THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY

OF

FAMOUS LITERATURE.

A FIGHT WITH A CANNON.

BY VICTOR HUGO.

(From "Ninety-three.")

[VICTOR MARIE HUGO, French novelist, poet, dramatist, and miscellaneous writer, was born at Besançon, February 26, 1802. He followed his father, one of Napoleon's generals, from place to place in Europe, studying privately or in local schools. From the age of eleven he poured out streams of literary product, won several prizes before he was eighteen, and was called by Châteaubriand "The Sublime Child." He was elected to the Academy in 1845. He entered political life in 1848; became an opponent of Louis Napoleon; was proscribed by him after the coup d'état of 1851, and remained in exile till Napoleon's fall in 1870, when he returned and was made senator. He died May 22, 1885. Of his enormously prolific genius the best-known products are the novels "Notre Dame de Paris," "Les Misérables," "The Toilers of the Sea," " "Ninety-three," and "L'Homme Qui Rit" (The Grinning Man); the plays "Hernani," "Ruy Blas," and "Les Burgraves"; "The History of a Crime," an account of the coup d'état; "The Last Day of a Condemned One"; the poems "Legend of the Ages," Contemplations, ," "The Chastisements," "The Pope," and "The Art of Being a Grandfather,” besides several miscellaneous volumes of verse.]

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LA VIEUVILLE's words were suddenly cut short by a desperate cry, and at the same instant they heard a noise as unaccountable as it was awful. The cry and this noise came from the interior of the vessel.

The captain and lieutenant made a rush for the gun deck, but could not get down. All the gunners were hurrying fran

tically up.

A frightful thing had just happened.

One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four-pounder, had got loose.

This is perhaps the most formidable of ocean accidents. Nothing more terrible can happen to a vessel in open sea and under full sail.

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