The Mamise was farther advanced, but she would have to tie up for sixty days at least. The carpenters had her furniture all ready and waiting, but she could not put forth under her own steam for two months more.
The more reason for impatience at any further delay. Davidge went along the launching-platform rails, like a captain on the bridge, eager to move out of the slip.
“Make ready!” he commanded. “Stand by! Where’s the bottle? Good Lord! Where’s the bottle?”
That precious quart of champagne was missing now. The bottle had been prepared by an eminent jeweler with silver 338 decoration and a silken net. The neck would be a cherished souvenir thereafter, made into a vase to hold flowers.
The bottle was found, a cable was lowered from aloft and the bottle fastened to it.
Davidge explained to Mamise for the tenth time just what she was to do. He gave the signal to the sawyers. The snarl of the teeth in the holding-blocks was lost in the noise of the band. The great whistle on the fabricating-plant split the air. The moving-picture camera-men cranked their machines. The last inches of the timbers that held the ship ashore were gnawed through. The sawyers said they could feel the ship straining. She wanted to get to her sea. They loved her for it.
Suddenly she was “sawed off.” She was moving. The rigid mountain was an avalanche of steel departing down a wooden hill.
Mamise stared, gasped, paralyzed with launch-fright. Davidge nudged her. She hurled the bottle at the vanishing keel. It broke with a loud report. The wine splashed everywhichway. Some of it spattered Mamise’s new gown.
Her muscles went to work in womanly fashion to brush off the stain.
When she looked up, ashamed of her homely misbehavior, she cried: