ankind for having contracted an
untoward relish for so pernicious a beverage. Then, finding my thirst not
sufficiently allayed, I filled a large goblet with water, and, after
having swilled it like a horse--

"Come, sir," said I to my master, "let us drink plentifully of this
beneficial liquor. Let us make those early establishments of dilution you
so much regret live again in your house."

He clapped his hands in ecstasy at these words, and preached to me for a
whole hour about suffering no liquid but water to pass my lips. To confirm
the habit, I promised to drink a large quantity every evening; and to keep
my word with less violence to my private inclinations, I went to bed with
a determined purpose of going to the tavern every day.

A FIGHT WITH A CANNON

BY VICTOR HUGO

La vieuville was suddenly cut short by a cry of despair, and a the same
time a noise was heard wholly unlike any other sound. The cry and sounds
came from within the vessel.

The captain and lieutenant rushed toward the gun-deck but could not get
down. All the gunners were pouring up in dismay.

Something terrible had just happened.

One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four pounder, had broken
loose.

This is the most dangerous accident that can possibly take place on
shipboard. Nothing more terrible can happen to a sloop of was in open sea
and under full sail.

A cannon that breaks its moorings suddenly becomes some strange,
supernatural beast. It is a machine transformed into a monster. That short
mass on wheels moves like a billiard-ball, rolls with the rolling of the
ship, plunges with the pitching goes, comes, stops, seems to meditate,
starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow from one end of the
vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away, dodges, rears, bangs,
crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering ram capriciously
assaulting a wall. Add to this the fact that the ram is of metal, the wall
of wood.

It is matter set free; one might say, this eternal slave was avenging
itself; it seems as if the total depravity concealed in what we call
inanimate things has escaped, and burst forth all of a sudden; it appears
to lose patience, and to take a strange mysterious revenge; nothing more
relentless than this wrath of the inanimate. This enraged lump leaps like
a panther, it has the clumsiness of an elephant, the nimbleness of a
mouse, the obstinacy of an ox, the uncertainty of the billows, the zigzag