By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

them. Britannia wouldn't be ruling those waves for
long.
    "Well, I'll say this, by God," warned Fain.
"Before long the U.S. will be the world's greatest shipbuilder, and
I mean to be there when we reach the top. Merchant ships or naval
ships, it's all the same to me; I'll take whatever the U.S.
Shipping Board throws my way."
    "You look capable of hitting any pitch,"
agreed Geoff. What an astonishing amount of enthusiasm the man had,
and yet he was sixty if he was a day.
    "'Course, we can't turn out a destroyer in a
month and a half like that damned Squantum yard used to; but then
again, we're not at war. Anyway, it's all a matter of getting
organized. When I took over the yard from my ex-partner, it wasn't
much more than a junkyard: scrap everywhere, rotting bulkheads,
silted over railways. We've dredged and rebuilt and expanded, and I
don't mind admitting I didn't know the first thing about
shipbuilding. But with a little bit of working capital, and a
little bit of expert help—well, you see the possibilities. I've
just bought a chunk of shoreline west of here, for a second yard.
And I suppose you know how high International Mercantile Marine
stock is flying nowadays. Yes indeed; the future looks bright."
    Jim Fain was bursting with pride, the
unmistakable sign of a self-made man. He behaved totally unlike
those whose fortunes have been handed to them, who tended to react
in either of two ways: either they were comfortable with the
notion, like Matt Stevenson, or they went into agonies of
conscience over it. Amanda Fain, for instance, probably
agonized.
    They were in shed number four, looking over
a small wood freighter that had seen better days and was now being
overhauled and refurbished, when they ran into David Fain. He was
looking a little harried himself and seemed to be bullying the shed
foreman about something. When he saw his father and Geoff, he ended
the conversation abruptly and came over to them.
    "Problem?" asked Jim Fain.
    "Frank says the garboard's rotten and has to
be replaced. I say it's not and doesn't. He'd like to take the
summer and bring the ship back to new condition. The fool doesn't
understand that we'd have to charter it for the next hundred years
to get our money back." David brought out a handkerchief and mopped
his wet brow. He was visibly upset by the run-in.
    "My son has made a great leap forward this
week on the road to success," said his father, beaming. "He's hit
on the idea of buying neglected but salvageable ships, fixing them
up, and putting them into service for us."
    "You haven't seen Amanda, have you?" David
asked them, ignoring the compliments his father was heaping on his
head. "She was supposed to meet me here at noon."
    Fain's mood sharpened abruptly. "I've told
her not to set foot in the yard or I'll have her arrested. She can
stay outside on the picket line with the rest of her pals."
    "She never told me that," said David,
surprised.
    "She probably didn't tell you the name of
her latest project in bronze, either: she plans to call it 'Ship.'
I suppose she's going to show some destroyer fallen off the ways
onto its side and squashing some yardhand underneath. Or maybe
mowing down a mother and her babes rowing a skiff at sea. Well,
she's not going to draw her inspiration from Fain's Ironworks if I
have anything to say about it!"
    "Don't take her so seriously, Dad. No one
else does. She's a sculptress, for crissake!"
    "Yeah, well she's also a damned
rabble-rouser. All I need is a strike, and I promise you I'll
throttle your sister with my own bare hands."
    His face was beet-red angry. Geoff found
himself hoping fervently that Amanda was nowhere on the premises;
he wanted to believe his days of witnessing bloodshed were behind
him. He wandered away a step or two from the conversation,
wondering how it was that the Fain family managed with such
alacrity to make him feel like one of the servants, as if he wasn't
there. In a minute David took his leave, nodding brusquely to Geoff
on