Mamise had heard a vast amount of discontented talk among the men. "There's an awful lot of trouble brewing." "Trouble is no luxury to me," said Davidge. "Blessed is he that expects trouble, for he shall get it. Wait till this war is over and then you'll see a real war." "Shall we all get killed or starved?" "Probably. But in the mean while we had better sail on and on and on. The storm will find us wherever we are, and there's more danger close ashore than out at sea. Let's make a tour of the _Mamise_ and see how soon she'll be ready to go overboard." CHAPTER VIII Nicky Easton's attempt to assassinate the ship had failed, but the wounds he dealt her had retarded her so that she missed by many weeks the chance of being launched on the Fourth of July with the other ships that made the Big Splash on that holy day. The first boat took her dive at one minute after midnight and eighty-one ships followed her into the astonished sea. While the damaged parts of the _Mamise_ were remade, Davidge pushed the work on other portions of the ship's anatomy, so that when at length she was ready for the dip she was farther advanced than steel ships usually are before they are first let into the sea. Her upper works were well along, her funnel was in, and her mast and bridge. She looked from a distance like a ship that had run ashore. There was keen rivalry among the building-crews of the ships that grew alongside the _Mamise_, and each gang strove to put its boat overboard in record time. The "Mamisers," as they called themselves, fought against time and trouble to redeem her from the "jinx" that had set her back again and again. During the last few days the heat was furious and the hot plates made an inferno of the work. Then an icy rain set in. The workers would not stop for mean weather, hot or cold. Mamise, the rivet-passer, stood to her task in a continual shower-bath. The furnace was sheltered, but the hot rivets must be passed across the rain curtain. Sutton urged her to lay off and give way to Snotty or somebody whose health didn't matter a damn. Davidge ordered her home, but her pride in her sex and her zest for her ship kept her at work. And then suddenly she sneezed! She sneezed again and again helplessly, and she was stricken with a great fear. For in that day a sneeze was not merely the little explosion of tickled surfaces or a forewarning of a slight cold. It was the alarum of the new Great Death, the ravening lion under the sheep's wool of influenza. The world that had seen the ancient horror of famine come stalking back from the Dark Ages trembled now before the plague. The influenza swept the world with recurrent violences.