Arabella of Mars(38)

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.

*

After every cannon had been cleaned and every ramrod, swab, and handspike properly stowed, Arabella hauled herself wearily hand over hand along the guide rope toward her berth. All she could think of was the simple pleasure of her hammock. But as she entered the lower deck, she found her way blocked by Gowse, the captain of her gun crew. Still grimy, red-eyed, and bare-chested from the afternoon’s gunnery drill, he stood at the ladder’s base like some malevolent troll from a fairy tale.

“Ye’ve made me look bad, Ashby!” he shouted. After so many hours of the crash and thunder of guns, his voice grated hoarsely, but even so he had to shout to be heard over the ringing in Arabella’s and every other airman’s ears. “Ye’ve made us all look bad, and now ye’ll pay!”

“Please, sir, I did the best I could.” Arabella looked around for support, but every airman in the vicinity was another member of Gowse’s gun crew, and none of them seemed in the least sympathetic. “And I did get better with time.”

“It’s thanks to you we’ll be drilling again tomorrow!” Gowse’s hands twisted into fists, and the ropey muscles of his arms bulged. “Ye need to be taught a lesson!” With that he lunged toward Arabella, flinging himself up the ladder toward her with a great thrust of his massive legs.