Miss Gabus was the first to address Davidge:
“My Gawd! Mr. Davidge, what you goin’ to do about it?”
They thought him a man of iron when he said, quietly:
“We’ll build some more ships. And if they sink those we’ll––build some more.”
He was a man of iron, but iron can bend and break and melt, and so can steel. Yet there is a renewal of strength, and, thanks to Mamise, Davidge was recalled to himself, though he was too shrewd or too tactful to give her the credit for redeeming him.
His resolute words gave the office people back to their own characters or their own reactions and their first phrases. Each had something to say. One, “She was such a pretty boat!” another, “Was she insured, d’you suppose?” a third, a fourth, and the rest: “The poor engineer––and the sailors!” “All that work for nothin’!” “The money she cost!” “The Belgians could ’a’ used that wheat!” “Those Germans! Is there anything they won’t do?”
The chief clerk shepherded them back to their tasks. Davidge took up the telephone to ask for more steel. Mamise renewed the cheerful rap-rap-rap of her typewriter.
The shock that struck the office had yet to rush through the yard. There was no lack of messengers to go among the men with the bad word that the first of the Davidge ships had been destroyed. It was a personal loss to nearly everybody, as it had been to Davidge, for nearly everybody had put some of his soul and some of his sweat into that slow and painful structure so instantly annulled. The mockery of the wasted toil embittered every one. The wrath of the workers was both loud and ferocious.
Jake Nuddle was one of the few who did not revile the German plague. He was not in the least excited over the dead sailors. They did not belong to his union. Besides, Jake did not love work or the things it made. He claimed to love the workers and the money they made.