"
By this time he had entirely given up his search for the boy, who felt
calm and secure where he sat in the wooden hat.
Thereupon both men wandered through the big establishment: sail-making
shops, anchor smithy, machine and carpenter shops. They saw the mast
sheers and the docks; the large magazines, the arsenal, the rope-bridge
and the big discarded dock, which had been blasted in the rock. They
went out upon the pile-bridges, where the naval vessels lay moored,
stepped on board and examined them like two old sea-dogs; wondered;
disapproved; approved; and became indignant.
The boy sat in safety under the wooden hat, and heard all about how they
had laboured and struggled in this place, to equip the navies which had
gone out from here. He heard how life and blood had been risked; how the
last penny had been sacrificed to build the warships; how skilled men
had strained all their powers, in order to perfect these ships which
had been their fatherland's safeguard. A couple of times the tears came
to the boy's eyes, as he heard all this.
And the very last, they went into an open court, where the galley models
of old men-of-war were grouped; and a more remarkable sight the boy had
never beheld; for these models had inconceivably powerful and
terror-striking faces. They were big, fearless and savage: filled with
the same proud spirit that had fitted out the great ships.
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