Not a breast respired freely, except perchance that of the old man who alone stood in the deck with the two combatants, a stern second.
He might himself be crushed by the piece. He did not stir.
Beneath them the blind sea directed the battle.
At the instant when, accepting this awful hand-to-hand contest, the gunner approached to challenge the cannon, some chance fluctuation of the waves kept it for a moment immovable, as if suddenly stupefied.
"Come on!" the man said to it. It seemed to listen.
Suddenly it darted upon him. The gunner avoided the shock.
The struggle began—struggle unheard of. The fragile matching itself against the invulnerable. The living thing of flesh attacking the inanimate brass. On the one side blind force, on the other a soul.
The whole passed in a half light. It was like the indistinct vision of a miracle.
A soul—strange thing; but you would have said that the cannon had one also—a soul filled with rage and hatred. This blindness appeared to have eyes. The monster had the air of watching the man. There was—one might have fancied so at least—cunning in this mass. It also chose its moment. It became some gigantic insect of metal, having, or seeming to have, the will of a demon.
Sometimes this colossal grasshopper would strike the low ceiling of the gun-deck, then fall back on its four wheels like a tiger upon its four claws, and dart anew on the man. He, supple, agile, adroit, would glide away like a snake from the reach of these lightning-like movements. He avoided the threatened encounters; but the blows which he escaped fell upon the vessel and continued the havoc.