His grin widened at that, and carefully he descended below decks. It was still light enough outside that the open gun ports allowed some measure of visibility, and Fletcher went back to the disassembled gun and set down his armful of iron pieces with a clatter.
"Now you can see," he said to her, though he might as well have been talking to an auditorium with the way he dove into his work, "your cabin boy did a passable job of cleaning out the bore of built-up residue. Of course, if you take a look inside, you can see that the actual bore itself is not even its entire length, which suggests a problem with the casting. Now it'll fire, but you won't get a perfect shot out of the girl short of recasting the entire barrel."
He picked up the iron bands which he'd removed from the gun carriage earlier. "Take a look at this. It's hard to see from just a quick glance, but it's bent out of shape, probably from too much firing. The trunnions don't sit evenly in it and don't rotate properly, which is why it's so hard to aim the barrel up or down. Replace it with one of these-" and he picked up one of the new rings, giving it a cursory look before nodding in satisfaction, "and that's a problem solved."
With almost a flourish, he tossed the old iron band out of the gun port before realizing what sort of show he was putting on. With another foolhardy grin, he turned back to the Captain. "Sorry, I get a little caught up in small details sometimes."
