iness has got to come first, for
it's business that makes comfort. I'll let any man run this shop who
can run it as well as I can or better.

"What I'm against is letting somebody run my business who can't run
his own. Talk won't build ships, old man. And complaints and protests
won't build ships, or make any important money.

"Poor men are just as good as rich men and ought to have just the same
rights, votes, privileges. But the first right a poor man ought to
preserve is the right to become a rich man. Riches are beautiful
things, Iddings, and they're worth working for. And they've got to be
worked for.

"A laboring-man is a man that labors, whether he labors for two
dollars a day or a thousand; and a loafer is a loafer, whether he has
millions or dimes. Well, I've talked longer than I ever did before or
ever will again. Do you believe anything I say?"

"No."

Davidge had to laugh. "Well, Iddings, I've got to hand it to you for
obstinacy; you've got an old mule skinned to death. But old mules
can't compete with race-horses. Balking and kicking won't get you very
far."

He walked away, and Mamise went along. Davidge was in a somber mood.

"Poor old fellow, he's got no self-starter, no genius, no ideas, and
he's doomed to be a drudge. It's the rotten cruelty of the world that
most people are born without enough get-up-and-get to bring them and
their work together without a whistle and a time-clock and an
overseer. What scheme could ever be invented to keep poor old Iddings
up to the level of a Sutton or a Sutton down to his?"

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 mid