“Do you believe in God, chevalier?”
La Vieuville replied: “Yes—no. Sometimes.”
“During a tempest?”
“Yes, and in moments like this.”
“God alone can save us from this,” said Boisberthelot.
Everybody was silent, letting the carronade continue its horrible din.
Outside, the waves beating against the ship responded with their blows
to the shocks of the cannon. It was like two hammers alternating.
Suddenly, in the midst of this inaccessible ring, where the escaped
cannon was leaping, a man was seen to appear, with an iron bar in his
hand. He was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun,
guilty of criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the
master of the carronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to
repair it. He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with
a slip-noose in the other, and jumped down the hatchway to the gun
deck.
Then began an awful sight; a Titanic scene; the contest between gun
and gunner; the battle of matter and intelligence, the duel between
man and the inanimate.
The man stationed himself in a corner, and with bar and rope in his
two hands, he leaned against one of the riders, braced himself on his
legs, which seemed two steel posts, and livid, calm, tragic, as if
rooted to the deck, he waited.
He waited for the cannon to pass by him.
The gunner knew his gun, and it seemed to him as if the gun ought to
know him. He had lived long with it. How many times he had thrust his
hands into its mouth! It was his own familiar monster. He began to
speak to it as if it were his dog.
“Come!” he said. Perhaps he loved it.
He seemed to wish it to come to him.
But to come to him was to come upon him. And then he would be lost.
How could he avoid being crushed! That was the question. All looked on
in terror.
Not a breast breathed freely, unless perhaps that of the old man, who
was alone in the battery with the two contestants, a stern witness.
He might be crushed himself by the cannon. He did not stir.
Beneath, them the sea blindly directed the contest.
At the moment when the gunner, accepting this frightful hand-to-hand
conflict, challenged the cannon, some chance rocking of the sea caused
the carronade to remain for an instant motionless and as if stupefied.
“Come, now!” said the man. It seemed to listen.
Suddenly it leaped towards him. The man dodged the blow.
The battle began. Battle unprecedented. Frailty struggling against the
invulnerable. The gladiator of flesh attacking the beast of brass. On
one side, brute force; on the other, a human soul.
All this was taking place in semi-darkness. It was like the shadowy
vision of a miracle.
A soul—strange to say, one would have thought the cannon also had a
soul; but a soul full of hatred and rage. This sightless thing seemed
to have eyes. The monster appeared to lie in wait for the man. One
would have at least believed that there was craft in this mass. It
also chose its time. It was a strange, gigantic insect of metal,
having or seeming to have the will of a demon. For a moment this
colossal locust would beat against the low ceiling overhead, then it
would come down on its four wheels like a tiger on its four paws, and
begin to run at the man. He, supple, nimble, expert, writhed away like
an adder from all these lightning movements. He avoided a collision,
but the blows which he parried fell against the vessel, and continued
their work of destruction.
[Illustration: The Contest Between Gun and Gunner]
An end of broken chain was left hanging to the carronade. This chain
had in some strange way become twisted about the screw of the
cascabel. One end of the chain was fastened to the gun-carriage. The
other, left loose, whirled desperately about the cannon, making all
its blows more dangerous.
The screw held it in a firm grip, adding a thong to a battering-ram,
making a terrible whirlwind around the cannon, an iron lash in a
brazen hand. This chain complicated the contest.
However, the man went on fighting. Occasionally, it was the man who
attacked the cannon; he would creep along the side of the vessel, bar
and rope in hand; and the cannon, as if it understood, and as though
suspecting some snare, would flee away. The man, bent on victory,
pursued it.
Such things cannot long continue. The cannon seemed to say to itself,
all of a sudden, “Come, now! Make an end of it!” and it stopped. One
felt that the crisis was at hand. The cannon, as if in suspense,
seemed to have, or really had—for to all it was a living being—a
ferocious malice prépense. It made a sudden, quick dash at the gunner.
The gunner sprang out of the way, let it pass by, and cried out to it
with a laugh, “Try it again!” The cannon, as if enraged, smashed a
carronade on the port side; then, again seized by the invisible sling
which controlled it, it was hurled to the starboard side at the man,
who made his escape. Three carronades gave way under the blows of the
cannon; then, as if blind and not knowing what more to do, turned its
back on the man, rolled from stern to bow, injured the stern and made
a breach in the planking of the prow. The man took refuge at the foot
of the steps, not far from the old man who was looking on. The gunner
held his iron bar in rest. The cannon seemed to notice it, and without
taking the trouble to turn around, slid back on the man, swift as the
blow of an axe. The man, driven against the side of the ship, was
lost. The whole crew cried out with horror.
But the old passenger, till this moment motionless, darted forth more
quickly than any of this wildly swift rapidity. He seized a package of
counterfeit assignats, and, at the risk of being crushed, succeeded in
throwing it between the wheels of the carronade. This decisive and
perilous movement could not have been made with more exactness and
precision by a man trained in all the exercises described in Durosel’s
“Manual of Gun Practice at Sea.”
The package had the effect of a clog. A pebble may stop a log, the
branch of a tree turn aside an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The
gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his
iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon
stopped. It leaned forward. The man using the bar as a lever, held it
in equilibrium. The heavy mass was overthrown, with the crash of a
falling bell, and the man, rushing with all his might, dripping with
perspiration, passed the slip-noose around the bronze neck of the
subdued monster.
It was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had control over the
mastodon; the pigmy had taken the thunderbolt prisoner.
The mariners and sailors clapped their hands.
The whole crew rushed forward with cables and chains, and in an
instant the cannon was secured.
The gunner saluted the passenger.
“Sir,” he said, “you have saved my life.”
The old man had resumed his impassive attitude, and made no reply.