Mr. Avery, the chief clerk, and other clerks and stenographers, gathered, wondering what was about to happen. Some of them came grinning, for when they had asked Miss Gabus what was up she had guessed: "I reckon he's goin' to announce his engagement." The office force came in like an ill-drilled comic-opera chorus. Davidge waited till the last-comer was waiting. Then he said: "Folks, I've just had bad news. The _Clara_--they got her! The Germans got her. She was blown up by a bomb. She was two days out and going like a greyhound when she sank with all on board except six of the crew who got away in a life-boat and were picked up by a tramp." There was a shock of silence, then a hubbub of gasps, oaths, of incredulous protests. Miss Gabus was the first to address Davidge: "My Gawd! Mr. Davidge, what you goin' to do about it?" They thought him a man of iron when he said, quietly: "We'll build some more ships. And if they sink those we'll--build some more." He was a man of iron, but iron can bend and break and melt, and so can steel. Yet there is a renewal of strength, and, thanks to Mamise, Davidge was recalled to himself, though he was too shrewd or too tactful to give her the credit for redeeming him. His resolute words gave the office people back to their own characters or their own reactions and their first phrases. Each had something to say. One, "She was such a pretty boat!" another, "Was she insured, d'you suppose?" a third, a fourth, and the rest: "The poor engineer--and the sailors!" "All that work for nothin'!" "The money she cost!" "The Belgians could 'a' used that wheat!" "Those Germans! Is there anything they won't do?" The chief clerk shepherded them back to their tasks. Davidge took up the telephone to ask for more steel. Mamise renewed the cheerful _rap-rap-rap_ of her typewriter. The shock that struck the office had yet to rush through the yard. There was no lack of messengers to go among the men with the bad word that the first of the Davidge ships had been destroyed. It was a personal loss to nearly everybody, as it had been to Davidge, for nearly everybody had put some of his soul and some of his sweat into that slow and painful structure so instantly annulled. The mockery of the wasted toil embittered every one. The wrath of the workers was both loud and ferocious. Jake Nuddle was one of the few who did not revile the German plague. He was not in the least excited over the dead sailors. They did not belong to his union. Besides, Jake did not love work or the things it made. He claimed to love the workers and the money they made. He was tactless enough to say to a furious orator: "Ah, what's it to you? The more ships the Germans sink the more you got to build and the more they'll have to pay you. If Davidge goes broke, so much the better. The sooner we bust these capitalists the sooner the workin'-man gets his rights." The orator retorted: "This is war-times. We got to make ships to win the war."