Yule Logs: Longmans' Christmas Annual for 1898

Edited by
With Sixty-one Illustrations
39 Paternoster Row, London New York and Bombay 1898
All rights reserved
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press
Author of The White Conquerors, At War with Pontiac, Through Swamp and Glade, With Crockett and Bowie, &c. &c.
It was a grand success. Every one said so; and moreover, every one who witnessed the experiment predicted that the Mermaid would revolutionize naval warfare as completely as did the world-famous Monitor . Professor Rivers, who had devoted the best years of his life to perfecting his wonderful invention, struggling bravely on through innumerable disappointments and failures, undaunted by the sneers of those who scoffed, or the significant pity of his friends, was so overcome by his signal triumph that he fled from the congratulations of those who sought to do him honour, leaving to his young assistants the responsibility of restoring the marvellous craft to her berth in the great ship-house that had witnessed her construction.
There his dearest chum was his class-mate, Carl Baldwin, son of the famous American shipbuilder, John Baldwin, and heir to the latter's vast fortune. The elder Baldwin had founded the school in which his own son was now being educated, and placed at its head his life-long friend, Professor Alpheus Rivers, who, upon his patron's death, had also become Carl's sole guardian.
In appearance and disposition young Baldwin was the exact opposite of Carlos Moranza, and it was this as well as the similarity of their names that had first attracted the lads to each other. While the young Cuban was a handsome fellow, slight of figure, with a clear olive complexion, impulsive and rash almost to recklessness, the other was a typical Anglo-Saxon American, big, fair, and blue-eyed, rugged in feature, and slow to act, but clinging with bulldog tenacity to any idea or plan that met with his favour. He invariably addressed his chum as West, while the latter generally called him Carol.