less, when the gale breaks that sixty-foot
yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall,
when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in the jaws
of the waves like a fisherman's hook in the jaws of a pike, when those
monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricane
bears forth into the void and into night, when all that power and all
that majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which are superior.

Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immense
feebleness it affords men food for thought, Hence in the ports curious
people abound around these marvellous machines of war and of navigation,
without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why. Every day,
accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices, and the
jetties of the port of Toulon were covered with a multitude of idlers
and loungers, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in staring
at the Orion.

The Orion was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in the course
of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collected on its
keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it had gone
into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the barnacles
scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning had
affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic
Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating
in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak.
A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in
a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the
foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the Orion had
run back to Toulon.

It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs were
begun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of the
planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to permit
of air entering the hold.

One morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an accident.

[Illustration: The Ship Orion, An Accident 2b2-1-the-ship-orion]

The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take the
upper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost his balance;
he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered a
cry; the man's head overbalanced his body; the man fell around the yard,
with his hands outstretched towards t