"Of these long 'uns?" he said, patting one affectionately on the breech as he spoke. "Well, we've jist fifteen here a-port and fifteen a-starboard, which makes thirty in all on this deck. A power o' metal, I tell ye!" "Oh, I know that," said I. "But I mean how many of the same sort." "There ain't any more of the same sort, I tell ye, but what you sees," rejoined the gunner a bit crossly. "The guns as is on the main deck and upper deck are all short thirty-two's; and, they're thirty too, o' them on the main, and twenty-two on the upper deck. They all of 'em carries the same weight of shot, though not such heavy guns as these, being only forty-five hundredweight each." "There, young Vernon, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it!" chimed in Larkyns, at this juncture, making a face behind the gunner's back, which, had he seen it, might have altered the opinion that worthy presently expressed of the speaker. "That's `the long and the short of it,' as Mr Triggs has so eloquently explained!" "Thank you, Mr Larkyns, for the compliment," said the gunner, taking the remark as a tribute to his conversational ability. "I allers tries to explain myself as well as I can. Is there anything more you'd like to know, Master Vernon? I'm allers pleased to instruct any of you young gentlemen when you asks civilly!" "You spoke just now of a ten-pound charge," I answered. "I suppose you mean of powder without the shot?" "That's not _charged_," put in Larkyns, grinning. "The shot is given in `free, gratis, for nothing,' as Paddy said." "Yes, Master Vernon," replied the gunner, taking no notice this time of Larkyns or his interpolation. "These here guns take a full charge of ten pounds of powder for long range, and redooced charges of six and eight pounds; whilst the charges of them on the main and upper deck are either six or eight pounds, as the case might be, according to the service required." "It must take an awful lot of powder for all the eighty-four guns, besides the shot and shell!" "You can bet on that," replied Mr Triggs, moving towards the side and looking through the port in the direction of the harbour. "We carries about a hundred rounds of each charge for every gun; or, something like ninety tons for our whole armament. That's what it takes." "Ninety tons of gunpowder!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Do you mean that we've got to take such a quantity as that on board?" "Of course I do; I always says what I means and means what I says," rejoined Mr Triggs, somewhat snappishly again, as if tired of the long string of puzzling questions with which I was now bothering him, like I used to do my dear old Dad. "By Jingo! I'm blessed if there it ain't a-coming off now, I tell ye!" "Coming off," I repeated. "Where?" "There, booby," said Larkyns, slewing me round and shoving my head right out of the port. "Can't you see the powder hoy, there to your right, passing Blockhouse Fort, at the mouth of the harbour?"