"Yes, boys, these were the dashin' days of old, and somehow I sighs w'en I think they're gone.
"But the future sea-fights, young gents, are goin' to be fought with cool heads on sturdy shoulders. Excitement or rashness will mean annihilation; manoeuvring will be prominent, ay, and pre-eminent."
Here Goodwin would pause perhaps, look funnily down at his models and smile.
"You may think it a droll remark o' me to make, lads, but I do believe that, given two hostile battleships, encountering each other, then that skipper who is a good whist player, and has a long head that can see a bit into futurity as it were, or guesses before-hand what t'other chap will do when he, the whist man, plays his next card, will win the game o' war.
"This will kind o' knock some o' the romance out o' naval warfare. But not so much as we may think. Moral courage, mind you, boys, is of a far higher sort of quality than physical. And altho' the poet asks—
"'And how can man die better,
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?'
one might answer him thus: He may die more truly courageously, more bravely too, if calm, if he meets his fate on a sinking iron-clad man-o'-war."
* * * * * * * * * * *
After their visit to Bermuda, and a delightful ramble through the beautiful island, Creggan was glad enough to find himself steering south and away via Puerto Rico, and bearing up for Venezuela. For the sea had already cast a glad glamour over the young man's life and soul.
Whenever he had time he wrote long delightful letters to his mother, to Daddy the hermit, to Archie, and to the Nugents, as well as to the manse. Perhaps his best and dearest of letters were those received by Matty. For Creggan couldn't help loving the child, and often he used to dream of her when far away at sea. Somehow she always appeared to him sitting in the stern of the skiff, her bonnie yellow hair toyed with by the breeze, and her eyes glistening with joy and happiness.