They had dined, and were gathered upon a wide verandah watching the sun
sink behind the rampart of Vancouver Island in a futurist riot of yellow
and red that died at last to an afterglow which lingered on the mountain
tops like a benediction. A bit of the Gulf opened to them, steel-gray,
mirror-smooth, more like a placid, hill-ringed lake than the troubled
sea.
But there was more in the eye's cast than beauty of sea and sky and
setting sun. From their seats they could look down on the curious jumble
of long sheds and giant scaffolding that was the great Coughlan steel
shipyard in False Creek. Farther distant, on the North Shore, there was
the yellowish smudge of what a keen vision discerned to be six wooden
schooners in a row, sister ships in varying stages of construction.
Some one said something about wooden shipbuilding.
"There's another big yard starting on the North Shore," Sophie said.
"One of our committee was telling me to-day. Her husband has something
to do with it."
"Yes. I can verify that," Tommy Ashe smiled. "That's my
contribution--the Vancouver Construction Company. I organized it. We
have contracted to supply the Imperial Munitions Board with ten
auxiliary schooners, three thousand tons burden each.
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