"Have you heard," said Davidson reflectively, "they're wanting more trawler skippers down at the base?"
"I've been fifty years, man and boy, at sea," said Captain Morgan; "that's half a century, mind you."
"Ah, it's hard on the women, too," said Davidson. "We're never sure what boats have been lost till we see the women crying. I don't know how they get the men to do it."
Captain John Kendrick stabbed viciously with his forefinger at a picture in an illustrated paper.
"Here's a wicked thing now," he said. "Here's a medal they've struck in Germany to commemorate the sinking of the Lusitania. Here's a photograph of both sides of it. On one side, you see the great ship sinking, loaded up with munitions which wasn't there; but not a sign of the women and children that was there. On the other side you see the passengers taking their tickets from Death in the New York booking office. Now that's a fearful thing. I can understand 'em making a mistake, but I can't understand 'em wanting to strike a medal for it."
"Not much mistake about the Lusitania," growled Captain Davidson.
"No, indeed. That was only my argyment," replied the councilor. "They're a treacherous lot. It was a fearful thing to do a deed like that. My son's in the Cunard; and, man alive, he tells me it's like sinking a big London hotel. There was ladies in evening dress, and dancing in the big saloons every night; and lifts to take you from one deck to another; and shops with plate-glass windows, and smoking-rooms; and glass around the promenade deck, so that the little children could play there in bad weather, and the ladies lay in their deck-chairs and sun themselves like peaches. There wasn't a soldier aboard, and some of the women was bringing their babies to see their Canadian daddies in England for the first time. Why, man, it was like sinking a nursing home!"
"Do you suppose, Captain Kendrick, that they ever caught that submarine?" asked Captain Morgan. They were old friends, but always punctilious about their titles.
"Ah, now I'll tell you something! Hear that?"
The three old men listened. Through the gusts of wind that battered the White Horse they heard the sound of heavy floundering footsteps passing down the cobbled street, and a hoarse broken voice bellowing, with uncanny abandonment, a fragment of a hymn: