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That, the boy could figure out because he saw all the battleships. All his life he had loved ships, although he had had nothing to do with any, except the galleys which he had sailed in the road ditches. He knew very well that this city where so many battleships lay couldn't be any place but Karlskrona.
When he stood on the big Karlskrona square, and looked at the German church, and town hall, and the cathedral from which he had just descended, he couldn't do anything but wish that he was back on the tower again with the geese. It was a lucky thing that the square was entirely deserted. There wasn't a human being about unless he counted a statue that stood on a high pedestal.
Never had he dreamed that he should hear anything so great as that anyone was willing to risk life for his sake. From that moment, it could no longer be said of Nils Holgersson that he did not care for anyone. Saturday, April second. It was a moonlight evening in Karlskrona calm and beautiful.
The rifle which drove away wild beasts was made of iron, also the pick that had broken up the mine. Iron covered the men-of-war he had seen at Karlskrona; the locomotives steamed through the country on iron rails; the needle that had stitched his coat was of iron; the shears that clipped the sheep and the kettle that cooked the food.
The Riksdag authorized the government to negotiate a loan of $25,000,000 for works of defense, and declared the harbors of Stockholm, Karlskrona, Gothenburg, and Farosund to be war ports from which all foreign naval vessels were to be excluded. Norway's army was also mobilized and brought near the Swedish boundary.
The boy's grandfather had been an old marine; and as long as he had lived, he had talked of Karlskrona every day; of the great warship dock, and of all the other things to be seen in that city. The boy felt perfectly at home, and he was glad that he should see all this of which he had heard so much.
He had expected that this should be something really remarkable. And now he remembered that grandpa had also spoken of the wooden man, and said that all the children in Karlskrona were so fond of him. And that must have been true, for he, too, found it hard to part with the wooden man.
With that they broke off and walked forward on the streets of Karlskrona large and mighty until they came to a high gate, which led to the shipyard. Just outside and on guard walked one of the navy's jack-tars, but the bronze man strutted past him and kicked the gate open without the jack-tar's pretending to notice it.
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