His fancy saw her transverses taking on their iron flesh. He saw the day of her nativity. He heard them knock out the blocks that lowered the sliding-ways to the groundways and sent her swirling into the sea.
He saw her ready for her cargo, saw a Niagara of wheat cascading into her hold. He saw her go forth into the sea.
Then he saw the ship stagger, a wound opened in her side, from the bullet of a submarine.
It was all so vivid that he spoke aloud in a frenzy of ire:
“If the Germans kill my ship I’ll kill a German! By God, I will!”
He was startled by the sound of his own voice, and he begged her pardon humbly.
She had been away in reverie, too. The word “submarine” had sent her back into her haunting remembrances of the Lusitania and of her own helpless entanglement in the fate of other ships––their names as unknown to her as the names and faces of the men that died with them, or perished of starvation and thirst in the lifeboats sent adrift. The thought of these poor anonymities frightened her. She shuddered with such violence that Davidge was startled from his own wrath.
“You’re having a chill,” he said. “I wish you would take my coat. You don’t want to get sick.”
She shook her head and chattered, “No, no.”
“Then you’d better get out and walk up and down this bridge awhile. There’s not even a lap-robe here.”