, on which I stumbled occasionally since my awed
gaze was turned upwards. And as we walked amid these awesome shapes,
he talked, I remember, of such futile things as--books.

I beheld great ships well-nigh ready for launching; I stared up at
huge structures towering aloft, a wild complexity of steel joists and
girders, yet, in whose seeming confusion, the eye could detect
something of the mighty shape of the leviathan that was to be; even
as I looked, six feet or so of steel plating swung through the air,
sank into place, and immediately I was deafened by the hellish racket
of the riveting-hammers.

"... nothing like a good book and a pipe to go with it!" said my
companion between two bursts of hammering.

"This is a huge ship!" said I, staring upward still.

"H'm--fairish!" nodded my companion, scratching his square jaw and
letting his knowledgeful eyes rove to and fro over the vast bulk that
loomed above us.

"Have you built them much bigger, then?" I enquired.

My companion nodded and proceeded to tell me certain amazing facts
which the riotous riveting-hammers promptly censored in the following
remarkable fashion.

"You should have seen the rat-tat-tat. We built her in exactly
nineteen months instead of two years and a half! Biggest battleship
afloat--two hundred feet longer than the rat-tat-tat--launched her
last rat-tat-tat--gone to rat-tat-tat-tat for her guns."

"What size guns?" I shouted above the hammers.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-inch!" he said, smiling grimly.

"How much?" I yelled.

"She has four rat-tat-tat-tat inch and twelve rattle-tattle inch
besides rat-tat-tat-tat!" he answered, nodding.

"Really!" I roared, "if those guns are half as big as I think, the
Germans--"

"The Germans--!" said he, and blew his nose.

"How long did you say she was?" I hastened to ask as the hammers died
down a little.

"Well, over all she measured exactly rat-tat feet. She was so big
that we had to pull down a corner of the building there, as you can
see."

"And what's her name?"

"The rat-tat-tat, and she's the rattle-tattle of her class."

"Are these hammers always quite so noisy, do you suppose?" I
enquired, a little hopelessly.

"Oh, off and on!" he nodded. "Kick up a bit of a racket, don't they,
but you get used to it in time; I could hear a pin drop. Look! since
we've stood here they've got four more plates fixed--there goes the
fifth. This way!"

Past the towering bows of future battleships he