bottom just
high enough to point it out over the bulwarks. Here, Hobbs: come
below, and help me fetch it on deck."

While they were getting up the chest, Raed and I brought up the
cannon-rifle. It was about as much as we could get up the stairs with
easily. It was, as the reader will probably remember, set in a light
framework of wrought-iron, adjusted to a swivel, and arranged with a
screw for raising or lowering the breech at will. The bed-pieces of
the framework had been pierced for screws. It was, therefore, but a
few minutes' work to bore holes in the top of the chest and drive the
screws. Meanwhile the captain, who enjoyed the scheme as well as any
of us, split open a couple of old tackle-blocks, and, getting out the
trucks, proceeded to set them on the ends of two stout axles cut from
an old ice-pole. These axles were then nailed fast to the bottom of
the chest. The gun-carriage was then complete, and could be rolled
anywhere on deck with ease.

"Decidedly neat!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard, surveying it with a grin of
self-approbation.

"What say to that, Trull?" cried Raed.

The old man-of-war's-man had been watching the progress of the
invention with an occasional tug at his waistband.

"Yes; how's that in your eye?" exclaimed the captain. "You're a
military character. Give us an opinion on that."

"Wal, sur," cocking his eye at it, "I'm free to confass I naver saw
anything like it;" and that was all we could get out of him.

"Bring some ammunition, and let's give it a trial," said Kit.

I brought up the powder-flask, caps, and a couple of bullets. The
bullets we had run for it were of lead, about an inch in diameter,
and weighed not far from six ounces apiece. The breech was depressed.
Raed poured in half a gill of the fine powder by measurement; a wad of
paper was rammed down; then a bullet was driven home. There only
remained to prime and cap it.

"Fire at one of these seals," suggested Wade, pointing to where a
group of three or four lay basking on an ice-cake at a distance of
eight or ten hundred yards.

"Who'll take the first shot?" said Kit.

Nobody seemed inclined to seize the honor.

"Come, now, that seal's getting impatient!" cried the captain.

Still no one volunteered to shoot off the big rifle.

"I think Wash had better fire the first shot," remarked Raed. "The
honor clearly belongs to him."

Seeing they were a little disposed to rally me on it, I stepped up and
cocked it. At that