Smooth sailing

The next two days passed smoothly. With a fair winds and blue sea the sloop could have almost sailed itself, but with a new crew and James brand new to sailing Brenan worked every one of them harder than he had to. Once each shift he had the hands douse and re-raise each of the sails in turn. It slowed the boat's progress a little but there was no substitute for practice.

Similarly he had the guns run out and mock-fired twice a day. Brenan could see Mr. Michaels itching to fire off the great guns at the old water casks that he had insisted they save to use as targets, but with his limited supplies of powder he decided to wait at least until Red, Cindy and Julien were aboard. Even working through the dry run drills Brennan had real hope for James, by the third gun practice Brenan stripped off his shirt and took the young man's place on the ropes.

"OK James." He told the confused young man as he handed him the powder horn with the fine grained powder used to prime the touch hole and the long-handled firing stick with the burning match at its end. "We'll go on your orders." He nodded to Harry who was manning the other set of ropes and to Sasha who was acting as a power-monkey carrying bags of corn meal that simulated gunpowder.

"Board #2!" James bellowed out confidently and Harry and Brenan rolled the heavy gun back from the port into the firing sequence starting position. Had the gun actually been fired the carriage would roll back this far on its own, for the drill they'd have to move the gun themselves.

"Sponge the barrel!" James ordered as he covered the vent hole with a leather patch. Mr. Michaels stepped forward obediently and ran a dripping wet wad at the end of a six foot pole down the barrel until water squirted up around the leather pad James was holding.

"Load cartridge!" Sang out James and Sasha handed the bag of corn meal to Brenan who pushed it into the cannon mouth before stepping back for Mr. Michaels to ram home.

"Load ball and wad!" Harry stepped to the gun and placed one of the heavy round balls and a thick wad and then he too stepped back while Mr. Michaels rammed the shot home.

"Haul #2!" Brenan actually found he liked the feel of the line in his hands as he and Castillo pulled the heavy gun until its muzzle was well clear of the gun port. His first station on the Kranderkill had been a ropeman on a portside gun he was just getting good when Red told the captain that he was by far the deadliest hand-to-hand recruit she had ever trained. That afternoon he had been reassigned to one of the boarding parties and never really worked the guns again.

At the time, Brenan had been pleased to get out of the claustrophobic smoke-filled gun deck back then, but he wished he had spent more time learning the nuances of aiming the great beasts. He watched James fill the vent-hole with fine-grained powder from the powder horn and then step to the side. James moved to the side to wait for the ship to start its upward swing. Mr. Michaels had been teaching the crew to fire the great guns on the up roll.

"We don't really want to sink our opponents, just knock down a couple spars so we can outrun them." He had explained on the first day and Brenan had quietly agreed, later he'd have Michaels work on level shots to clear decks of potential boarders. The power flashed in the venthole as James lowered the glowing match to the firing hole.

James might have fired the vent-hole just a split second to early, but Brenan wasn't going to complain.

"He glanced at his gunnery officer and saw Mr. Michaels nod in satisfaction as well.

"OK." He said briskly. "Worm the ball and all that mock powder out of the gun and we'll put in the tompions and call it a day."

By the time the schooner was sailing into the rendezvous point the deck had been once again cleared and he had Tyler up on the cross trees looking for Red and her boat.

"Sail-ho!" He heard from above with no hint of a stutter at all and Brenan craned his neck trying to see where Tyler was pointing.