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.
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.
He stood beside me at the window with one in the uniform of a naval captain, and we looked, all three of us, at that which few might behold unmoved.
"She's a beauty!" said the Captain. "She's all speed and grace from cutwater to sternpost."
"I've been building ships for sixty-odd years and we never launched a better!" said the Master Builder.
She lay within a stone's-throw, a mighty vessel, huge of beam and length, her superstructure towering proudly aloft, her massive armoured sides sweeping up in noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought complete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like she sat the water all buoyant grace from lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me there was something sublime in the grim and latent power, the strength and beauty of her.
"But she's not so very--big, is she?" enquired a voice behind me.