His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith's at the village on the hill--to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to the dockyard. Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions, and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know. And when he got to the dockyard his obliging feet carried him to a man in a great leather apron, busy with great beams of wood and tools that Dickie had never seen. And the man greeted him as an old friend, kissed him on both cheeks--which he didn't expect, and felt much too old for--and spread a sack for him that he might sit in the sun on a big baulk of timber. "Thou'rt a sight for sore eyes, Master Richard," he said; "it's many a long day since thou was here to pester me with thy questions. And all's strong again--no bones broken? And now I'll teach thee to make a galleon, like as I promised." "Will you, indeed?" said Dickie, trembling with joy and pride. "That will I," said the man, and threw up his pointed beard in a jolly laugh. "And see what I've made thee while thou'st been lazying in bed--a real English ship of war." He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next moment came out with a little ship in his hand--a perfect model of the strange high-built ships Dickie could see on the river. [Illustration: "'TIS THE PICTURE,' SAID HE PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP, "THE GOLDEN VENTURE"'" [_Page 97_] "'Tis the picture," said he, proudly, "of my old ship, _The Golden Venture_, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his beard." "The Armada!" said Dickie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather like going down unexpectedly in a lift. "The _Spanish_ Armada?" "What other?" asked the ship-builder. "Thou'st heard the story a thousand times." "I want to hear it again," Dickie said. And heard the story of England's great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the one you read in your history book--and yet how different, when it was told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. Dickie held his breath.