work of destruction. It had already shattered four other
pieces, and dug two crevices in the side, fortunately above the
water-line, though they would leak in case a squall should come on. It
dashed itself frantically against the framework; the solid tiebeams
resisted, their curved form giving them great strength, but they creaked
ominously under the assaults of this terrible club, which seemed endowed
with a sort of appalling ubiquity, striking on every side at once. The
strokes of a bullet shaken in a bottle would not be madder or more rapid.

The four wheels passed and repassed above the dead men, cut, carved,
slashed them, till the five corpses were a score of stumps rolling about
the deck; the heads seem to cry out, streams of blood twisted in and out
of the planks with every pitch of the vessel. The ceiling, damaged in
several places, began to gape. The whole ship was filled with the awful
tumult.

The captain promptly recovered his composure, and at his order the sailors
threw down into the deck everything which could deaden and check the mad
rush of the gun--mattresses, hammocks, spare sails, coils of rope, extra
equipments, and the bales of forged French currency of which the corvette
carried a whole cargo--an infamous deception which the English considered
a fair trick in war.

But what could these rags avail? No one dared descend to arrange them in
any useful fashion, and in a few instants they were mere heaps of lint.

There was just sea enough to render the accident as complete as possible.
A tempest would have been desirable--it might have thrown the gun upside
down; and the four wheels once in the air, the monster could have been
mastered. But the devastation continued and increased. There were gashes
and even fractures in the masts, which, embedded in the woodwork of the
keel, pierce through the decks of ships like great round pillars.

The mizzenmast was cracked, and the mainmast itself was injured under the
convulsive blows of the gun. The battery was being destroyed. Ten pieces
out of the thirty were disabled; the breaches multiplied in the side, and
the corvette began to take in water.

The old passenger, who had descended to the gun-deck, looked like a form
of stone stationed at the foot of the stairs. He stood motionless, gazing
sternly about upon the devastation. Indeed, it seemed impossible to take a
single step forward.

Each bound of the liberated carronade menaced the destruction of the