Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/122

 boy's enlightenment. Nelson soon had a large fund of information on many subjects concerned with gunnery. He learned the why and wherefore of gas check pads and rings, and how to seat them, learned how to clear powder chamber and mushroom head of oil before firing, how to sponge and re-oil after, learned that anyone using emery or brick dust on certain parts was inherently a criminal who would murder his poor old blind grandmother, learned how to find leaks in the recoil cylinders and how to refill them and much more severely practical information, some of which he had known and forgotten and much of which was new to him.

He dipped into the subject of explosives, which he found intensely interesting, and borrowed a book about them from the ship's library and, I suspect, made rather a nuisance of himself during those four days at anchor and for several days after.

Norfolk was a busy scene just then and scarcely a day passed that didn't witness the arrival or departure of one or more warships. There were submarines there, too, and Nelson often wondered if Martin Townsend was aboard one of them. On the morning of the fourth day of the Gyandotte's stay there was much activity in the subma- 99