Surgeons in steel operated on the battered epidermis of the _Mamise_ and sewed her up again. It was slow work and it had all the discouraging influence of work done twice for one result. But the toil went on, and when at last Davidge left the hospital he was startled by the change in the vessel. As a father who has left a little girl at home comes back to find her a grown woman, so he saw an almost finished ship where he had left a patchwork of iron plates. It thrilled him to be back at work again. The silence of the hospital had irked his soul. Here the air was full of the pneumatic riveter. They called it the gun that would win the war. The shipyard atmosphere was shattered all day long as if with machine-gun fire and the riveters were indeed firing at Germany. Every red-hot rivet was a bullet's worth. The cry grew louder for ships. The submarine was cutting down the world's whole fleet by a third. In February the Germans sank the _Tuscania_, loaded with American soldiers, and 159 of them were lost. Uncle Sam tightened his lips and added the _Tuscania's_ dead soldiers to the _Lusitania's_ men and women and children on the invoice against Germany. He tightened his belt, too, and cut down his food for Europe's sake. He loosened his purse-strings and poured out gold and bonds and war-savings stamps, borrowing, lending, and spending with the desperation of a gambler determined to break the bank. While Davidge was still in the hospital the German offensive broke. It succeeded beyond the scope of the blackest prophecy. It threw the fear of hell into the stoutest hearts. All over the country people were putting pins in maps, always putting them farther back. Everybody talked strategy, and geography became the most dreadful of topics. On March 29th Pershing threw what American troops were abroad into the general stock, gave them to Haig and Foch to use as they would. On the same day the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of _Gott_ sent this harbinger of good-will. The Germans began to talk of the end of Great Britain, the erasure of France, and the reduction of America to her proper place. Spring came to the dismal world again with a sardonic smile. In Washington the flower-duel was renewed between the Embassy terrace and the Louise Home. The irises made a drive and the forsythia sent up its barrage. The wistaria and the magnolia counterattacked. The Senator took off his wig again to give official sanction to summer and to rub his bewildered head the better. The roving breezes fluttered tragic newspapers everywhere--in the parks, on the streets, on the scaffolds of the buildings, along the tented lanes, and in the barrack-rooms.