he did not recognize her under her big hat till she paused for breath
and looked up, counting the remaining steep steps and wondering if her
tottering legs would negotiate the height.

He ran down and haled her up, scolding her with fury. He had been on
the go all night, and he was raw with uneasiness.

"I'm all right," Mamise pleaded. "I got caught in the jam at the gate
and was nearly crushed. That's all. It's glorious up here and I'd
rather die than miss it."

It was a sight to see. The shipyard was massed with workmen and their
families, and every roof was crowded. On a higher platform in the rear
the reporters of the moving-picture newspapers were waiting with their
cameras. On the roof of a low shed a military band was tootling
merrily.

And the sky had relented of its rain. The day was a masterpiece of
good weather. A brilliant throng mounted to the platform, an admiral,
sea-captains and lieutenants, officers of the army, a Senator,
Congressmen, judges, capitalists, the jubilant officers of the
ship-building corporation. And Mamise was the queen of the day. She
was the "sponsor" for the ship and her name stood out on both sides of
the prow, high overhead where the launching-crew grinned down on her
and called her by her _nom de guerre_, "Moll."

The moving-picture men yelled at her and asked her to pose. She went
to the rail and tried to smile, feeling as silly as a Sunday-school
girl repeating a golden text, and looking it.

Once more she would appear in the Sunday supplements, and her childish
confusion would make throngs in moving-picture theaters laugh with
pleasant amusement. Mamise was news to-day.

The air was full of the hubbub of preparation. Underneath the upreared
belly of the ship gnomes crouched, pounding the wedges in to lift the
hull so that other gnomes could knock the shoring out.

There was a strange fascination in the racket of the shores falling
over, the dull clatter of a vast bowling-alley after a ten-strike.

Painters were at work brushing over the spots where the shores had
rested.

Down in the tanks inside the hull were a few luckless anonymities with
search-lights, put there to watch for leaks from loose rivet-heads.
They would be in the dark and see nothing of the festival. Always
there has to be some one in the dark at such a time.

The men who would saw the holding-blocks stood ready, as solemn as
clergymen. The cross-saws were at hand for their sacred office. The
sawyer