“Most of you have been through this drill before,” he said. “You new men”—and here his gaze flicked across Arabella as well as several others—“are mostly seamen. You probably think a four-pound gun is just something you’d brush your teeth with, and even three of them add up to less than a mouse fart in a hurricane.” He laid a hand respectfully on the black brass barrel of the nearest cannon. “But in the air, properly handled, these weapons are just as deadly as any of His Majesty’s naval broadsides.”
The experienced crewmen then separated themselves among the three guns, followed by Kerrigan sorting the “new men” into the remaining positions. “You’ll be number three powder boy,” he said to Arabella, “reporting to Gowse.” He indicated a burly airman, who nodded an acknowledgement of the assignment to Kerrigan. “Run down to the magazine and bring back a charge, then do as he tells you.”
Arabella had to ask where the magazine was. It proved to be belowdecks and well aft, and like the gun deck it was positioned at the ship’s stem in the very center of her body—a small, dim room whose walls were sheathed in copper, stinking of saltpeter and sulfur. There a thin, nervous man whose name Arabella did not catch handed her a flannel bag packed tight with gunpowder. She tucked it under one arm and hurried back to the gun deck, nervously eyeing every lamp as she passed for fear her burden would explode before she reached her destination.
When she arrived back at the gun deck, she found it a hive of activity, reeking with the smell of freshly burned powder. Most of the men were stripped to the waist, and Arabella’s gun had been hauled back away from the open port, though a network of ropes and tackle held it fast in place.
Gowse glared angrily at her. “Ye took yer sweet time,” he shouted, snatching the bag from her and tossing it through the filthy air to another man. This second man shoved the bag into the cannon’s mouth and then, hooking his feet through two of the ropes that held the gun in place, rammed it the rest of the way down the cannon’s throat with a stout oak ramrod. Gowse, who had shoved some kind of tool through a hole at the cannon’s base, shouted “Home!” as he felt the bag touch down. The bag was followed by an iron ball a bit bigger than a cricket ball and then a wad of cloth, each packed tightly in place with the ramrod.
Then all the men, including Arabella, hauled on the lines until the gun was snugged up against its port, joining the rest of the guns, which had been waiting in that position for some time. One of the other men then grabbed Arabella by the shoulders and hauled her roughly away, leaving her to sail through the air until she bounced off the wall. Flailing in midair, she snagged one of the cannon ropes and held fast.
Kerrigan, frowning grimly at his pocket watch, immediately cried, “Fire!” At once, all the men around Arabella put their hands over their ears, and she strove to do the same without letting go of her rope.
Gowse blew on a smoldering match and touched it to the hole at the cannon’s base.
Then there came a cataclysmic triple crash as all three guns went off at once. The sound was so great that the breath was crushed out of Arabella’s lungs and, despite her hands pressed tightly to her ears, it felt as though her eardrums were meeting in the middle of her head.
For a moment Arabella floated stunned in midair, the brimstone stench of burnt powder the only sensation that penetrated her rattled brain. Hearing had been replaced by a vast sourceless ringing, vision was blurred, even the sense of touch was muffled by that terrible sound.
And then, out of the ringing dimness, could barely be heard Kerrigan’s voice: “Five minutes, eight seconds! That was appalling, lads! Again!”
A rough hand shook Arabella’s shoulder. It was Gowse, who shouted in her face, the spittle spraying her cheeks, but she could not make out a word. She shook her head. Again he shouted at her, and this time she barely heard: “Get down there and bring us a charge, and make f____g haste! Ye should have left the moment the last shot was done!”
For that entire watch, Arabella ran back and forth from the gun deck to the magazine, nearly the entire length of the ship, over and over and over again. The terror of carrying a highly explosive powder bag soon faded, replaced by exhaustion and annoyance at every obstacle, human or otherwise, that stood in her way. She became adept at flinging herself great distances down the length of the deck, springing off a bulkhead with the full strength of her legs and then twisting in midair to stop herself with her feet. Then, when she arrived at the gun deck with powder in hand, she joined in the preparation of the gun and then dashed away immediately for another charge, increasing her speed as well as avoiding the worst of the guns’ mighty noise.
She was almost disappointed when, after hours of endless labor, she brought back yet another bag of gunpowder only to find the gun deck’s ceaseless activity stilled. “That’s enough for today, lads!” Kerrigan cried, glancing at his watch. “Three minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Better, but still not good enough! More drill tomorrow!”
Arabella felt in her chest, rather than heard with her ringing ears, the men’s groans in response.