"Well, I received a letter from Stanton last week; he says the sights of this gun are very poor. Now in our gunnery sections we were all encouraged to make improvements. You see gunnery in the navy is now a matter of terrific competition; it is ship against ship and gun against gun. At each target practice the ship that does the best carries the gunnery trophy for a year, and big money prizes are won by the best gun crews. And officers in command of different guns are encouraged to make improvements. Why, just before the Spanish war the twelve-inch guns of the 'Texas' could only shoot once in five minutes, and then the shots didn't hit often. On her last target practice those same guns fired once a minute and hit the target almost every time. And the improvements were all made by officers aboard the ship."
"Well, Bob, here is your six-pounder gun; just take a look at it. I don't imagine you will be allowed to do much tinkering with it. You don't know a great deal about the gun—not nearly so much as the men who designed and built it—and here you are talking about improving it. You would probably injure rather than improve it."
"I know how to work it, anyway, and I have fired a six-pounder a number of times," replied Robert, rapidly throwing down a couple of clamps, and turning the gun on its pivot.
"I have no notion of touching the mechanism of the gun; but Stanton says the gun sights are poor; that anybody could put better sights on the gun."
Robert now put himself at the rear of the gun, assuming the prescribed position of the man who fired it, holding it securely by the shoulder and hand of his right arm, his left hand being at the trigger. He ran his eye over the gun sights, and moved the gun up and down, and from side to side.
"Pete," he remarked, "look at this rear sight; it's an open sight—just a mere notch, a groove. And the forward sight is just a sharp point. If I screw my eye up or down, or from side to side, I might think there were many different places the gun would shoot to. When the gun is fired in this exact position the shot is going in only one direction, but I bet you if ten different fellows should aim along these sights as the gun is now and say where the shot was going to hit you would find there were ten different opinions."
"Of course there would be," replied Peters in a superior tone; "there always are with open sights; professional marksmen always use peep-sights."
"Pete, you're a treasure," cried Robert in enthusiastic approval; "we'll fit peep-sights to this gun, but we'll keep it a dead secret, and when we come to fire our string of shots we'll use our own peep-sights."
"How are you going to fit peep-sights to this gun and not have everybody else know about it?" asked Peters dubiously. "And we only practice with this gun; we will actually fire one of the 'Nevada's' six-pounders,—and probably the sight you fitted to this gun wouldn't fit the 'Nevada's.'"