Dolly looked at the heavy piece of metal, and at him, but did not repeat her question.
"Now you want to know how," he said, smiling. "If I were captain, I would have the men here and show you. The gun is run in by means of this tackle, see!—and when it is charged, it is bowsed out again."
Seeing Dolly's wise grave eyes bent upon the subject, he went on to amuse her with a full detail of the exercise of the gun; from "casting loose," to the finishing "secure your guns;" explaining the manner of handling and loading, and the use of the principal tackle concerned. Dolly listened, intent, fascinated, enchained; and I think the young man was a little fascinated too, though his attentions were given to so very young a lady. Dolly's brown eyes were so utterly pure and grave and unconscious; the brain at work behind them was so evidently clear and busy and competent; the pleasure she showed was so unschoolgirl-like, and he thought so unchildlike, and at the same time so very far from being young lady-like. What she was like, he did not know; she was an odd little apparition there in the gun-deck of the "Achilles," leaning with her elbows upon a gun carriage, and surveyeing with her soft eyes the various paraphernalia of conflict and carnage around her. Contrast could hardly be stronger.
"Suppose," said Dolly at last, "a shot should make a hole in the side of the ship, and let in the water?"
"Well? Suppose it," he answered.
"Does that ever happen?"
"Quite often. Why not?"
"What would you do then?"
"Pump out the water as fast as it came in,—if we could."
"Suppose you couldn't?"