The monstrous gun was left to itself.  It was its own mistress, and mistress of the ship.  It could do with it whatsoever it wished.  This crew, accustomed to laugh in battle, now trembled.  It would be impossible to describe their terror.

Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant la Vieuville, brave men though they were, paused at the top of the ladder, silent, pale, and undecided, looking down on the deck.  Some one pushed them aside with his elbow, and descended.  It was their passenger, the peasant, the man about whom they were talking a moment ago.

Having reached the bottom of the ladder he halted.

* * * * * *

The cannon was rolling to and fro on the deck.  It might have been called the living chariot of the Apocalypse.  A dim wavering of lights and shadows was added to this spectacle by the marine lantern, swinging under the deck.  The outlines of the cannon were indistinguishable, by reason of the rapidity of its motion; sometimes it looked black when the light shone upon it, then again it would cast pale, glimmering reflections in the darkness.

It was still pursuing its work of destruction.  It had already shattered four other pieces, and made two breaches in the ship’s side, fortunately above the waterline, but which would leak in case of rough weather.  It rushed frantically against the timbers; the stout riders resisted,—­curved timbers have great strength; but one could hear them crack under this tremendous assault brought to bear simultaneously on every side, with a certain omnipresence truly appalling.

A bullet shaken in a bottle could not produce sharper or more rapid sounds.  The four wheels were passing and repassing over the dead bodies, cutting and tearing them to pieces, and the five corpses had become five trunks rolling hither and thither; the heads seemed to cry out; streams of blood flowed over the deck, following the motion of the ship.  The ceiling, damaged in several places, had begun to give way.  The whole ship was filled with a dreadful tumult.

The captain, who had rapidly recovered his self-possession, had given orders to throw down the hatchway all that could abate the rage and check the mad onslaught of this infuriated gun; mattresses, hammocks, spare sails, coils of rope, the bags of the crew, and bales of false assignats, with which the corvette was laden,—­that infamous stratagem of English origin being considered a fair trick in war.

But what availed these rags?  No one dared to go down to arrange them, and in a few moments they were reduced to lint.

There was just sea enough to render this accident as complete as possible.  A tempest would have been welcome.  It might have upset the cannon, and which its four wheels once in the air, it could easily have been mastered.  Meanwhile the havoc increased.  There were even incisions and fractures in the masts, that stood like pillars grounded firmly in the keel, and piercing the several decks of the vessel.  The mizzen-mast was split, and even the main-mast was damaged by the convulsive blows of the cannon.  The destruction of the battery still went on.  Ten out of the thirty pieces were useless.  The fractures in the side increased, and the corvette began to leak.