Morgan’s Run by Colleen McCullough Page B

Besses he made would ever be fired in combat. He knew that her caliber was close enough (the ball was two sizes smaller than the smooth interior of the barrel) to French, Portuguese and Spanish caliber to enable cartridges from those three countries to be fired from her. And he knew that if one of her balls did strike a human target, the chances of survival were slim. If a man were chest- or gut-shot, his insides were a butchered shambles; if he were limb-shot, his bones were so fragmented that amputation was the only treatment.
    It took him two hours to craft his first Brown Bess, but after that the rhythm came back, and by the end of the day he was making one musket an hour. For him, fabulous money at four shillings a gun, but for Senhor Habitas, far more. After deducting the costs of parts and Richard’s labor, Senhor Habitas made a profit of ten shillings a gun. There were cheaper gunsmithies, but a Habitas product
fired.
In the hands of a trained fusilier, no hang fires and no flashes in the pan. Senhor Habitas also made sure that he was present to watch his gunsmiths test fire the guns they made.
    “I am not,” he said to Richard as they strolled through to the proving butt while there was still light enough to see, “putting on any apprentices. Just qualified gunsmiths, and preferably those I have schooled myself.” He looked suddenly very serious. “It will end, my beloved Richard, do not think otherwise. I give this war another three or four years, and I cannot see the French emerging from it in any state to fight us yet again. So we have work aplenty now, but it will cease, and I will have to let you go a second time. One reason why I am willing to pay you four shillings a gun. For I have never seen work as good as yours, and you are quick.”
    Richard did not reply, which was so much his habit that Tomas Habitas had not expected a reply. Richard was a listener. He took in what was said to him with illuminating intelligence, yet would make no comment for the sake of talking. Information went aboard and straight into the cargo holds of his mind, there to stay until events required that he unload it. Perhaps, thought Habitas, that is why, even apart from his work, I am so fond of him. He is a truly peaceful man who minds his own business.
    The ten Brown Besses that Richard had made were standing in a rack, fetched there by the ten-year-old lad whom Habitas employed as a menial. Richard picked up the first one, removed the ramrod from its pipes beneath the part of the stock supporting the barrel, and reached into a bin for a cartridge. The ball and powder lay inside a little bag of paper; Richard produced a mouthful of spit, sank his teeth hard into the base of the paper to rupture and moisten it, tipped the powder into the barrel, screwed up the paper and jammed it after the powder, then pushed the ball in. A deft thrust with the ramrod and the lot was snug in the breech at the bottom of the barrel. As he swung the musket up to his shoulder he rapped it smartly over the firing pan to clear powder out of the touch hole, and pulled the trigger. The cock, chunk of flint in its jaws, came down and struck the frizzen. Sparks, explosion and a huge puff of smoke seemed to happen all at once; a bottle forty yards away on a shelf in the range wall disintegrated.
    “You have not lost your touch,” purred Senhor Habitas while the lad, barefoot, swept up the glass with a broom and put another dull brown, Bristol-made bottle up.
    “Say that after I have fired all ten,” said Richard, grinning.
    Nine behaved perfectly. The tenth needed a little more filing of the frizzen spring—not a major task, as it lay on the outside of the lock mechanism.

    When Richard walked into the Cooper’s Arms he snatched William Henry from his high chair and held him tight, curbing his impulse to squeeze and hug until the child could scarcely breathe. William Henry, William Henry, how much I love you! Like life, like air, like the sun, like