Swirling Waters | Page 3

with the call of the ocean ringing in his ears from the Viking inheritance that was his. But on this was superposed the fierce desire for success that formed the psychical atmosphere of the new American environment. As a boy in the smoke-blackened factory town, he had breathed in the longing to make money--big money--to use men to his own ends, to be a master of masters.
With precocious insight he quickly learnt that money is made not by those who go out upon the waters, but by those who stay on land and send them hither and thither. He soon gave up the seafaring life and entered a shipbroker's office. He starved himself in order to save money to speculate in shipping reinsurance. An uncanny insight had guided him to rush in when shrewdly prudent business men held aloof.
He had emphatically "made good." Each fresh success had given him new confidence in himself and his judgment and his powers. He would allow nothing to stand in his path. Scruples were to him the burden of fools.
A fair-haired giant in build, with inscrutable eyes and mouth set grim and straight--such was Lars Larssen.
Though Matheson was in no way a small man, yet he seemed somehow dwarfed when Larssen entered the room. The financier was a self-made master, but the shipowner was a born master of men--perhaps one's instinctive contrast lay there. The one had the strength of finished steel, but the other was rugged granite.
Lars Larssen said quietly: "Your letter brought me over to Paris. I don't usually waste time in railway trains myself when I have men I can pay to do it for me. So you can judge that I consider your letter mighty important."
"I'm sorry if you have given yourself an unnecessary journey," returned Matheson. "I had intended my letter to make my attitude clear to you."
"Then you missed fire."
"My attitude is simply this: I want to call the deal off."
"Not enough in it for you?" cut in Larssen.
"Not enough in it for the public."
The shipowner surveyed the other man through half-closed lids, weighing up how far this declaration might be a genuine expression of opinion and how far a mere excuse to cover some hidden motive.
"Talk it longer," he said.
For reply Matheson drew out a large-scale map of Canada from a drawer and unfolded it with a decisive deliberation. He laid a finger on the south-western corner of Hudson Bay. "Here is Fanning trading station, the terminus of your five-hundred-mile railway. The land you run it over is mostly lakes, rivers, and frozen swamps for three-quarters of the year. The line is useless except for your own purpose--to carry wheat for the Hudson Bay steamship route to England. You agree?"
"Agreed." Larssen was not the man to waste argument over minor points when a vital matter was under discussion.
"Then the scheme centres on the practicability of making the arctic Hudson Bay passage a commercial highway. It means the creating of a modern port at Fanning. It means the lighting of a whole coast-line"--his finger travelled to the north of Hudson Bay and the northern coast of Labrador--"before a cargo of wheat leaves Port Fanning."
"I'll build lighthouses myself by the dozen if the Canadian Government won't. I'll equip every one with long-range wireless."
"The cost will be tremendous."
"There will be a differential of sixpence a bushel on wheat over my route. That talks down fifty lighthouses."
"But it makes no allowance for rate-cutting by the big men on the present routes. Further, if the Canadian Government are not with you on this scheme, they'll be against you. There are a dozen ways in which you might be frozen out. In that case the Hudson Bay Route will be the biggest fiasco that ever happened."
"Nothing I've yet touched has been a fiasco," answered Lars Larssen with a grim tightening of jaw. "Leave that end to me.... Now your end is to get the money."
"From the English and Canadian public."
"Naturally."
"You came to me because the English and Canadian public are prejudiced against 'Yankee propositions.' You yourself couldn't float it in England. On the other hand, I'm Canadian-born, and my name carries weight both in England and in Canada."
"With the public," added Larssen, and there was a subtle emphasis on the word "public," which carried a world of hidden meaning. Matheson had been associated with other schemes which had a bad odour in the nostrils of City men.
"With the public who provide the capital," answered the financier, and his emphasis was on the word "capital." He continued. "With myself and Sir Francis Letchmere and a few titled dummies on the Board--which is what you want from me--the public will tumble over one another to take up stock."
"Agreed."
"The capitalization you propose is ��5,000,000 in Ordinary ��1 Shares, which the public will mostly take up. Also