensselaer. It was purely an accident that they kept him in their grasp, and beat him against the cliff all day; that one by one they rushed up to seize him, and spent all their force in hurling him, in pounding him, until he had lost all semblance of a man; it was not until night, and when the wind died out, that they washed him on down the shore, and sought out a little cove and bore him to the sandy edge.

It was a still spot; there was no voice but the waves' voice, and all night long they called to each other on the beach, and tossed the body back and forth in the silver moonlight. When the morning broke it was swollen and purple, and it lay half hidden in the sand.

The sun came up and still it was there, unheeded save by innumerable small creatures that walked awkwardly, bearing long weapons in the air. One of them soon climbed upon the face and fastened its claws in the lips; and others came quickly, for it was choice prey. Was it not true that for twoscore years and more the earth had been searched for things rare and precious enough to help make up the body of Robert van Rensselaer? Think of the hogs-heads of rare wines that had been poured into it! Of the boxes of priceless cigars that had flavored it! Of the terrapin, and the venison, and the ducks—the strangely spiced sauces—the infinity of sweetmeats—the pink satin menus, full of elegant French names! Had not thousands of men labored daily to fetch and prepare these things, to serve them upon crystal and silver before that precious body—and to clothe it and to house it, and to smooth all its paths through the world? And now it lay at last upon the sand, to be devoured by a swarm of hungry crabs!

So another day came, and in the afternoon two fishing boats rowed by, and one of the fishermen espied the body. He landed with his companion, shouting to the other boat that there must have been a wreck, and to go on up the shore and look for it.

Then he went toward the body, or what there was of it. The clothing was still intact, and so he searched in the pockets, pulling out first of all a marvellous gold watch that had cost eighteen hundred dollars in Geneva. That interested him, of course, and he went on in haste, and found a wallet, with plenty of money, and with some cards in it. They were blurred, but one could still make out the name on them, and the fisherman gave a cry, "Good God! this says Robert van Rensselaer!"

"Who's Robert van Rensselaer?" demanded the other, wonderingly.

"You never heard of him? Why, he's the richest man in the country."

The speaker was gazing down, awe-stricken, at the body; but his companion merely moved away a little. "He smells like the devil, anyhow," said he.

XXXVII

It was not long before the other boat came back to tell of the wreck of the Comet, and of the finding of several more bodies. And so in a few hours the news reached New York, causing another panic in Wall Street, and dreadful grief in the bereaved family of the unfortunate millionnaire. Before night the newspapers reported that the remains (their own phrase!) of Robert van Rensselaer were on their way to the city by special train.

They were received in state, of course; and two days later there was a most solemn and impressive funeral, many columns of description of which I might quote, were it not that this story is too long already. Suffice it to say that the ceremony was held in the great Fifth Avenue Church, and that it was attended by all the wealth and fashion of our metropolis; and that the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray preached the most eloquent of all his sermons upon the text, "Blessed are the millionnaires, for they have inherited the earth, and you can't get it away from them."