As soon as he reached the gun, Kenton showed he had not wasted the half an hour spent reading the gunner's notebook. "Right, line up, you men. Jackson, you are number one. You should have the plumb bob. Who has it? Right, give it to Jackson. Now, Jackson, you command, point and serve the vent - under my direction, of course. Stafford, you'll be number two, so you're responsible for the cartridge cases and measures. And don't forget - you might be measuring in single ounces so don't be heavy handed. You -" he pointed at the two boys, "- bring up the powder from the magazine."

"Rossi, you'll be number three. You collect the fuses, load, help lift in the shell, run out the mortar and train." He looked at the remaining three men. "Gutteridge, you're number four. You provide a funnel for the powder, sponge, wipe the bottom of the shell to make sure there's no loose powder on it, take the fuse from the box and put it in the shell - don't forget one and a half inches must protrude. Then you help number three run out. Number five - that'll be you, Barnes. You bring up the shell with number six, and the two of you lift it up while number three guides it into the bore of the gun. Lower it gently. Then you help run out, and then help number three to train. Then you take a linstock and - when you get the order -  light the fuse. Number six - that's you, King. You help bring up the shell, run out and train. Then you prime the vent. If necessary you'll have helped number three guide the shell into the bore."

He made each man repeat his tasks and then said briskly, "There are only nine commands you are likely to hear from me and they're fairly obvious: Run the mortar up - Cross lift to the right (or to the left) - Muzzle to the right (or the left) - Down (the bed bolster will be in place by then) - Load - Prime - Fire!"

He made the men repeat the sequence and then said suspiciously: "You all seem to know your jobs and the sequence of commands very well - why is that?"

Jackson looked at Orsini, who winked, so the American said: "Mr Orsini borrowed a notebook about this gun, sir, so we all sat around this morning and went over it. We were all curious, sir."

"You didn't know the Captain was going to offer a guinea prize for target practice?"

Jackson shook his head. "No, sir," he said ruefully, "otherwise we might have paid more attention."

Kenton grinned sympathetically. "Very well, let's get started. The magazine is open, fearnought blankets unrolled? Right, I see the water tub is there and the match tub. Slow matches alight and -" he looked carefully "- burning steadily. Very well, wet the decks, and then we can load."

The deckwash pump started wheezing and spitting fitfully as King began working the handle, and as soon as water came out of the nozzle two other seamen filled buckets and sluiced the deck. The sun had heated the planking and it took several buckets before the wood stayed wetted.

Finally Kenton gave the signal and four of the men and the two powder boys ran below.

Listening for the sound of the Brutus's mortar firing, Kenton took out his watch and began timing. Finally Stafford arrived with his two wooden cartridge cases, cylindrical wooden boxes with lids that slid up and down on loops of line which also acted as carrying handles. He slid up one lid and began undoing the worsted bag, ready to measure out powder, while one powder boy held the second box, and the other waited to run for a third.

Barnes and King were now walking quickly towards the mortar with a wooden beam across their shoulders. Two thin ropes with hooks hung from the beam, the hooks going through the two carrying handles on the top of the black ball that was the shell. Until Kenton shouted at them to break step, they walked in time, cursing as the shell swung back and forth like a pendulum, catching them across the shins.

Jackson was walking round the mortar looking at the items the men had placed ready, and he named them out loud, as if checking a mental list. "Plumb bob . . . two cartridge cases and measures ... sponge . . . funnel for the powder... two linstocks . . . four handspikes ... one priming wire ... There's Rossi with the fuses, and I've got a knife and the tube box . . . Here comes the carrying beam and the shell. That's the lot. . ."

Kenton looked at his watch. Two minutes so far - appalling time, but this was the first occasion. Then he noticed that Jackson had been naming the pieces of equipment out loud so that Orsini could check them against a list he was holding in his hand.

After that the six men went to work as though they had spent the last few weeks doing nothing but fire mortars: Gutteridge held the funnel in the fuse hole of the shell while Stafford measured out four pounds. Rossi handed the cone-shaped wooden fuse to Kenton, who said: "We'll wait a few moments before cutting it. For a nineteen-seconds flight it would be four inches and eighteen hundredths."

He turned to Orsini. "Stand by here. I'm going to the bow to watch where the Brutus's-"

At that moment there was an explosion beyond the Calypso and Kenton ran to the bow, looking up at a small black ball still climbing into the sky at a steep angle. Then, as though rolling over the summit of a hill, it began dropping and Kenton lost sight of it but looked down at the cask. There was a flurry of sand well beyond it.

"A hundred yards over!" he exclaimed and suddenly realized that Orsini was beside him counting out the seconds.

". . . twenty-three and four and five . . ."

"It's misfired," Kenton muttered. "It won't go off. The fuse is damaged."

". . . twenty-seven and eight . . ."

The explosion sent up a flock of birds which had been hidden in the pine trees, and along the beach the sandpipers which had stood fast for the mortar firing finally fled for the shell, skimming over the sand like tiny arrows to land again ahead of the Fructidor.

"Hmmm," Kenton said, his voice sounding as judicial as possible. "A good hundred yards over with the elevation, and more than six seconds too much fuse in the shell."

"So much for Pythagoras," Paolo said sourly, as though his suspicions of the untrustworthiness of both Greeks and mathematics were confirmed. "Like us, the Brutus is two hundred yards from the shore; the cask is fifteen hundred yards along the beach. The range is the hypotenuse, which is 1,513 yards."

Kenton took out the notes which he had stuffed in his pocket and smoothed flat the pages.

"Damnation, that range is within a dozen yards of the figure in the tables, with a two-pound-six-ounce charge. Wagstaffe must have gone for a much higher range - more than two thousand yards. Yet he wasn't five hundred yards over ... I don't understand it. Anyway, we'll keep to our own figures." He turned to walk aft to the mortar, calling to Stafford: "Put in two pounds six ounces of powder as the charge."

He turned to Orsini. "I can't make out the twenty-eight seconds, though: the time of flight for the range Wagstaffe used should have been about nineteen seconds . . . The devil take it, I think he was unlucky and that fuse burned unevenly because of bad French powder. Cut ours to three and three-quarter inches - let's stop this 'hundredths' business."

Jackson handed the fuse and knife to Orsini and held out a foot rule so that the boy could measure the cone. "Keep the point upwards as you cut it, sir," Jackson warned, "just in case there's any loose powder."

Kenton looked across at the Calypso and saw the Captain and the master both watching with telescopes. So were the first lieutenant, and he realized, most of the ship's company, too.

Stafford finished measuring the powder charge into the mortar and Rossi put in a wad and rammed it down vigorously. Kenton told Jackson and Orsini to fit the fuse into the shell, which they did after opening the top, and then gestured to Barnes and King to lift with the beam to place the shell in the mortar.