everybody hastily stood back. I took as good aim as
the motion of the schooner would permit; though I think I should have
done better had not Palmleaf just at that moment sang out, "Dinner,
sar!" from behind. I pulled the trigger, however. There was a stunning
crack; and so smart a recoil, that I was pushed half round sidewise
with amazing spitefulness. The old chest rolled back, whirled round,
and upset against the bulwarks on the other side. The reader can
imagine what a rattle and racket it made.

"Golly!" exclaimed Palmleaf. "Am crazy!"

"Did it hit the seal?" recovering my equilibrium.

Wade was the only one who had watched the seal.

"I saw him flop off into the water," said he.

"Then of course it hit him," said I.

Nobody disputed it; though I detected an odious wink between the
captain and Kit.

The prostrate gun was got up on its legs again; old Trull remarking
that we had better trig it behind before we fired, in future: that
duty attended to, he thought it might work very well.

We then went to dinner. How to mount the howitzer was the next
question.

"We need a regular four-wheeled gun-carriage for that," said Raed.

"I think we can make one out of those planks," remarked Kit.

"The worst trouble will come with the wheels," said Wade.

But Capt. Mazard thought he could saw them out of sections of
fifteen-inch plank with the wood-saw.

"I'll undertake that for my part," he added, and, as soon as dinner
was over, went about it.

"Now we'll get old man Trull to help us on the _body_," said Kit.

The planks, with axe, adz, auger, and hammer, were carried on deck.
Our old man-of-war's man readily lent a hand; and with his advice,
particularly in regard to the cheeks for the trunnions, we succeeded
during the afternoon in getting up a rough imitation of the
old-fashioned gun-carriage in use on our wooden war-vessels. The
captain made the wheels and axles. The body was then spiked to them,
and the howitzer lifted up and set on the carriage. By way of testing
it, we then charged the piece with half a pint of powder, and fired
it. The sharp, brassy report was reverberated from the dark mountains
on the starboard side in a wonderfully distinct echo. Hundreds of
seals dropped off the ice-cakes into the sea all about,--a fact I
observed with some mortification. As the guns would have to remain on
deck, exposed to fog and rain, we stopped the muzzles with plugs, and
covered them with two of our rubber