Adams, Robert - Castaways 04 - Of Chiefs and Champions by Adams Robert

Author:Adams, Robert [Adams, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction, Time Travel
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1987-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

"What in the name of God is this contraption?" asked Sir Rupen, lifting a vaguely key-shaped object of copper, brass, and tin-plated iron from Sir Peter Fairley's cluttered desk.

Pete sighed. "That there's a cannon primer, like what Bass's fleet is using now. One them letters you brought down here to me last week was from Walid Pasha asking me to send them some more of them, and I been studying that one at odd times trying to figger is it any way to make them simpler to make."

"Show me how this thing works, will you?" said Rupen.

Pete shrugged. "Sure thing, but we'll have to go out to the side yard where it's some small cannons. C'mon."

"No, no, Pete." Rupen shook his head. "No need to burn up any powder. I'm good at visualizing. Just take this one down and tell me what the parts do."

"Well . . ." Looking a bit dubious, Fairley picked up the primer and said, "You stick this tube down in the touchhole of the piece, see—it's made out of thin iron plate, but it's been tin-plated so's it won't strike sparks off a iron gun and set it off premature-like. And that there was Bass Foster's idea, too; the first ones I made up was all copper and brass and damn expensive."

"Inside of the tube is a fast-igniting, fast-burning, hot-burning mix of real fine powder, plus a lot of little bitty pieces of pyrites and flints glued into grooves. This little ring is a pin that holds a steel spring compressed, and when the lanyard jerks it out, the spring unwinds real fast down the tube and strikes sparks off of the pyrites and all and they lights the powder mix and that fire sets off the touchhole priming and that sets off the main charge. Sounds screwy, I know, but it works about nineteen times out of ever twenty."

"Thing is, putting them all together right so they'll have a decent chance to do their job right is damn tedious and takes up a hell of a lot of time my crews could be doing something else in, and God knows with all the irons I allus got in the fire, them and me is allus got a lot to do, too."

"It's like I told Bass before he went to Ireland, after I'd showed these here primers off and showed all the gunnery officers of his ships how to use them right. I know damn good and well it's a easier, simpler way these used to be made in our world back 'bout the time of the Civil War, but I can't for the life of me remember. And I ought to, too, 'cause I was a muzzle-loading shooter, with a bunch was with the North-South Skirmish 'sociation, and we had us a reproduction six-pounder field gun and we shot it and most the time used primers we bought us from Dixie Gun Works in Tennessee or from Confed'rate States Armaments in Virginia."

"But

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