“By George! I’m beginning to feel sick of the sight of these dead-an’-alive shipyards,” he muttered to himself, throwing a backward glance, as he drove off, at the yards full of skeleton shapes, like a scarecrow Armada. “Working on moulding timbers--laying the thin moulds on the timbers out there in the field beyond the yard, marking those timbers down to the proper size and beveled shape, using my mathematics until my head aches--nice pastime when the sun’s hot! And, for variety, steering Blind Tim, that old draft-horse--hitched to one o’ those half-ton timbers when at last it’s polished down to a rib--from end to end o’ the yard, between green stock and seasoned stock, an’ every other kind of lumber!” He tooted his horn fiercely, to warn some homing workman, swerved to avoid another automobile, and so snapped the thread of meditation.
As he did so, he caught the critical glance of a trio of blue-shirted ship-carpenters hailing from his own sphere of labor, wending their way homeward, too; and almost he caught the carping comment of one of them, Libby Taber--professional shipyard pessimist.
“There! Aw, there goes the ‘Candy Kid’!” grunted Libby, and his voice was flatter than a marsh-fog. “Well, he ain’t putting up much of a front, is he? He’s ‘soured’ on shipyard work already. He’ll be knocking off, some fine day, pretty soon, an’ tucking himself away, as a Mamma’s boy, in some soft little ‘bunk-fatigue’ job--lazy man’s job for war-time.... See if he don’t!”
“Well, now, I’m not so sure about that,” tempered the foreman. “He side-tracked the ‘bunk-fatigue’ jobs when he was drafted for work. An’ if he ain’t stuck on the shipyard stunt, he’s sticking to it, with muscle an’ nerve--and risks don’t faze him; he’s as ready to take a chance as another!”
But despite these sterling qualifications, before the boy reached home that evening, Libby’s marsh-fog mood had, somehow, mysteriously communicated itself to the young draftee of labor, the wealthy banker’s son, who, until the war summons sounded, had never before done anything he wasn’t particularly interested in doing.
“Oh, confound it all! I do want to knock off. May as well own up to it,” he acknowledged to himself then, and during the days immediately following. “How about jumping my job at the end of next week, after I’ve given the foreman--he’s a fine old fellow--due warning, and--and slipping into some niche in the bank, or in Uncle Peter’s patent attorney’s office, as the Mater wanted me to do? Maybe, after all, I strained a point, leaving the softer snaps for older men, and starting in to help build ships, as I’m too young to go across--too young to enter the Army or Navy, or Aviation either; at least, the family is against it--Uncle Sam, too, it seems--until I’ve had another year or two of college. Well! there’s not much sugar in the deal I’ve chosen.... Pretty raw deal all round! Bah!”
He forged this latter comment, in a moody play upon words, five days after the scouting war-plane had flown over the shipyards and landed by a Council Fire, as he pursued the monotonous task of leading the big blind horse hauling a half-ton of that raw “deal”--unpainted timber--through the shipyard, amid yellow reefs of the same “ships’ stuff” all about him.
Then, suddenly, under the forenoon sun, Atlas--he had not yet become Atlas, though, upholding shipping and the world--jumped, caught his breath, and yanked at Tim’s rein--sightless Tim!
A limousine had stopped by the country shipyard--the open, unguarded shipyard--where vessels were built by the roadside.
A lady stepped out, his mother.