"That may not be necessary, Your Excellency." Jeremy seemed very positive, very sure of himself. "Have I your permission to proceed?"
"You certainly have!" Sir Arthur was on his feet, and the members of the council were sitting up in their thickly padded chairs.
Dirk, unabashed at appearing before such a select group, raised his voice for the first time. "Up where we come from," he said mildly, "folks learn t' be just naturally nosy. So me 'n' Jerry here, we got a-talkin' t' Cap'n Thorne, and b'fore ye could spit cross-wind, he was a-takin' us around 'n' a-showin' us all them guns that the boucaniers went 'n' spoilt for ye."
"It so happens, Your Excellency," Jeremy cut in, "that my friend and I are gunsmiths by training and vocation. We have examined the weapons that the enemy attempted to destroy. However, in our opinion they had too little time to accomplish their purpose, and we believe we can repair the damage." "Master Stone has outlined his plan to me, sir," Captain Thorne put in, "and it seems very logical. In fact, I think it might work."
"Can you place sufficient guns in operation by eight o'clock tomorrow morning to repulse a rebel attack, Master Stone?'* The governor general's face looked tired and lined.
Dirk whistled. "Eight o'clock in the mornin'. That sure ain't a-givin' us much time."
Jeremy silenced the giant with a glance. "We'll do our best. Your Excellency." "I'm sure you will."
"However, with such a time limit I shall need far more help than I had anticipated. In fact, I'll require your very active co-operation."
"You have it, young man!" To the astonishment of the council members, Sir Arthur strode over to the bedraggled young gunsmith and clapped him fondly on the shoulder.
"You'll give me one hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred men, all of them prepared to work through the remainder of the day and the night, Your Excellency?"
Clearly Sir Arthur had not anticipated a request of such magnitude and for an instant he seemed staggered. "I think I can oblige you, though our force of effectives for tomorrow will be cut considerably. Men who labor all night do not make alert soldiers in the morning." He deliberated briefly, then added, "As I know a little something about artillery, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how you intend to employ my troops."
"Certainly, sir. If my memory serves me correctly, there are a large number of demi-cannon and culverins located in the Citadel. I inspected them at a time when I—ah—enjoyed your confidence as well as that of Her Grace of Glasgow. Those guns need not concern us in any way. They are emplaced in the stones of the fort, facing out to sea, and they therefore cannot be turned to face inland." He looked past the governor general at the inquiring faces of the council members. "A demi-cannon weighs more than four thousand pounds, gentlemen, and fires a thirty-two-pound ball. A culverin weighs approximately five thousand pounds and shoots an eighteen-pound ball. Both of these guns are about twelve feet long. And we need not fear that the Duchess can exert her charms to the extent that the muzzles of these weapons can be pointed in our direction."
Dirk Friendly jammed his hands into the pockets of his ragged trousers, and his bass voice filled the room. "Them sakers 'n' basilisks ye got right in yer own yard 'n' at the garrison, them is guns we c'n use for sure."
"That's right," Jeremy added confidently. "There are twenty sakers only partly damaged. With the right help I can have a number of them in operation again, perhaps by tomorrow morning." His voice grew in volume and authority. "A saker, gentlemen, is a comparatively small yet powerful gun. It weighs about fifteen hundred pounds, and it fires a six-pound ballwith great force. We'll also do what we can with one or two of the basilisks on the parade ground, for I'm sure you'd find them useful in the event that it should be necessary for you to destroy a whole section of the Citadel with cannon fire. But I make you no promises with regard to the basilisks, Sir Arthur. They are ponderous guns, and I am handicapped by a lack of proper equipment as well as by time. However, I will do my best and I hope to have some success before the enemy attacks."
By midnight the lawns of King's House looked as though a particularly devastating tropical hurricane had struck them. Teams of soldiers had dug a series of deep holes five feet long and almost as wide, and in these burned fires that were continually being fed by troopers. Other groups of perspiring men of the brigade labored with axes, knives, and even cutlasses to reduce hastily cut dead trees to kindling.
There were perhaps a dozen pits, and across each one was laid the barrel of a saker; as the cannon were six feet long, they extended beyond the lips of the holes and thus balanced themselves. At a point farthest from the palace, at the edge of the parade ground, there was a larger hole, almost twelve feet long, and across it was laid the incredibly heavy and thick barrel of a ponderous basilisk, a siege gun capable of hurling a twelve-pound shot.
Slowly the wrought iron of the gun barrels was being heated, and occasionally a soldier, anxious to hurry the process, would throw too many shavings on the fire in one of the pits. Then the flames would leap high, the outside of the gun barrel would become streaked with smoke, and in a few moments either Jeremy Stone or Dirk Friendly would appear and give the offender a tongue-lashing. The officer in charge of each pit, either a lieutenant or an ensign, would be told that an even fire was necessary, and the harried gunsmith would hurry off to the next crisis.
The wives of several senior officers accompanied Lady Bartlett on a tour of the premises, but the gentlewomen soon withdrew to the more comfortable though musket-scarred precincts of the palace, and for a valid reason. The men, tired to the point of exhaustion and disgruntled at being forced to labor like field slaves, grumbled and swore incessantly. For a time Sir Arthur strolled around the lawns, peering at the work and trying not to interfere. Unfortunately his very presence at a pit caused the crew at work there to jump to rigid attention, and after a time Jeremy suggested that the repairs might progress more smoothly and rapidly if the governor general would absent himself from the scene. This he did, rather grumpily.
Meanwhile, as the two gunsmiths went their separate ways, supervising the heating of the smooth-bored gun barrels and trying vainly to be everywhere at once, the members of the officers' corps who had nothing better to do stood together at the edge of the lawn and commented cynically on the scene of bedlam. They made no attempt to conceal their pessimistic view that the operation was doomed and that men who would otherwise have been fit for combat would be useless in the morning. The one officer who seemed to believe in the gunsmiths was Captain Henry Thorne. Now, his uniform smoke-grimed and his face blackened, he hastily swallowed the last bite of a slab of cold roast beef and hurried to join Jeremy, who was standing before one of the saker barrels, holding a mug of liquid in his hand.
As the officer came up beside him, the young gunsmith dipped his fingers into the mug, carefully sprinkled a few drops onto the gun, then peered intently as the liquid sizzled and dried. "What's this, Stone?" the captain asked jocularly. "Wasting good rum?"
"No, Captain." Jeremy grinned. "It's only water, and the best test I know. When you've cast as many barrels as I have, you learn to judge the heat of the iron by the length of time it takes for a drop to dry on the metal." Again he let a little water fall onto the iron, then dropped to one knee and studied it carefully in the light of the fire's glare.
At last he arose, nodding in satisfaction. Captain Thorne swallowed some smoke, coughed, and backed away from the pit. A question loomed large in the officer's mind, but he hesitated before blurting it out. "What's your opinion, Stone? Can you do the trick and give me some guns to shoot by morning?"