done on
the Serapis, where several guns were seen surrounded by their buff crews
as by fauns and satyrs.

At the beginning of the fray, before the ships interlocked, in the
intervals of smoke which swept over the ships as mist over
mountain-tops, affording open rents here and there--the gun-deck of the
Serapis, at certain points, showed, congealed for the instant in all
attitudes of dauntlessness, a gallery of marble statues--fighting
gladiators.

Stooping low and intent, with one braced leg thrust behind, and one arm
thrust forward, curling round towards the muzzle of the gun, there was
seen the _loader_, performing his allotted part; on the other side of
the carriage, in the same stooping posture, but with both hands holding
his long black pole, pike-wise, ready for instant use--stood the eager
_rammer and sponger_; while at the breech, crouched the wary _captain of
the gun_, his keen eye, like the watching leopard's, burning along the
range; and behind all, tall and erect, the Egyptian symbol of death,
stood the _matchman_, immovable for the moment, his long-handled match
reversed. Up to their two long death-dealing batteries, the trained men
of the Serapis stood and toiled in mechanical magic of discipline. They
tended those rows of guns, as Lowell girls the rows of looms in a cotton
factory. The Parcae were not more methodical; Atropos not more fatal;
the automaton chess-player not more irresponsible.

"Look, lad; I want a grenade, now, thrown down their main hatchway. I
saw long piles of cartridges there. The powder monkeys have brought them
up faster than they can be used. Take a bucket of combustibles, and
let's hear from you presently."

These words were spoken by Paul to Israel. Israel did as ordered. In a
few minutes, bucket in hand, begrimed with powder, sixty feet in air, he
hung like Apollyon from the extreme tip of the yard over the fated abyss
of the hatchway. As he looked down between the eddies of smoke into that
slaughterous pit, it was like looking from the verge of a cataract down
into the yeasty pool at its base. Watching, his chance, he dropped one
grenade with such faultless precision, that, striking its mark, an
explosion rent the Serapis like a volcano. The long row of heaped
cartridges was ignited. The fire ran horizontally, like an express on a
railway. More than twenty men were instantly killed: nearly forty
wounded. This blow restored the chances of battle, before in favor of
the Serap