The cannon came and went along the deck. One might have fancied it the living chariot of the Apocalypse. The marine lantern, oscillating from the ceiling, added a confusing whirl of lights and shadows to the strange vision. The shape of the cannon was undistinguishable from the rapidity of its course; now it looked black in the light, now it cast weird reflections through the gloom.
It kept on its 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 vessel. A few minutes more and shipwreck would be inevitable.
They must perish or put a summary end to the disaster. A decision must be made—but how?