the instant when, accepting this awful hand-to-hand contest, the gunner
approached to challenge the cannon, some chance fluctuation of the waves
kept it for a moment immovable, as if suddenly stupefied.

"Come on!" the man said to it. It seemed to listen.

Suddenly it darted upon him. The gunner avoided the shock.

The struggle began--struggle unheard of. The fragile matching itself
against the invulnerable. The living thing of flesh attacking the
inanimate brass. On the one side blind force, on the other a soul.

The whole passed in a half light. It was like the indistinct vision of a
miracle.

A soul--strange thing; but you would have said that the cannon had one
also--a soul filled with rage and hatred. This blindness appeared to have
eyes. The monster had the air of watching the man. There was--one might
have fancied so at least--cunning in this mass. It also chose its moment.
It became some gigantic insect of metal, having, or seeming to have, the
will of a demon.

Sometimes this colossal grasshopper would strike the low ceiling of the
gun-deck, then fall back on its four wheels like a tiger upon its four
claws, and dart anew on the man. He, supple, agile, adroit, would glide
away like a snake from the reach of these lightning-like movements. He
avoided the threatened encounters; but the blows which he escaped fell
upon the vessel and continued the havoc.

An end of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This chain had
twisted itself, one could not tell how, about the screw of the breech
button. One extremity of the chain was fastened to the carriage. The
other, hanging loose, whirled wildly about the gun and added to the danger
of its blows.

The screw held it like a clinched hand, and the chain, multiplying the
strokes of the battering-ram by its strokes of a thong, made a fearful
whirlwind about the cannon--a whip of iron in a fist of brass. This chain
complicated the battle.

Nevertheless, the man fought. Sometimes, even, it was the man who attacked
the cannon. He crept along the side, bar and rope in hand, and the cannon
had the air of understanding, and fled as if it perceived a snare. The
man pursued it, formidable, fearless.

Such a duel could not last long. The gun seemed suddenly to say to itself,
"Come, we must make an end!" and it paused. One felt the approach of the
crisis. The cannon, as if in suspense, appeared to have, or had--because
it seemed to all a sentient being--a furiou