ice, they set out to
bind the wounds and raise our damaged ships to a further lease of
sea-activity. So definite and sure are their methods, so skilled and
rapid their execution, they steam ahead of reconstruction and crowd the
waiting-room at the dry-dock gates. Lined up at the anchorage awaiting
their turn, the recovered vessels may be crippled and bent, and showing
torsion and distress in the list, and staggering trim with which they
swing flood and ebb. They may rest, halting, on the inshore shallow
flats, but, laid by for a term of repair, their day is to come again.
The Salvage Section has reclaimed their rent and stranded hulls from the
misty sea-Front; the Repair Section, working day and night, will hammer
and bind and reframe the gaps of their steel; the Sea Section will take
them out on the old stormy road, sound and seaworthy, with the flag at
the peak once more.

A DAY ON THE SHOALS

THE rigger was engaged at second tucks of a five-inch wire-splicing job,
and hardly looked in the direction we indicated. "Them," he said.
"Them's crocks wot we don't want nothin' more t' do with! Two on 'em's
got frozen mutton. High? Excelsi-bloody-or! . . . an' that feller as is
down by th' 'ead--Gawd! 'e don't 'arf smell 'orrible!" A pause, while he
hammered down the strands and found fault with his assistant, gave us
time to disentangle the negatives of his opening. "Grain, she 'as--an'
of all th' ruddy messes wot I ever see--she gets it! We 'ad four days at
'er--out there 'n th' Padrig Flats, an' she sickened nigh all 'ands! . . .
Now we're well quit o' 'er, an' th' longshore gangs is unloadin' th'
bulk, in nosebags an' gas 'elmets, t' get 'er a-trim for th' dry dock!"

As we passed alee of the grain-carrier there was no doubt of the truth
of the rigger's assurance. Steam-pumps on her fore-deck were forcing a
sickly mixture of liquid batter through hoses to a barge alongside, and
the overpowering stench of the mess blew down to us and set eyes and
noses quickening with instant nausea. The men on the barges were garbed
in odd headgear, high cowls with staring circular eyepieces, and each
carried a knapsack cylinder on his back. Clouds of high-pressure steam
from the winches and pumps threw out in exhaust, and the hooded,
ghost-like figures of the labourers passed and repassed in drifts of
white vapour. To the hiss and rumble of machines, clamour of
block-sheaves and chain and piston joined action to make a setting of
_I