The petite french girl smiled and danced down the gang plank after the Englishman.  "Let's do keep those for spares."<br/>She walked beside Ricard with her hands behind her back, which brought prominence too her nicely presented cleavage in the square bodice.  "My father has been gunsmith too the Marquise de Gascone since I was born, but he studded in Sweden before then, and might have settled there if my mother had survived childbirth.<br/>"Sweden's King--Gustav Adolphus--patronizes cannon science and puts the advances quickly to work in his army.  They do amazing things with smaller, more efficient guns aimed by ma thematic equation or--more often--simply firing a canister of musket balls rather than a single cannonball too strafe a battlefield.<br/>"That is canister shot.  I don't know how much range we can get out of canister shot with these big beauties, but if I can work up a few, we should be able to clear a deck at a hundred feet quite efficiently."