It was the moved foreman who spoke. Instantly Captain Bob came back to business, sent his critical gaze roving over the wooden hulls most nearly finished upon the building-stocks.
“Oh! we’re all ready to go to-morrow,” he remarked unconcernedly, chewing his lip, like a cud of courage. “There’s a man I know who wants to buy a fishing-vessel--and he’s after me to take her out. He sent me up here to look ’em over. The ‘Jerries’ ain’t going to keep me ashore.”
“I reckon not! You’re like the rest o’ the skippers, Capt’n Bob--heart of a bullock, with no back-down to it! The subs couldn’t----”
But it was at that very moment--that full and flattering moment--that the inevitable pessimist spoke up, breaking in upon the foreman’s tribute.
“Aw-w! What’s the use?” groaned Libby Taber, in swampy tones--he who had predicted that the rich boy among them would soon be taking ease in a “bunk-fatigue job.” “Where’s the use?... Gloucester’s gone up. It’s good-bye--Gloucester! Day, day, Gloucester! We can’t build ships faster than the submarines can sink ’em!”
There was an explosive sound in the yard. Blind Tim--duty’s hero--heard it. The foreman heard it, too, and knew it for what it was--the sob of a young soul coming into its own!
“‘Gloucester gone up!... Good-bye, Gloucester!’” gritted a voice between clenched teeth. “Well--I guess not! ‘We can’t build ships fast as the subs can sink them!’ ... Well! maybe we can now.”
It was the voice of the “Candy Kid”; the voice of a young David crying aloud in the shipyards against the Philistine menace of his people.
Ship-carpenters stared. Another minute and they might have scoffed at the stripling--a discouraged stripling, at that--turning spokesman.
But the foreman didn’t. He promptly gave a diverting order: