“Then let us try this general.”

“He is a great nobleman.”

“Do you think he will do?”

“If he is one of the right sort,” said La Vieuville.

“You mean relentless?” said Boisberthelot.

The count and the chevalier looked at each other.

“Monsieur Boisberthelot, you have defined the meaning of the word.  Relentless,—­yes, that’s what we need.  This is a war that shows no mercy.  The blood-thirsty are in the ascendant.  The regicides have beheaded Louis XVI; we will quarter the regicides.  Yes, the general we need is General Relentless.  In Anjou and Upper Poitou the leaders play the magnanimous; they trifle with generosity, and they are always defeated.  In the Marais and the country of Retz, where the leaders are ferocious, everything goes bravely forward.  It is because Charette is fierce that he stands his ground against Parrein,—­hyena pitted against hyena.”

Boisberthelot had no time to answer.  Vieuville’s words were suddenly cut short by a desperate cry, and at the same instant they heard a noise unlike all other sounds.  This cry and the unusual sounds came from the interior of the vessel.

The captain and the lieutenant rushed to the gun-deck, but were unable to enter.  All the gunners came running up, beside themselves with terror.

A frightful thing had just happened.

One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four pound cannon, had become loose.

This is perhaps the most dreadful thing that can take place at sea.  Nothing more terrible can happen to a man-of-war under full sail.

A cannon that breaks loose from its fastenings is suddenly transformed into a supernatural beast.  It is a monster developed from a machine.  This mass runs along on its wheels as easily as a billiard ball; it rolls with the rolling, pitches with the pitching, comes and goes, stops, seems to meditate, begins anew, darts like an arrow from one end of the ship to the other, whirls around, turns aside, evades, rears, hits out, crushes, kills, exterminates.  It is a ram battering a wall at its own pleasure.  Moreover, the battering-ram is iron, the wall is wood.  It is matter set free; one might say that this eternal slave is wreaking its vengeance; it would seem as though the evil in what we call inanimate objects had found vent and suddenly burst forth; it has the air of having lost its patience, and of taking a mysterious, dull revenge; nothing is so inexorable as the rage of the inanimate.  The mad mass leaps like a panther; it has the weight of an elephant, the agility of a mouse, the obstinacy of the axe; it takes one by surprise, like the surge of the sea; it flashes like lightning; it is deaf as the tomb; it weighs ten thousand pounds, and it bounds like a child’s ball; it whirls as it advances, and the circles it describes are intersected by right angles.  And what help is there?  How can it be overcome?