. Up from the floors with
their work completed, the divers doff their heavy head-gear and sit a
while, _resting_ comfortably under the thrash of the same persistent
rain. Anon, their awkward garb discarded, they walk off, striding with a
crook at the knees, like farmer folk on ploughed land. The great pumps
now pulsate at full speed, drawing water to their sluices in an eddying
current that spins the flotsam and bares ledge after ledge of the solid
dock masonry. From gaping wounds of the crippled vessels a full tide of
seawater gushes and spurts to join the troubled wash below. The beams
and side-planking, and temporary measures of the salvage section,
uncover and come to sight, showing with what patience and laborious care
the divers have striven to stem an inrush.

On the second ship the receding water-line exposes the damage to her
engine- and boiler-rooms. A litter of coal and oily scum showers from
angles of the wrecked bunker and stokehold to the floor of the dock, and
leaves the fractured beams and tubes to stand out in gaunt twist and
deformity. Through the breaches the shattered cylinders and broken
columns of the engines lie distorted in a piled raffle of wrenched pipe
sections, valves and levers, footplates, skeleton ladders, and shafting.
The mass of distorted metal has still a shine and token of polish, and
these signs of late care and attention only serve to make the ruin seem
the more complete and irremediable.

An hour later a strident power syren sounds out from roof of the repair
'shops.' The workmen, hurrying to 'check in' at the gates, scarcely
glance at their new jobs on the blocks of the dry-dock. To them it seems
quite a commonplace that the round of their industry should suffer no
halt, that the two seaworthy ships they completed yesterday should be so
quickly replaced by the same type of casualty for their attention. The
magnitude of the task--the vast extent of plating to be sheared and
rebuilt, the beams to be withdrawn or straightened in place, the litter
to be cleared--holds no misgivings. Short on the stroke of 'turn to'
they straggle down the dockside to start the round anew. With critical
eye, foremen and surveyors chalk off the cypher of their verdicts on the
rusted displaced remnants; the gangs apportion and assemble with tools
and gear; the huge travelling cranes rumble along on their railways, and
lower slings and hooks in readiness for a load of damaged steel.

With the men lined o