So we had tea and cigarettes, and when I eventually shook hands with my Captain, I felt that I was parting with a friend.
"And what struck you most particularly this afternoon?" enquired one of my companions.
"Well," said I, "it was either the Lewis gun or Paterfamilias the grim."
Henceforth the word "Clydebank" will be associated in my mind with the ceaseless ring and din of riveting-hammers, where, day by day, hour by hour, a new fleet is growing, destroyers and torpedo-boats alongside monstrous submarines--yonder looms the grim bulk of Super-dreadnought or battle-cruiser or the slenderer shape of some huge liner.
And with these vast shapes about me, what wonder that I stood awed and silent at the stupendous sight. But, to my companion, a shortish, thick-set man, with a masterful air and a bowler hat very much over one eye, these marvels were an every day affair; and now, ducking under a steel hawser, he led me on, dodging moving trucks, stepping unconcernedly across the buffers of puffing engines, past titanic cranes that swung giant arms high in the air; on we went, stepping over chain cables, wire ropes, pulley-blocks and a thousand and one other obstructions, on which I stumbled occasionally since my awed gaze was turned upwards. And as we walked amid these awesome shapes, he talked, I remember, of such futile things as--books.
I beheld great ships well-nigh ready for launching: I stared up at huge structures towering aloft, a wild complexity of steel joists and girders, yet, in whose seeming confusion, the eye could detect something of the mighty shape of the leviathan that was to be; even as I looked, six feet or so of steel plating swung through the air, sank into place, and immediately I was deafened by the hellish racket of the riveting-hammers.
" ... nothing like a good book and a pipe to go with it!" said my companion between two bursts of hammering.
"This is a huge ship!" said I, staring upward still.
"H'm--fairish!" nodded my companion, scratching his square jaw and letting his knowledgeful eyes rove to and fro over the vast bulk that loomed above us.
"Have you built them much bigger, then?" I enquired.
My companion nodded and proceeded to tell me certain amazing facts which the riotous riveting-hammers promptly censored in the following remarkable fashion.