A frightful thing had just happened; one of the carronades of the
battery, a twenty-four pound cannon, had become loose.
This is perhaps the most dreadful thing that can take place at sea.
Nothing more terrible can happen to a man-of-war under full sail. A
cannon that breaks loose from its fastenings is suddenly transformed
into a supernatural beast. It is a monster developed from a machine.
This mass rolls along on its wheels as easily as a billiard ball; it
rolls with the rolling, pitches with the pitching, comes and goes, stops
and seems to meditate, begins anew, darts like an arrow from one end of
the ship to the other, whirls around, turns aside, evades, rears, hits
out, crushes, kills, exterminates.
[Illustration: VICTOR HUGO]
It has the air of having lost its patience, and of taking a mysterious,
dull revenge. The mad mass leaps like a panther; it has the weight of an
elephant, the agility of a mouse, the obstinacy of an axe; it takes one
by surprise like the surge of the sea; it flashes like lightning; it is
deaf as the tomb; it weighs ten thousand pounds, and it bounds like a
child’s ball. How can one guard against these terrible movements?
The ship had within its depths, so to speak, imprisoned lightning
struggling to escape; something like the rumbling of thunder during an
earthquake. In an instant the crew were on their feet. Brave men though
they were, they paused, silent, pale, and undecided, looking down at the
gun deck. Some one pushed them aside with his elbow and descended. It
was their passenger, the peasant, the man about whom they had been
talking a minute ago.
Having reached the foot of the ladder he halted. The cannon was rolling
to and fro on the gun deck. A dim wavering of lights and shadows was
added to this spectacle by the marine lantern swinging under the deck.
The outlines of the cannon were becoming indistinguishable by reason of
the rapidity of its motion; sometimes it looked black when the light
shone upon it, then again it would cast pale, glimmering reflections in
the darkness.
It was still pursuing its work of destruction. It had already shattered
four other pieces, and made two breaches in the ship’s side, fortunately
above the water line. It rushed frantically against the timbers; the
stout riders resisted,--curved timbers have great strength; but one
could hear them crack under this tremendous assault. The whole ship was
filled with the tumult.
The captain, who had rapidly recovered his self-possession, had given
orders to throw down the hatchway all that could abate the rage and
check the mad onslaught of this infuriated gun,--mattresses, hammocks,
spare sails, coils of rope, and bales of paper. But what availed these
rags? No one dared to go down to arrange them, and in a few moments they
were reduced to lint. Meanwhile the havoc increased. The mizzenmast was
split and even the mainmast was damaged by the convulsive blows of the
cannon. The fractures in the side grew larger and the ship began to
leak.
The old passenger, who had descended to the gun deck, looked like one
carved in stone, as he stood motionless at the foot of the ladder.
Suddenly, as the escaped cannon was tossing from side to side, a man
appeared, grasping an iron bar. It was the chief gunner, whose criminal
negligence was the cause of the catastrophe. Having brought about the
evil, he now intended to repair it. Holding a handspike in one hand, and
in the other a rope with a noose in it, he had jumped through the
hatchway to the deck below.
Then began a terrible struggle; a contest between mind and matter; a
duel between man and the inanimate. The man stood in one corner holding
in his hands the bar and the rope; calm, livid, and tragic, he stood
firmly on his legs that were like two pillars of steel. He was waiting
for the cannon to approach him. The gunner knew his piece, and he felt
as if it must know him. They had lived together a long time. How often
had he put his hand into its mouth! He began to talk to it as he would
to a dog. “Come,” said he. Possibly he loved it.
When, in the act of accepting this awful hand-to-hand struggle, the
gunner approached to challenge the cannon, it happened that the surging
sea held the gun motionless for an instant, as if stupefied. “Come on!”
said the man. It seemed to listen. Suddenly it leaped towards him. The
man dodged. Then the struggle began,--a contest unheard of; the human
warrior attacking the brazen beast; blind force on one side, soul on the
other. It was as if a gigantic insect of iron was endowed with the will
of a demon. Now and then this colossal grasshopper would strike the low
ceiling of the gun deck, then falling back on its four wheels, like a
tiger on all fours, would rush upon the man. He--supple, agile,
adroit--writhed like a serpent before these lightning movements.
A piece of broken chain remained attached to the carronade; one end was
fastened to the gun carriage; the other end thrashed wildly around,
aggravating the danger with every bound of the cannon. The screw held it
as in a clenched hand, and this chain, multiplying the strokes of the
battering ram by those of the thong, made a terrible whirlwind around
the gun,--a lash of iron in a fist of brass. The chain complicated the
combat.
Despite all this, the man fought. Suddenly the cannon seemed to say to
itself: “Now, then, there must be an end to this.” And it stopped. A
crisis was felt to be at hand. All at once it hurled itself upon the
gunner, who sprang aside with a laugh as the cannon passed him. Then,
as though blind and beside itself, it turned from the man and rolled
from stern to stem, splintering the latter and causing a breach in the
walls of the prow.
The gunner took refuge at the foot of the ladder, a short distance from
the old man, who stood watching. Without taking the trouble to turn, the
cannon rushed backwards on the man, as swift as the blow of an axe. The
gunner, if driven against the side of the ship, would be lost. A cry
arose from the crew.
The old passenger, who until this moment had stood motionless, sprang
forwards more swiftly than all those mad whirls. He had seized a bale of
paper, and at the risk of being crushed succeeded in throwing it between
the wheels of the carronade.
The bale had the effect of a plug. The carronade stumbled, and the
gunner thrust his iron bar between the spokes of the back wheels.
Pitching forwards, the cannon stopped; and the man, using his bar for a
lever, rocked it backwards and forwards. The heavy mass upset, with the
resonant sound of a bell that crashes in its fall. The man flung himself
upon it, and passed the slip noose round the neck of the defeated
monster.
The combat was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the
mastodon; the pigmy had imprisoned the thunderbolt.
--_From the French of_ VICTOR HUGO.