The fuses would come from a "laboratory chest" in the captain's cabin, too. These were conical tubes made of beech or willow wood and filled with a composition of sulphur, saltpetre and mealed powder. A mixture of tallow, pitch and beeswax sealed both ends. The tapering end of the cone would go inside the shell, stripped of its protective coating, but the great end must keep its tallow until just before firing. And they all agreed that, whilst the mortars were in service, it would be impossible to employ the thirty-two-pounder great-guns simultaneously, for they would require other lit port-fires and slow matches, and that was a risk too great to contemplate.
It helped immensely, Lewrie learned from observation, that their mortars were mounted on central pintles which passed completely through the bed of the mortar carriages, through the supporting timbers and deck beams of the mortar wells, through the overhead beams on the orlop, and terminated in large baulks of timber which held the whole affair up; so the mortars could be "laid" or "pointed" left and right. All they had to do was anchor with the best-bower and single kedge (with springs, of course, on their cables), roughly abeam of the target or the coast, and the bombardiers could heave their massive charges about for aiming.
Thirteen-inch mortar; weight, eighty-one hundredweight, two quarters, one pound, according to Falconer. Powder charge when the chamber at its base was full, thirty pounds. Weight of a "fixed" shell, 198 pounds; and filled with seven pounds of the very best powder. The shells were cast-iron balls, hollow, with their greatest thickness on the bottom, the better to resist the awful force of discharge from the bore, and to keep that heaviest part away from the fuse, flying first through the air, and landing on that thick portion, with the thinner, and lighter, filling and fusing end uppermost. There were two carrying handles cast or hammer-welded to either side of the fuse hole. Perhaps to avoid confusion for slower minds.
Beyond that, Lewrie's theory got a little vague; he'd never had the greatest head for numbers. Falconer's, under Range, listed a table of practice for sea mortars, giving the specific weights of propelling charges, and the proper fuses to use. For instance, he could discover that at forty-five degrees of elevation, a thirteen-inch mortar took an eighteen-pound charge to hurl the shot, which resulted in a flight of twenty-six seconds, and range of roughly 2,873 yards. And for the fuse to explode at the right moment, burning at the rate of four seconds and forty-eight parts to the inch, would require a premade fuse of the exact length of five inches, seventy-two parts, to be selected from the "laboratory chest." Then, of course, there was the niggling matter of the gunners who would light the fuse, and the mortar's touch hole, with slow match, doing both at the same instant. But Alan assumed that the Spanish bombardiers, and the insufferably laconic Don Luis, might know what they were doing, and if they made a hash of it, then it was their own damned fault.
Lavishly re-equipped from those mountains of French supplies in the basin's arsenals and warehouses, they sailed Zele, her new sails almost virgin-white, from the docks, through the opening between the bomb-proof jetties, and out to join St. George and Aurore, just after first light on the 24th.
"Springs on the cables, sir," Lieutenant Scott informed him.
"Wash-deck pumps going? Filling room and magazine passageway?"
"Aye, sir."
"Let's be at it, then," Lewrie grimaced, his stomach chilly with trepidation at the unknown nature of their work. And over the danger, which was very known, of any clumsiness or inattentiveness.
"Might as well be, sir," Scott dared to assay a tiny, wry grin. "It appears the Frogs already are."
They walked amidships, to peer down into the mortar wells, then tip their hats to de Crillart and Esquevarre, who stood close together by the rearward lip, evidently engaged in some heated discussion.
"Non non, Comandante, Le Blond…" Charles de Crillart objected gently. "Alain… mon capitaine, I attemp' to tell zis… monsieur Le Blond say ze s'irty pound' charge eez beau-coup, mais zis… ze Comandante insist…"
Don Luis de Esquevarre rattled off an expostulation in rapid Spanish, out of which Lewrie caught perhaps the odd word in ten, most of those mildly insulting.
"Senor," he said, whipping out his copy of Falconer. "Allow me to quote, and do you translate, Lieutenant de Crillart… aha, here it is.
Mr. Mutter in his Treatife of Artillery, very juftly obferves, that the breech of our 13-inch fea-mortars is loaded with an unneceffary weight of metal. The chamber thereof contains 32 pounds of powder, and at the fame time they are never charged with more than 12 or 15 pounds by the moft expert officers, becaufe the bomb-vessel is unable to bear the violent fhock of their full charge."
" 'E say eez Inglese bull-sheet, mon capitaine," de Crillart translated back. "Zat eez on'y pour ze cyUnder chambre, et we 'ave een zis bombard, ze conical. 'E also say 'e eez tres esperi-ence viz artillery, an' 'e 'ave no need to be tol'… 'ow to soock eggs? Comment?" de Crillart shrugged in bewilderment.
To de Crillart's even further confusion, Lewrie laughed out loud, prompting a tiny upturn of one corner of Don Luis' mouth in return.
"Senor Comandante, I have implicit trust in your experience," Lewrie cajoled, phrase by phrase as de Crillart transposed for him, "but this is a ship, not a firm battlement or well-prepared battery… do you see here, under Range… practice table? Weights of charge?"
"Ah, si, capitan!" Don Luis brightened, pulling from a voluminous pocket of his ornate uniform coat a much-tattered, oft-rolled and thumbed table of practice, expostulating eagerly.
Fumm-fumm! Umumm. Scrreee-BLAM! BLAM! All this time, Republican shot had been falling into the Little Road, St. George belching displeasure, and Aurore's six- and twelve-pounders, breeches resting flat on their carriages for greatest "range at random-shot," had been barking away. And once in a while, other floating batteries had erupted in fog banks of powder smoke.
"Ze tres petit malentendu… ze lettle mis-un'erstan'ment?" Charles said with relief, at last. " 'E eez 'ave een min' ze less of ze powder. 'E ees s'inking ze, uhm… nine poun', at firs'?"
"Whew!" Scott breathed out.
"I defer to his greater knowledge, tell him, Charles," Alan said, doffing his hat, making sure he was grinning when he said it.
Up from the orlop came a powder charge, sacked by the called-for weight. Spanish bombardiers used paper cartridges. From the filling room came a shell, two burly Spaniards grunting with effort to carry it by its small, slippery handles. Don Luis and his aspirante, or ensign-in-training, and a hirsute, cursing bear of a man, a sergeant-gunner, Diego Huelva, directed the work of heaving the after-mortar, the left hand of the pair as they faced the coast, into line. Then began to elevate it to forty-five degrees. They fussed and hopped, peered and tinkered at screws, until satisfied, then waved for the shell to be brought forward.
Down it went into the well, as the powder charge was rammed deep into the chamber, and the priming iron was thrust into the touch hole to both clear the vent and puncture the bag. Slowly the fixed shell was lowered into the stubby bore, handles and fuse hole up.
Don Luis took a deep breath, almost made to cross himself, as he waved the excess hands away and ordered the tallow seal on the fuse to be opened. "Fosforo, preparado…!" he cried. "Fuego!"
The smouldering port-fires touched both fuse and touch hole, and there was a split second of sizzle, then a tremendous blast! Down went the deck, as if shoved by the hand of God, and Zele's timbers groaned.