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Updated: June 10, 2025
He gin'rally says, `I not un'r'stan' English ver' well, shakes his head an' grins, but the Cappen never listens to his answers, bein' too busy loadin' and primin' for another broadside." The man to whom he referred cut short the conversation at this point by shouting down the stair: "Hallo! Gillie, you powder-monkey, where are my shoes?"
Each man went to his station bulkheads were knocked away the fires put out the magazine opened powder and shot were carried on deck the guns were cast loose, and every preparation was made in a wonderfully short space of time. As I passed along the main-deck, I found Toby Bluff sitting on his tub, the picture of a regular powder-monkey fat, sturdy, and unconcerned.
Each individual, therefore, from Lord Exmouth to the smallest powder-monkey, was as well primed for action as were the guns of the fleet when the flag of truce returned. It had been met outside the mole about eleven AM by the captain of the port, and an answer was promised in two hours. But these pirates had never been celebrated for keeping their word.
Tim Fid acted the part of powder-monkey; while he and Hartland had charge of one gun, and Mr Nott, helped by Paul, worked the other. Paul, indeed, stepped from gun to gun as his services were required. Now they set to work in right earnest and began to blaze away as hard as they could, while Tom Marline stood at the helm and steered the flying brig.
Charley and I had got hold of a pistol a-piece, and purposed committing great execution with them, but I was condemned to help La Motte to hand up powder and shot from below, greatly to Master Charley's amusement, who looked down and asked how I liked being a powder-monkey. As I every now and then shoved my head through the hatchway, I saw that the brig was coming up rapidly after us.
So I put him down again, and there was his little lordship as busy as any powder-monkey, handing up the powder to the gunners. Well, as I was saying, the shot was falling pretty thick about our ears, when a round shot takes off the head of a marine standing close to the small boy, scattering the brains and blood of the poor fellow right over the small chap, almost blinding him.
"And if you should want to see a main-deck fought as a main-deck should be fought, why, sir, be good enough to take a seat." He kicked a powder-monkey off his box, and offered it with a bow. "Can't," said Kit, turning. "No time. See you again later." The other stooped and peered out of a port. "Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy doobious. Ah!
He was afterwards appointed a storekeeper in the Dockyard. It was during the former stage of William Maudslay's employment at Woolwich, that the subject of this memoir was born in the house in the court above mentioned, on the 22nd of August, 1771. The boy was early set to work. When twelve years old he was employed as a "powder-monkey," in making and filling cartridges.
And did we not show them the very guns, and the muskets, the pistols and the cutlasses, the shot-lockers and magazines, and tell them how the lad, scrubbing a brass kettle in the caboose, had been occupied as a powder-monkey and seen blood shed in earnest?
The Laurel had for some days been becalmed, and though every one on board, from the captain to the smallest powder-monkey, had been whistling for a breeze to carry her back to look after her prizes and consorts, no breeze came. Dick had been the busiest of the busy.
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