The story is of Richard Hogarth, a man of lofty spirit who on discovering a cache of giant diamonds inside a fallen meteor undertakes a bold project to re-shape the human condition on a global scale. He builds huge steel forts with his wealth, places diamonds at the cross-roads of the earths oceans to control all sea-traffic for tribute to benefit the citizens of his mammoth iron islands. The Lord of the Sea (1901) develops a network of mid-19th-century motifs incredible coincidences, swapped babies, hidden identities, chance-found incredible wealth, documents in a trunk, festering revenges, elaborate prison escapes, frustrated romance, Napoleonic megalomania yet, though written to an aesthetic outdated for its time, in embodies that aesthetic with enormous elan and vitality.