towers and cannon
on deck--such as are in use nowadays; and narrow, shining torpedo boats
which resembled long, slender fishes.

When the boy was carried around among all this, he was awed. "Fancy that
such big, splendid ships have been built here in Sweden!" he thought to
himself.

He had plenty of time to see all that was to be seen in there; for when
the bronze man saw the models, he forgot everything else. He examined
them all, from the first to the last, and asked about them. And
Rosenbom, the boatswain on the _Dristigheten_, told as much as he knew
of the ships' builders, and of those who had manned them; and of the
fates they had met. He told them about Chapman and Puke and Trolle; of
Hoagland and Svensksund--all the way along until 1809--after that he had
not been there.

Both he and the bronze man had the most to say about the fine old wooden
ships. The new battleships they didn't exactly appear to understand.

"I can hear that Rosenbom doesn't know anything about these new-fangled
things," said the bronze man. "Therefore, let us go and look at
something else; for this amuses me, Rosenbom."

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