s premeditation. It sprang
unexpectedly upon the gunner. He jumped aside, let it pass, and cried out
with a laugh, "Try again!" The gun, as if in a fury, broke a carronade to
larboard; then, seized anew by the invisible sling which held it, was
flung to starboard toward the man, who escaped.

Three carronades gave way under the blows of the gun; then, as if blind
and no longer conscious of what it was doing, it turned its back on the
man, rolled from the stern to the bow, bruising the stem and making a
breach in the plankings of the prow. The gunner had taken refuge at the
foot of the stairs, a few steps from the old man, who was watching.

The gunner held his handspike in rest. The cannon seemed to perceive him,
and, without taking the trouble to turn itself, backed upon him with the
quickness of an ax-stroke. The gunner, if driven back against the side,
was lost. The crew uttered a simultaneous cry.

But the old passenger, until now immovable, made a spring more rapid than
all those wild whirls. He seized a bale of the forged currency, and at the
risk of being crushed, succeeded in flinging it between the wheels of the
carronade. This maneuver, decisive and dangerous, could not have been
executed with more adroitness and precision by a man trained to all the
exercises set down in Durosel's "Manual of Sea Gunnery."

The package had the effect of a plug. A pebble may stop a log, a
tree-branch turn an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The gunner, in his
turn, seizing this terrible chance, plunged his iron bar between the
spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon was stopped.

It staggered. The man, using the bar as a lever, rocked it to and fro. The
heavy mass turned over with a clang like a falling bell, and the gunner,
dripping with sweat, rushed forward headlong and passed the slipping noose
of the tiller-rope about the bronze neck of the overthrown monster.

It was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had subdued the mastodon; the
pygmy had taken the thunderbolt prisoner.

The marines and the sailors clapped their hands.

The whole crew hurried down with cables and chains, and in an instant the
cannon was securely lashed.

The gunner saluted the passenger.

"Sir," he said to him, "you have saved my life."

The old man had resumed his impassible attitude, and did not reply.

The man had conquered, but one might say that the cannon had conquered
also. Immediate shipwreck had been avoided, but the corve