How the Big Howitzer was Fired.
Time glided on, and Gil’s ship was fast getting ready for sea. It was to be a good trip this season; and, as she approached completion, her freight was gradually accumulated, for, as in a quiet matter-of-fact way, the captain let the relations between him and Mace stand in abeyance, the founder made some slight advances, and business arrangements were resumed.
It would have been a serious matter for both if they had stood out, for Gil formed almost the only channel through which Jeremiah Cobbe’s productions were sold, and upon him depended the supply of two of the principal ingredients with which one of the founder’s branches of industry was carried on.
So gunpowder was made and ground. Gil—though never asked to the house, nor making any attempt to see Mace, and at their casual encounters meeting her quite as a friend—spent much of his time at the founder’s works, superintending a casting, watching the purification of some batch of nitre that he had brought home, and, above all, helping at the trial of a newly-finished howitzer or culverin.
The founder was pleased, for he told himself that the young people were growing sensible, and he became more friendly to Gil, who at last, after sundry night journeys had been noted by the people about, found himself ready for another voyage.
“When do you sail, then?” said the founder to him one morning.
“I have thought of going to-morrow,” was the reply; “but the tide hardly suits.”
“Then put it off till the next day, my lad, and we’ll have out the new piece to-morrow, and try her across the Pool.”
“With all my heart,” said Gil, and the next morning he was busy and light-hearted at the foundry, with old Wat Kilby and half-a-dozen more, helping and superintending the mounting and dragging out of the great newly-finished piece of artillery, on which the founder for some time had been engaged.
“She’ll startle some of them,” he said, as he patted the great piece on the breech, just as Mace came up slowly, and saluted Gil. “You shall have the first shot with her, Tit,” he said, as the idea occurred to him.