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.

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.