ng, let one imagine a drop of water
running over a glass.

At the moment when the fastenings gave way, the gunners were in the
battery, some in groups, others scattered about, busied with the customary
work among sailors getting ready for a signal for action. The carronade,
hurled forward by the pitching of the vessel, made a gap in this crowd of
men and crushed four at the first blow; then sliding back and shot out
again as the ship rolled, it cut in two a fifth unfortunate, and knocked a
piece of the battery against the larboard side with such force as to
unship it. This caused the cry of distress just heard. All the men rushed
to the companion-way. The gun-deck was vacated in a twinkling.

The enormous gun was left alone. It was given up to itself. It was its
own master and master of the ship. It could do what it pleased. This whole
crew, accustomed to laugh in time of battle, now trembled. To describe the
terror is impossible.

Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant la Vieuville, although both dauntless
men, stopped at the head of the companion-way and, dumb, pale, and
hesitating, looked down on the deck below. Some one elbowed past and went
down.

It was their passenger, the peasant, the man of whom they had just been
speaking a moment before.

Reaching the foot of the companion-way, he stopped.

The cannon was rushing back and forth on the deck. One might have supposed
it to be the living chariot of the Apocalypse. The marine lantern swinging
overhead added a dizzy shifting of light and shade to the picture. The
form of the cannon disappeared in the violence of its course, and it
looked now black in the light, now mysteriously white in the darkness.

It went on in its destructive work. It had already shattered four other
guns and made two gaps in the side of the ship, fortunately above the
water-line, but where the water would come in, in case of heavy weather.
It rushed frantically against the framework; the strong timbers withstood
the shock; the curved shape of the wood gave them great power of
resistance; but they creaked beneath the blows of this huge club, beating
on all sides at once, with a strange sort of ubiquity. The percussions of
a grain of shot shaken in a bottle are not swifter or more senseless. The
four wheels passed back and forth over the dead men, cutting them, carving
them, slashing them, till the five corpses were a score of stumps rolling
across the deck; the heads of the dead men seeme