It was like two hammers alternating.

Suddenly, in the midst of this inaccessible ring, where the escaped cannon
was leaping, a man was seen to appear, with an iron bar in his hand. He
was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun, guilty of
criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the master of the
carronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to repair it. He had
seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with a slip-noose in the
other, and jumped, down the hatchway to the gun-deck.

Then began an awful sight; a Titanic scene; the contest between gun and
gunner; the battle of matter and intelligence; the duel between man and
the inanimate.

The man stationed himself in a corner, and, with bar and rope in his two
hands, he leaned against one of the riders, braced himself on his legs,
which seemed two steel posts; and livid, calm, tragic, as if rooted to the
deck, he waited.

He waited for the cannon to pass by him.

The gunner knew his gun, and it seemed to him as if the gun ought to know
him. He had lived long with it. How many times he had thrust his hand into
its mouth! It was his own familiar monster. He began to speak to it as if
it were his dog.

"Come!" he said. Perhaps he loved it.

He seemed to wish it to come to him.

But to come to him was to come upon him. And then he would be lost. How
could he avoid being crushed? That was the question. All looked on in
terror.

Not a breast breathed freely, unless perhaps that of the old man, who was
alone in the battery with the two contestants, a stern witness.

He might be crushed himself by the cannon. He did not stir.

Beneath them the sea blindly directed the contest.

At the moment when the gunner, accepting this frightful hand-to-hand
conflict, challenged the cannon, some chance rocking of the sea caused the
carronade to remain for an instant motionless and as if stupefied. "Come,
now!" said the man.

It seemed to listen.

Suddenly it leaped toward him. The man dodged the blow.

The battle began. Battle unprecedented. Frailty struggling against the
invulnerable. The gladiator of flesh attacking the beast of brass. On one
side, brute force; on the other, a human soul.

All this was taking place in semi-darkness. It was like the shadowy vision
of a miracle.

A soul--strange to say, one would have thought the cannon also had a soul;
but a soul full of hatred and rage. This sightless thing seemed to have
eyes.