John Dene of Toronto: A Comedy of Whitehall

by Herbert George Jenkins

That night as she was undressing she remembered the passenger from the second taxi. Why had he been so interested in the taxi that was bearing John Dene away, and why had he tried to signal to other vehicles passing along Pall Mall? He had seemed greatly excited. Above all, why had John Dene taken a taxi when he had been warned against it?

CHAPTER XII

THE DESTROYER READY FOR SEA

James Blake stood in the bows of the Toronto gazing down at the long, cigar-shaped object that lay like a huge grey cocoon reposing in her bowels. The morrow would see the Destroyer floated out to carry her three hundred odd feet of menace into the blues and greys of the ocean.

Blake was a man upon whom silence had descended as a blight; heavy of build, slow of thought, ponderous of movement, he absorbed all and apparently gave out nothing. His most acute emotion he expressed by fingering the right-hand side of his ragged beard, whilst his eyes seemed to smoulder as his thoughts slowly took shape.

As he gazed down at the grey shape of the Destroyer's hull, there was in his eyes a strange look of absorption. For nearly two years he had lived for the Destroyer. It had been wife and family to him, home and holiday, labour and recreation, food and drink. Nothing else mattered, because nothing else was. The war existed only in so far as it was concerned with the Destroyer. It was the mise en scêne for this wonder-boat. It was to be her setting, just as a stage is the setting for a play.

As he gazed down at her, he fumbled in the pocket of his pilot-jacket and drew forth a cigar, one of a box that John Dene had sent him. Slowly and deliberately he pulled out his jack-knife, cut off the end and, taking a good grip of the cigar with his teeth, lighted it, all without once raising his eyes from the Destroyer.

As he puffed clouds of smoke for the breeze to pick up and scurry off with to the west, he thought lovingly of the work of the last two years, of the last month in particular. Never had men worked as had James Blake and his "boys." It was not for country or for gain that they slaved and sweated; it was not patriotism or pride of race that caused them to work until forced, by sheer inability to keep awake, to lie down for a few hours' sleep, always within sound of their comrades' hammers, often beside the Destroyer herself. It was "the Boss" for whom they worked. They were his men, and this was their boat. Every time John Dene wrote to Blake, there was always a message for "the boys." "I know the boys will show these Britishers what Canada can do," he would write, or, "see that the boys get all they want and plenty to smoke." Remembering was John Dene's long suit; and his men would do anything for "the Boss."

Blake had not spared himself. When not engaged in the work of overseeing, he had thrown off his coat and worked with the most vigorous. He seemed never to sleep or rest. Every detail of the Destroyer's construction he carried in his head. Plans there had been in his shack; but what were the use of plans to a man who had every line, every bolt and nut engraved upon his brain. He had them merely for reference.