(From Ninety-Three.)
By VICTOR HUGO.
One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four pounder, had
broken loose.
This is the most dangerous accident that can possibly take place on
shipboard. Nothing more terrible can happen to a sloop of war in open
sea and under full sail.
A cannon that breaks its moorings suddenly becomes some strange,
supernatural beast. It is a machine transformed into a monster. That
short mass on wheels moves like a billiard-ball, rolls with the
rolling of the ship, plunges with the pitching, goes, comes, stops,
seems to meditate, starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow,
from one end of the vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away,
dodges, rears, bangs, crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering
ram capriciously assaulting a wall. Add to this, the fact that the ram
is of metal, the wall of wood.
It is matter set free; one might say, this eternal slave was avenging
itself; it seems as if the total depravity concealed in what we call
inanimate things had escaped, and burst forth all of a sudden; it
appears to lose patience, and to take a strange mysterious revenge;
nothing more relentless than this wrath of the inanimate. This enraged
lump leaps like a panther, it has the clumsiness of an elephant, the
nimbleness of a mouse, the obstinacy of an axe, the uncertainty of the
billows, the zigzag of the lightning, the deafness of the grave. It
weighs ten thousand pounds, and it rebounds like a child’s ball. It
spins and then abruptly darts off at right angles.
And what is to be done? How put an end to it? A tempest ceases, a
cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced,
a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of
this enormous brute of bronze? How can it be captured? You can reason
with a bull-dog, astonish a bull, fascinate a boa, frighten a tiger,
tame a lion; but you have no resource against this monster, a loose
cannon. You cannot kill it, it is dead; and at the same time it lives.
It lives with a sinister life which comes to it from the infinite. The
deck beneath it gives it full swing. It is moved by the ship, which is
moved by the sea, which is moved by the wind. This destroyer is a toy.
The ship, the waves, the winds, all play with it, hence its frightful
animation. What is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this
stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and
goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on
the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful
meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind,
which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant.
How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon
struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes left, retreats,
passes by, disconcerts expectation, grinds up obstacles, crushes men
like flies. All the terror of the situation is in the fluctuations of
the flooring. How fight an inclined plane subject to caprices? The
ship has, so to speak, in its belly, an imprisoned thunderstorm,
striving to escape; something like a thunderbolt rumbling above an
earthquake.
In an instant the whole crew was on foot. It was the fault of the gun
captain, who had neglected to fasten the screw-nut of the
mooring-chain, and had insecurely clogged the four wheels of the gun
carriage; this gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the
two platforms, and finally the breeching. The tackle had given way, so
that the cannon was no longer firm on its carriage. The stationary
breeching, which prevents recoil, was not in use at this time. A heavy
sea struck the port, the carronade insecurely fastened, had recoiled
and broken its chain, and begun its terrible course over the deck.
To form an idea of this strange sliding, let one image a drop of water
running over glass.
At the moment when the fastenings gave way, the gunners were in the
battery. Some in groups, others scattered about, busied with the
customary work among sailors getting ready for a signal for action.
The carronade, hurled forward by the pitching of the vessel, made a
gap in this crowd of men and crushed four at the first blow; then
sliding back and shot out again as the ship rolled, it cut in two a
fifth unfortunate, and knocked a piece of the battery against the
larboard side with such force as to unship it. This caused the cry of
distress just heard. All the men rushed to the companion-way. The gun
deck was vacated in a twinkling.
The enormous gun was left alone. It was given up to itself. It was its
own master, and master of the ship. It could do what it pleased. This
whole crew, accustomed to laugh in time of battle, now trembled. To
describe the terror is impossible.
Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant La Vieuville, although both
dauntless men, stopped at the head of the companion-way, and dumb,
pale, and hesitating, looked down on the deck below. Some one elbowed
past and went down.
It was their passenger, the peasant, the man of whom they had just
been speaking a moment before.
Reaching the foot of the companion-way, he stopped.
* * * * *
The cannon was rushing back and forth on the deck. One might have
supposed it to be the living chariot of the Apocalypse. The marine
lantern swinging overhead added a dizzy shifting of light and shade to
the picture. The form of the cannon disappeared in the violence of its
course, and it looked now black in the light, now mysteriously white
in the darkness.
It went on in its destructive work. It had already shattered four
other guns and made two gaps in the side of the ship, fortunately
above the water-line, but where the water would come in, in case of
heavy weather. It rushed frantically against the framework; the strong
timbers withstood the shock; the curved shape of the wood gave them
great power of resistance; but they creaked beneath the blows of this
huge club, beating on all sides at once, with a strange sort of
ubiquity. The percussions of a grain of shot shaken in a bottle are
not swifter or more senseless. The four wheels passed back and forth
over the dead men, cutting them, carving them, slashing them, till the
five corpses were a score of stumps rolling across the deck; the heads
of the dead men seemed to cry out; streams of blood curled over the
deck with the rolling of the vessel; the planks, damaged in several
places, began to gape open. The whole ship was filled with the horrid
noise and confusion.
The captain promptly recovered his presence of mind and ordered
everything that could check and impede the cannon’s mad course to be
thrown through the hatchway down on the gun deck—mattresses, hammocks,
spare sails, rolls of cordage, bags belonging to the crew, and bales
of counterfeit assignats, of which the corvette carried a large
quantity—a characteristic piece of English villany regarded as
legitimate warfare.
But what could these rags do? As nobody dared to go below to dispose
of them properly, they were reduced to lint in a few minutes.
There was just sea enough to make the accident as bad as possible. A
tempest would have been desirable, for it might have upset the cannon,
and with its four wheels once in the air there would be some hope of
getting it under control. Meanwhile, the havoc increased.
There were splits and fractures in the masts, which are set into the
framework of the keel and rise above the decks of ships like great,
round pillars. The convulsive blows of the cannon had cracked the
mizzen-mast, and had cut into the main-mast.
The battery was being ruined. Ten pieces out of thirty were disabled;
the breaches in the side of the vessel were increasing, and the
corvette was beginning to leak.
The old passenger, having gone down to the gun deck, stood like a man
of stone at the foot of the steps. He cast a stern glance over this
scene of devastation. He did not move. It seemed impossible to take a
step forward. Every movement of the loose carronade threatened the
ship’s destruction. A few moments more and shipwreck would be
inevitable.
They must perish or put a speedy end to the disaster; some course must
be decided on; but what? What an opponent was this carronade!
Something must be done to stop this terrible madness—to capture this
lightning—to overthrow this thunderbolt.