Free Foundling by D. M. Cornish Page A

more solid than she had first appeared, pushing sturdily through many of the submerged snags that hindered their progress. Rossamünd was informed that the fifty-odd crew slept on the upper deck—right down the middle of the vessel, between the guns—and, as there was no room in the hold, he would be expected to do the same. He did not mind, for the hold was more cramped than the marine society and stunk horribly of pigs, sweat and other worse unnameable things. There were no cabins upon the flat, flush upper deck except for the hold-way about halfway down the vessel, a low boxlike structure with doors which opened onto the ladder that descended into the hold. There were also the twelve bull-black twelve-pounder cannon in staggered rows down either side and taking up a goodly amount of room. Six cannon were in a line on the steerboard or right side and six down the ladeboard or left side of the vessel. Rossamünd admired them.
    Despite his anxieties, he found that he was actually excited to be on his first real voyage—the movement of the cromster in the water, the bustle of activity and the routine of the watches, the silent throbbing of the gastrines. The Hogshead was no oceangoing ironclad, yet it was much more thrilling than the small craft on which Rossamünd had made day trips in the past.
    In map-reading classes back at the foundlingery, he had been taught about the oceans—the vinegar seas. He had been taught that they were a rainbow of different colors: reds, greens, azures, yellows, and black—shown on the charts as the Pontus Nubia. These lessons made him long to see the sea, and now that he was almost upon such waters, he sorely regretted that an oceangoing life was not to be his.
    By the third bell of the middle watch the fog had lifted sufficiently for Poundinch to trust the course of the Hogshead to Mister Pike and make good on his offer to show Rossamünd the gastrines. The ladder creaked frighteningly as the rivermaster led him down into the hold. It was painfully cramped below deck. Poundinch stooped low and even lower to pass beneath the beams. The stench of the place made Rossamünd’s eyes water. He never thought anything could be so putrid, so foul. He was determined to make a brave showing, however, and pressed on. The rivermaster did not seem to mind, or even notice.
    Poundinch waved vaguely to the forward parts, where the barrels were lashed and obscured with canvas tarpaulins. “No need to be showin’ ye that, just filthy ol’ swine’s lard. It’s aft ye wants to be—follow me, lad, and see all th’ wonder of this beauty’s gastrines.”
    Rossamünd followed and there they were—the gastrines. His sense of disappointment was much the same as when he had spied Sebastipole’s sthenicon box. As that device was just a small ordinary box, so these gastrines were just very large, ordinary wooden boxes bound with copper—but at least these were big. They almost reached the planking of the deck above. Running down either side of them were much smaller boxes of hardwood, two on each side for each gastrine. These were the limbers. From the top of each rose great cranks and several many-jointed shafts that pivoted perpendicularly and entered the side of the gastrines. They were still now, the limbers not being in use. With such a crowd of machinery there was barely enough room to press along the grimy, curving inner walls of the hold to pass. Rossamünd was amazed at the sturdy pulsating of the muscles within the gastrines; he could sense it in the air all about as they squeezed past, feel it powerfully in the planks and beams beneath his feet and at his back. What surprised him most was the warmth that came from the great brass-bound boxes, a sickly heat which made the rotten air of the hold thick and clinging. In a cramped space at the stern they met a wizened man in an apron surrounded by a complicated array of levers, his long, thin white hair dripping in the humidity. He looked up at the