"No, daughter, there is no danger of that. The largest ones are wooden models, and though quite a number are real and capable of doing terrible execution, there is not the slightest danger of their being used on us."
"I'm not one bit afraid of them!" cried little Ned, straightening himself up with a very brave, defiant air. "Not with papa along, anyhow."
"No, you needn't be, Ned," laughed Walter, "for most assuredly nobody would dare to shoot Captain Raymond or anybody under his care."
"No, indeed, I should think not," chuckled the little fellow, with a proudly affectionate look up into his father's face.
"No, nor any other visitor to the ship," said the captain. "We may go there without feeling the least apprehension of such a reception."
"So we will start for the Illinois as soon as we are ready for the day's pleasures," said Violet, smiling into the bright little face of her boy.
Harold and Herbert joined them at the usual early hour, bringing Chester and Frank Dinsmore with them, and in a few minutes they were all upon the deck of the model battleship.
They were treated very politely and shown every department from sleeping quarters to gun-deck. They were told that she was steel armor-plated below the berth-deck, and were shown that above the decks were steel turrets, through portholes of which deep-mouthed wooden guns projected. Also that she was fully manned and officered with a crew of two hundred men, who gave daily drills and performed all the duties required of them when in actual service on the high seas.
From the battleship they went to the lighthouse and life-saving station.
On the plaza in front of the Government Building was the camp of the life-saving corps. It was neat and pretty, and close beside it was the model of a government lighthouse. Some of our party went to the top of that, and all of them viewed the paraphernalia used in the saving of life when a vessel is wrecked within sight of the shore. Some of them had already seen it on the Eastern shore, but were sufficiently interested to care to look at it again, while to the others it was altogether new, as was the drill through which the company of life guards were presently put, for both the benefit to themselves of the practice, and the edification of visitors.