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guns I have, Lewrie told himself, smiling in grim reverie. A full twenty guns made Jester a small frigate, under the new rating system, a post-captain’s command; while an eighteen- gunned ship sloop was suitable to a newly promoted commander! They’d taken two away from him, with many “tsk-tsks” over his affrontery, to show up in a vessel armed beyond his rank.
    British sloops, be they brig, schooner, ketch, or three-masted ship-rigged vessels, were allotted six-pounders, and that, by God, was that. Sixth-Rate frigates got nine- or twelve-pounders, 5th Rates carried twelves, or more lately, eighteen-pounders. The French, though (most sensibly, Alan thought), armed their equivalent corvettes with les huit-livre canon— eight-pounders. And the Frog Avoirdupois Livre was just a trifle heavier than the English Pound Weight, so his eight-pounders were the equal of a British nine-pounder. The shot was almost the same diameter, perhaps a quim-hair (about one twenty-fifth of an inch) smaller, allowing a tad more obturation, or “windage,” between shot and bore diameter.
    And what was that, about a cable less at extreme elevation, at range-to-random shot, where the odds of actually hitting anything a mile-and-a-half off were pretty much By Guess and By God? Half a sea mile was considered long-range shooting, and most captains and gunners preferred point-blank, which was anything from one cable, right down to close broadsides, with the muzzles sticking almost through the enemy’s gun ports—“close pistol shot”!
    Had the officials insisted, it would have taken weeks more to outfit Jester; new six-pounders, a full eighteen of ’em, weren’t just lying about, after all. Might not even be sufficient stock far up north near Scotland, where most of the foundries had relocated, now they’d gone to coke instead of charcoal for melting and casting pig-iron. Wouldn’t cost the Crown tuppence, sirs! Bags of Frog round-shot aboard, sixty per gun now, and replacement nine-pounder English  shot is a lot cheaper than an entire new set of artillery! Please, sirs! Pretty please, sirs? Can’t swing idle for a month, sirs!
    And, when they’d come, what would he have ended up with? Some of those new, lighter, and shorter Blomefield Pattern pieces, which he had heard had a distressing tendency to burst when charged with newfangled cylinder powder ’stead of puny old corned powder! No, there was only one thing he admired about Blomefields—that neat forged-on loop for the breeching ropes above the cascabel button. His old guns had breeching ropes eye-spliced about the button, while Blomefields let the ropes pass through ring bolts on the truck carriages, then through that loop, easing stress on the breeching if fired at extreme angles. They wouldn’t snap their breeching and roll about like rampaging steers if pointed too far forrud or aft in the gun ports, or rip the end ring bolts in the bulwarks loose.
    No he’d have his nine-pounders, and God help the Frog who came within range, mistaking Jester for a quarterdecked ship sloop below the Rates, armed with mere popguns!
    He spoke briefly with his surgeon, Mister Howse, that tall and lanky saturnine of the square, mournful face, who always looked as if he needed a shave, even right after shaving; and his surgeon’s mate, LeGoff, who played the gingery terrier to Howse’s rangy mastiff. No one had herniated yet; there were some sore muscles, but Howse held that horse liniment usually worked just as well on bipeds as it did for quadrupeds.
    Midshipman Hyde with Knolles near the double-wheel. Knolles was midtwenties, blond-haired, and sun-bronzed. If some spark of relationship had arisen between him and his charge Sophie—and Alan had pressed ’em damn’ hard together—there was no sign of it. Hyde . . . a year older than Mister Midshipman Clarence Spendlove, at sixteen, a seasoned lad,