"There were some odd fish surrounding old Sir Joseph. Some of them I couldn't quite make out. He was just a little hard to get at, himself. I got very huffy at the old boy once or twice, I'm sorry to say. It was about ships. I'm a crank on ships. Everybody has at least one mania. That's mine--ships. Sir Joseph and I quarreled about them. He wanted to buy all I could make, but he was in no hurry to have 'em finished. I told him he talked more like a German trying to stop production than like a Britisher trying to speed it up. That made him huffy. I'm sorry I did him such an injustice. When you insult a man, and he dies--What a terrible repartee dying is! He had offered me a big price, too, but it's not money I want to make; it's ships. And I want to see 'em at work. Did you ever see a ship launched?" "No, I never did." "There's nothing prettier. Come over to my shipyard and I'll show you. We're going to put one over before long. I'll let you christen her." "That would be wonderful." "It's better than that. The civilized world is starting out on the most poetic job it ever undertook." "Indeed?" "Yep. The German sharks are gradually dragging all our shipping under water. The inventors don't seem able to devise any cure for the submarines except to find 'em and fight 'em. They're hard to find, and they won't fight. But they keep popping up and stabbing our pretty ships to death. And now the great game is on, the greatest game that civilized men ever fought with hell." "What's that?" "We're going to try to build ships faster than the Hun can sink 'em. Isn't that a glorious job for you? Was there ever a--well, a nobler idea? We can't kill the beast; so we're going to choke him to death with food." He laughed to hide his embarrassing exaltation. She was not afraid of it: "It is rather a stupendous inspiration, isn't it?" "Who was it said he'd rather have written Gray's 'Elegy' than taken Quebec? I'd rather have thought up this thought than written the Iliad. Nobody knows who invented the idea. He's gone to oblivion already, but he has done more for the salvation of freedom than all the poets of time."