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Stewam and Sugarscraps will send in everything, if you'll only tell the old fogies downstairs not to interfere." Then she made a little request. Might she ask Everett, who was now in town? "I've already got Major Pountney and Captain Gunner," he said. She pleaded that one more would make no difference. "But that's just what one more always does.
Of course, I shall enjoy a good substantial dinner once a week, but I really care more to be with the family at that house. Gunner is a splendid fellow, as you know, and his father draws all kinds of nice people about him, I hear. I did not dare to tell you this before, little sister; but now I have made a clean breast of it. I was half teasing about it, too.
But before the sun set there were more serious disasters. Much powder and shot had been expended by the Spaniards to very little purpose, and so a master-gunner on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimanded for careless ball-practice. The gunner, who was a Fleming, enraged with his captain, laid a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, and threw himself into the sea. Two decks blew up.
Watch a gunner laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel.
'A little short, says our gunner. 'Two and a half minutes left, adds a little small voice, which represents another observer at a different angle. 'Raise her seven five, says our boy encouragingly. 'Mother' roars more angrily than ever. 'How will that do? she seems to say. 'One and a half right, says our invisible gossip.
Ben a few days afterwards received, to his satisfaction, his warrant as boatswain, his zeal being considerably enlivened thereby. He, before long, managed to pick up a number of prime hands from among his old shipmates, on whom he could thoroughly depend. The gunner and carpenter joined the same day he got his warrant.
The crew of the middle cannon lay on the deck in a pitiable state, two killed outright and the gunner bleeding from a great splinter wound in the head. A shot had entered to one side of the port, tearing the planking to bits and after striking down the two gun-servers, had passed into the fo'c's'le.
Furthermore, of those two hundred and ninety-two men, no less than one hundred and sixty-five had been aboard the Colossus, and had joined after being paid off from that craft; while, on the quarter-deck, the skipper, Mr Galway the second lieutenant, Mr Trimble the master, Maxwell the master's-mate, Gascoigne a midshipman, Mr Purvis the gunner, and myself had all been shipmates together in the same craft.
He promised to leave with them provisions of bread and wine for a year, a ship's boat, seeds for sowing crops, and a carpenter, a caulker, a gunner, and a cooper.
In one place were seen three men it was the gunner and his two mates. They had carefully-closed lanterns and list shoes on their feet. They were visiting the magazine, to see that the powder was dry.
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