"What we need is a prince,--a French prince, a prince of the blood, a
real prince."
"How can that be? He who says 'prince'----"
"Says 'coward.' I know it, commander. But we need him for the
impression he would produce upon the herd."
"My dear chevalier, the princes don't care to come."
"We will do without them."
Boisberthelot pressed his hand mechanically against his forehead, as if
striving to evoke an idea. He resumed,--
"Then let us try this general."
"He is a great nobleman."
"Do you think he will do?"
"If he is one of the right sort," said La Vieuville.
"You mean relentless?" said Boisberthelot.
The count and the chevalier looked at each other.
"Monsieur Boisberthelot, you have defined the meaning of the word.
Relentless,--yes, that's what we need. This is a war that shows no
mercy. The blood-thirsty are in the ascendant. The regicides have
beheaded Louis XVI; we will quarter the regicides. Yes, the general we
need is General Relentless. In Anjou and Upper Poitou the leaders play
the magnanimous; they trifle with generosity, and they are always
defeated. In the Marais and the country of Retz, where the leaders are
ferocious, everything goes bravely forward. It is because Charette is
fierce that he stands his ground against Parrein,--hyena pitted against
hyena."
Boisberthelot had no time to answer. Vieuville's words were suddenly
cut short by a desperate cry, and at the same instant they heard a
noise unlike all other sounds. This cry and the unusual sounds came
from the interior of the vessel.
The captain and the lieutenant rushed to the gun-deck, but were unable
to enter. All the gunners came running up, beside themselves with
terror.
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 runs along on its wheels as easily as a billiard ball; it
rolls with the rolling, pitches with the pitching, comes and goes,
stops, 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. It is a ram battering a wall
at its own pleasure. Moreover, the battering-ram is iron, the wall is
wood. It is matter set free; one might say that this eternal slave is
wreaking its vengeance; it would seem as though the evil in what we
call inanimate objects had found vent and suddenly burst forth; it has
the air of having lost its patience, and of taking a mysterious, dull
revenge; nothing is so inexorable as the rage of the inanimate. The
mad mass leaps like a panther; it has the weight of an elephant, the
agility of a mouse, the obstinacy of the 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;
it whirls as it advances, and the circles it describes are intersected
by right angles. And what help is there? How can it be overcome? A
calm succeeds the tempest, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies away, we
replace the broken mass, we check the leak, we extinguish the fire; but
what is to be done with this enormous bronze beast? How can it be
subdued? You can reason with a mastiff, take a bull by surprise,
fascinate a snake, frighten a tiger, mollify a lion; but there is no
resource with the monster known as a loosened gun. You cannot kill
it,--it is already dead; and yet it lives. It breathes a sinister life
bestowed on it by the Infinite. The plank beneath sways it to and fro;
it is moved by the ship; the sea lifts the ship, and the wind keeps the
sea in motion. This destroyer is a toy. Its terrible vitality is fed
by the ship, the waves, and the wind, each lending its aid. What is to
be done with this complication? How fetter this monstrous mechanism of
shipwreck? How foresee its coming and goings, its recoils, its halts,
its shocks? Any one of those blows may stave in the side of the
vessel. How can one guard against these terrible gyrations? One has
to do with a projectile that reflects, that has ideas, and changes its
direction at any moment. How can one arrest an object in its course,
whose onslaught must be avoided? The dreadful cannon rushes about,
advances, recedes, strikes to right and to left, flies here and there,
baffles their attempts at capture, sweeps away obstacles, crushing men
like flies.
The extreme danger of the situation comes from the unsteadiness of the
deck. How is one to cope with the caprices of an inclined plane? The
ship had within its depths, so to speak, imprisoned lightning
struggling for escape; something like the rumbling of thunder during an
earthquake. In an instant the crew was on its feet. It was the chief
gunner's fault, who had neglected to fasten the screw-nut of the
breeching chain, and had not thoroughly chocked the four trucks of the
carronade, which allowed play to the frame and the bottom of the
gun-carriage, thereby disarranging the two platforms and parting the
breeching. The lashings were broken, so that the gun was no longer
firm on its carriage. The stationary breeching which prevents the
recoil was not in use at that time. As a wave struck the ship's side
the cannon, insufficiently secured, had receded, and having broken its
chain, began to wander threateningly over the deck. In order to get an
idea of this strange sliding, fancy a drop of water sliding down a pane
of glass.
When the fastening broke, the gunners were in the battery, singly and
in groups, clearing the ship for action. The carronade, thrown forward
by the pitching, dashed into a group of men, killing four of them at
the first blow; then, hurled back by the rolling, it cut in two an
unfortunate fifth man, and struck and dismounted one of the guns of the
larboard battery. Hence the cry of distress which had been heard. All
the men rushed to the ladder. The gun-deck was empty in the twinkling
of an eye.
The monstrous gun was left to itself. It was its own mistress, and
mistress of the ship. It could do with it whatsoever it wished. This
crew, accustomed to laugh in battle, now trembled. It would be
impossible to describe their terror.
Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant la Vieuville, brave men though
they were, paused at the top of the ladder, silent, pale, and
undecided, looking down on the deck. Some one pushed them aside with
his elbow, and descended. It was their passenger, the peasant, the man
about whom they were talking a moment ago.
Having reached the bottom of the ladder he halted.
* * * * * *
The cannon was rolling to and fro on the deck. It might have been
called the living chariot of the Apocalypse. 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 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 waterline, but which would leak in case of rough
weather. 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 brought to bear simultaneously on
every side, with a certain omnipresence truly appalling.
A bullet shaken in a bottle could not produce sharper or more rapid
sounds. The four wheels were passing and repassing over the dead
bodies, cutting and tearing them to pieces, and the five corpses had
become five trunks rolling hither and thither; the heads seemed to cry
out; streams of blood flowed over the deck, following the motion of the
ship. The ceiling, damaged in several places, had begun to give way.
The whole ship was filled with a dreadful 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, the bags of the crew, and bales of false
assignats, with which the corvette was laden,--that infamous stratagem
of English origin being considered a fair trick in war.
But what availed these rags? No one dared to go down to arrange them,
and in a few moments they were reduced to lint.
There was just sea enough to render this accident as complete as
possible. A tempest would have been welcome. It might have upset the
cannon, and which its four wheels once in the air, it could easily have
been mastered. Meanwhile the havoc increased. There were even
incisions and fractures in the masts, that stood like pillars grounded
firmly in the keel, and piercing the several decks of the vessel. The
mizzen-mast was split, and even the main-mast was damaged by the
convulsive blows of the cannon. The destruction of the battery still
went on. Ten out of the thirty pieces were useless. The fractures in
the side increased, and the corvette 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 stairs and
glanced sternly over the devastation. It would have been impossible to
move a step upon the deck.
Each bound of the liberated carronade seemed to threaten the
destruction of the ship. But a few moments longer, and shipwreck would
be inevitable.
They must either overcome this calamity or perish; some decisive action
must be taken. But what?
What a combatant was this carronade!
Here was this mad creature to be arrested, this flash of lightning to
be seized, this thunderbolt to be crushed. Boisberthelot said to
Vieuville:--
"Do you believe in God, chevalier?"
"Yes and no, sometimes I do!" replied La Vieuville.
"In a tempest?"
"Yes, and in moments like these."
"Truly God alone can save us," said Boisberthelot.
All were silent, leaving the carronade to its horrible uproar.
The waves beating the ship from without answered the blows of the
cannon within, very much like a couple of hammers striking In turn.
Suddenly in the midst of this inaccessible circus, where the escaped
cannon was tossing from side to side, a man appeared, grasping an iron
bar. It was the author of the catastrophe, the chief gunner, whose
criminal negligence had caused the accident,--the captain of the gun.
Having brought about the evil, his intention was to repair it. Holding
a handspike in one hand, and in the other a tiller rope with the
slip-noose in it, he had jumped through the hatchway to the deck below.
Then began a terrible struggle; a titanic spectacle; a combat between
cannon and cannoneer; a contest between mind and matter; a duel between
man and the inanimate. The man stood in one corner in an attitude of
expectancy, leaning on the rider and 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 though it must know him.
They had lived together a long time. How often had he put his hand in
its mouth. It was his domestic monster. He began to talk to it as he
would to a dog. "Come," said he. Possibly he loved it.
He seemed to wish for its coming, and yet its approach meant sure
destruction for him. How to avoid being crushed was the question. All
looked on in terror.
Not a breath was drawn freely, except perhaps by the old man, who
remained on the gun-deck gazing sternly on the two combatants.
He himself was in danger of being crushed by the piece; still he did
not move.
Beneath them the blind sea had command of the battle. 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 though 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 fragile wrestling with the
invulnerable; the human warrior attacking the brazen beast; blind force
on the one side, soul on the other.
All this was in the shadow. It was like an indistinct vision of a
miracle.
A soul!--strangely enough it seemed as if a soul existed within the
cannon, but one consumed with hate and rage. The blind thing seemed to
have eyes. It appeared as though the monster were watching the man.
There was, or at least one might have supposed it, cunning in this
mass. It also chose its opportunity. It was as though a gigantic
insect of iron was endowed with the will of a demon. Now and then this
colossal grass-hopper would strike the low ceiling of the gun-deck,
then falling back on its four wheels, like a tiger on all fours, rush
upon the man. He--supple, agile, adroit--writhed like a serpent before
these lightning movements. He avoided encounters; but the blows from
which he escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece
of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain
had twisted in some incomprehensible way around the breech button.
One end of the chain 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. This chain complicated the combat.
Despite all this, the man fought. He even attacked the cannon at
times, crawling along by the side of the ship and clutching his
handspike and the rope; the cannon seemed to understand his movements,
and fled as though suspecting a trap. The man, nothing daunted,
pursued his chase.
Such a struggle must necessarily be brief. 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. The cannon, as if in
suspense, seemed to meditate, or--for to all intents and purposes it
was a living creature--it really did meditate, some furious design.
All at once it rushed on the gunner, who sprang aside with a laugh,
crying out, "Try it again!" as the cannon passed him. The gun in its
fury smashed one of the larboard carronades; then, by the invisible
sling in which it seemed to be held, it was thrown to the starboard,
towards the man, who escaped. Three carronades were crushed by its
onslaught; then, as though blind and besides 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.
He held his handspike in readiness. The cannon seemed aware of it, and
without taking the trouble to turn, it rushed backward on the man, as
swift as the blow of an axe. The gunner, if driven up against the side
of the ship, would be lost.
One cry arose from the crew.
The old passenger--who until this moment had stood motionless--sprang
forward more swiftly than all those mad swirls. He had seized a bale
of the false assignats, and at the risk of being crushed succeeded in
throwing it between the wheels of the carronade. This decisive and
perilous manoeuvre could not have been executed with more precision and
adroitness by an adept in all the exercises given in the work of
Durosel's "Manual of Naval Gunnery."
The bale had the effect of a plug. A pebble may block a log; a branch
sometimes changes the course of an avalanche. The carronade stumbled,
and the gunner, availing himself of the perilous opportunity, thrust
his iron bar between the spokes of the back wheels. Pitching forward,
the cannon stopped; and the man, using his bar for a lever, rocked it
backward and forward. The heavy mass upset, with the resonant sound of
a bell that crashes in its fall. The man, reeking with perspiration,
threw himself upon it, and passed the slip-noose of the tiller-rope
around the neck of the defeated monster.
The combat was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the
mastodon; the pygmy had imprisoned the thunderbolt.
The soldiers and sailors applauded.
The crew rushed forward with chains and cables, and in an instant the
cannon was secured.