“Well, there’s a lot of fighting going on here,” nodded my companion, “we’re fighting night and day and we’re fighting damned hard. And now we’d better hurry; your party will be cursing you in chorus.”
“I’m afraid it has before now!” said I.
So we hurried on, past shops whence came the roar of machinery, past great basins wherein floated destroyers and torpedo boats, past craft of many kinds and fashions, ships built and building; on I hastened, tripping over more cables, dodging from the buffers of snorting engines and deafened again by the fearsome din of the riveting-hammers, until I found my travelling companions assembled and ready to depart. Scrambling hastily into the nearest motor car I shook hands with this shortish, broad-shouldered, square-jawed man and bared my head, for, so far as these great works were concerned, he was in very truth a superman. Thus I left him to oversee the building of these mighty ships, which have been and will ever be the might of these small islands.
But, even as I went speeding through dark streets, in my ears, rising high above the hum of our engine was the unceasing din, the remorseless ring and clash of the riveting-hammers.
V
SHIPS IN MAKING
Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
—Longfellow.
He was an old man with that indefinable courtliness of bearing that is of a past generation; tall and spare he was, his white head bowed a little by weight of years, but almost with my first glance I seemed to recognise him instinctively for that “worthy Master Builder of goodly vessels staunch and strong!” So the Master Builder I will call him.