"And do you mean the air's the same, or going to be?"
The look that I have ventured to call discontent came into his eyes.
"Well, nothing's quite the same as anything else, of course. But I do think this. There's Germany. Over there----," he nodded out to sea. "North Sea or German Ocean we used to call that, and that was there she said her future was. Well, it isn't, of course. She hasn't got any coast to speak of, and isn't going to have any. But----"
And this time his eyes went aloft to the immeasurable fields of the air.
"She's got just as much of _that_ as anybody else. Taking a perfectly sound line about it too. And what's the good of our saying she shan't build aircraft as long as the damn dog doesn't know? Of course she'll build aircraft. That's where her future is now, and she can afford to hand over ships. But every Zepp or plane you get out of her you'll have to get with a pair of pincers. Then ... swift? Swift won't be the word.... Oh, don't I wish I could get on one of these Expeditions!"
I made no comment on this, since I know nothing about the air. These were merely the words of Charles Valentine Smith, who did.
He knew very little about himself--hardly seemed aware that there was anything of importance to know. It was all Maxwell--"Bobby was the whole show." And I had a very keen sense of the honor the dead man had done himself in denying this. "Frightfully hot stuff on maths," said Smith; and the world is full of men who are "frightfully hot stuff on maths," in that sense; but it is rarely that you find one of these not too absorbed in the technique and detail of his own activities to be aware of a vision beyond. I know this in my own business. I see men working with an appalling intensity, a new and wild and squandering energy that has long ago passed from me; but for their Muse I look in vain. An altar is set up, not to any god known or unknown, but to itself. I speak diffidently, but I seldom see that any flame from Elsewhere descends upon it. This is hard to say, since I too rub my two sticks together with my fellows, hoping they may kindle. I should not say it except that I was now trying to arrive at some comprehension of Maxwell, the competent and efficient man, exposed to all manner of temptations to narrowness and complacency and inertia, but who could yet see in this unsuspecting youngster something he himself did not and could never possess.