en up
the long hill on the other side. As they neared the crest of the
hill, Claude stood up in the car and looked back at the house,
waving his cone-shaped hat. She leaned out and strained her
sight, but her tears blurred everything. The brown, upright
figure seemed to float out of the car and across the fields, and
before he was actually gone, she lost him. She fell back against
the windowsill, clutching her temples with both hands, and broke
into choking, passionate speech. "Old eyes," she cried, "why do
you betray me? Why do you cheat me of my last sight of my
splendid son!"

Book Four: The Voyage of the Anchises

I

A long train of crowded cars, the passengers all of the same sex,
almost of the same age, all dressed and hatted alike, was slowly
steaming through the green sea-meadows late on a summer
afternoon. In the cars, incessant stretching of cramped legs,
shifting of shoulders, striking of matches, passing of
cigarettes, groans of boredom; occasionally concerted laughter
about nothing. Suddenly the train stops short. Clipped heads and
tanned faces pop out at every window. The boys begin to moan and
shout; what is the matter now?

The conductor goes through the cars, saying something about a
freight wreck on ahead; he has orders to wait here for half an
hour. Nobody pays any attention to him. A murmur of astonishment
rises from one side of the train. The boys crowd over to the
south windows. At last there is something to look at,--though
what they see is so strangely quiet that their own exclamations
are not very loud.

Their train is lying beside an arm of the sea that reaches far
into the green shore. At the edge of the still water stand the
hulls of four wooden ships, in the process of building. There is
no town, there are no smoke-stacks--very few workmen. Piles of
lumber lie about on the grass. A gasoline engine under a
temporary shelter is operating a long crane that reaches down
among the piles of boards and beams, lifts a load, silently and
deliberately swings it over to one of the skeleton vessels, and
lowers it somewhere into the body of the motionless thing. Along
the sides of the clean hulls a few riveters are at work; they sit
on suspended planks, lowering and raising themselves with
pulleys, like house painters. Only by listening very closely can
one hear the tap of their hammers. No orders are shouted, no thud
of heavy machinery or scream of iron drills tears the air. These
strange b