lonely and as anxious for her as if she
were indeed a little red-bonneted forest-farer on an errand of mercy.

Ships have always been dear to humankind because of the dangers they
run and because of the pluck they show in storms and fires, and the
unending fights they make against wind and wave. But of late they had
had unheard-of enemies to meet, the submarine and the infernal machine
placed inside the cargo.

Marie Louise spoke of this at the supper-table that night:

"To think, with so little food in the world and so many starving to
death, people could sink ships full of wheat!"

On the second day after the _Clara_ set forth on the ocean Marie
Louise took dictation for an hour and wrote out her letters as fast as
she could. In the afternoon she took the typewritten transcripts into
Davidge's office to drop them into his "in" basket.

The telephone rang. His hand went out to it, and she heard him say:

"Mr. Davidge speaking.... Hello, Ed.... What? You're too close to the
'phone.... That's better.... You're too far away--start all over.... I
don't get that.... Yes--a life-boat picked up with what--oh, six
survivors. Yes--from what ship? I say, six survivors from what
ship?... The _Clara_? She's gone? _Clara_?"

He reeled and wavered in his chair. "What happened--many lost? And the
boat--cargo--everything--everybody but those six! They got her, then!
The Germans got her--on her first voyage! God damn their guts!
Good-by, Ed."

He seemed to be calm, but the hand that held up the receiver groped
for the hook with a pitiful blind man's gesture.

Mamise could not resist that blundering helplessness. She ran forward
and took his hand and set the receiver in place.

He was too numb to thank her, but he was grateful. His mother was
dead. The ship he had named for her was dead. He needed mothering.

Mamise put her hands on his shoulders and gripped them as if to hold
them together under their burden. She said:

"I heard. I can't tell you how-- Oh, what can we do in such a world!"

He laughed foolishly and said, with a stumbling voice:

"I'll get a German for this--somehow!"

CHAPTER V

Mamise shuddered when she heard the blood-cry wrung out of Davidge's
agony.

She knew that the ship was more than a ship to him. Its death was as
the death of many children. It might mean the death of many children.
She stood over him, weeping for him like another Niobe among her
slaughtered family. The business man