s, where, day by day, hour by hour, a new fleet is growing, destroyers and torpedo boats alongside monstrous sub

y 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 cabl

s, 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 f

pipe to go with it!" said my compa

hip!" said I, sta

square jaw and letting his knowledgeful eyes rove

hem much bigger,

amazing facts which the riotous riveting-hammers pr

ead of two years and a half! Biggest battleship afloat-two hundred feet longer than

?" I shouted ab

tat-inch!" he sai

ch?" I

d twelve rattle-tattle inch besides r

hose guns are half as big

" said he, and

s?" I hastened to ask as the

eet. She was so big that we had to pull down a

at's he

d she's the rattle-t

e so noisy, do you suppose?" I

ou get used to it in time; I could hear a pin drop. Look! since we've stoo

led me, over and under more steel cables, until

ght she was pretty big then-but now-!" he settled his ha

!" said I, "she'll

ing his square jaw, "no, she'll never be f

k a medal in comme

"I fancy they'll wish they could swallow that damn medal

oard, but they escaped, thank G

ote, remember? Over there's one of the latest submarines. Germany can't

for the hammers were rio

t noisy! This way. A destroyer yonder-new class-rat-tat feet longer than ordinary. We expect her to do rat-tat-tat knots and she'll mount rat-tat guns. There are two of t

ere a week," said I, tri

classes since the war began in this one yard, and we're going on building till the war's over-and after that too. And this place is only one of

rbines and engines of monstrous shape in course of construction; I beheld mighty propellers, with boilers and furnaces big as houses, whose proportions were eloquent of the colossal ships that were to be. But here ind

ion, patting one of these monsters wit

men!" I

They haven't been giving muc

man," I suggested, "and some one has said that a man can fight

n, "we're fighting night and day and we're fighting damned hard. An

t has before

uffers 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-should

s, rising high above the hum of our engine was the unceasing