Inside the yards the great hulls rose up to the moon like the buttresses of a cliff. Only, they were delicately vulnerable, and Europe waited for them.
CHAPTER IV
True sleep came to Mamise so late that her alarm-clock could hardly awaken her. It took all her speed to get her to her post. She dared not keep Sutton waiting, and fear of the time-clock had become a habit with her. As she caught the gleaming rivets and thrust them into their sconces, she wondered if all this toil were merely a waste of effort to give the sarcastic gods another laugh at human folly.
She wanted to find Davidge and took at last the desperate expedient of pretended sickness. The passer-boy Snotty was found to replace her, and she hurried to Davidge’s office.
Miss Gabus stared at her and laughed. “Tired of your rivetin’ a’ready? Come to get your old job back?”
Mamise shook her head and asked for Davidge. He was out––no, not out of town, but out in the yard or the shop or up in the mold-loft or somewheres, she reckoned.
Mamise set out to find him, and on the theory that among places to look for anything or anybody the last should be first she climbed the long, long stairs to the mold-loft.
He was not among the acolytes kneeling at the templates; nor was he in the cathedral of the shop. She sought him among the ships, and came upon him at last talking to Jake Nuddle, of all people!