The Battery and the Boiler, Robert Michael Ballantyne [best book club books .TXT] 📗

on, when, in the language of the poet, `adequate words is wantin'!' And Letta's mother is second only to herself. Then as to the men, could there be found anywhere finer fellows than uncle Rik and Ebenezer Smith, and Frank Hedley--to say nothing of myself and our splendid little boy Sammy? I can't understand it, Robin. You're not ill, are you?"

"Ill? no. Never was better in my life."

"Well, then, what is it? Be confidential, my boy. The witching hour of sunrise is fitted for confidential communications. You're not in love, are--"

"Hush, Sam! the skylight is open. Come forward to the bows. Yes, Sam, I _am_ in love."

"Well, Robin, I can't pretend ignorance, for I know it--at least I have seen it."

"Seen it!" echoed Robin, "how is that? I have never by word or look given the slightest indication to any one, of the state of my feelings."

"True, Robin, as regards words, but there are other modes of indication, as must be well-known to a celebrated electrician like yourself. The fact is, my dear boy, that you and Letta have been rubbing your intellects together for so many years, that you have electrified each other--the one positively, the other negatively; and even a Manx cat with an absent mind and no tail could hardly fail to observe the telegraphic communication which you have established by means of that admirable duplex instrument, a pair of eyes."

"You distress me very much, Sam," returned Robin, seriously. "I assure you I have never consciously done anything of the sort, and I have never opened my lips to Letta on the subject--I dare not."

"I believe you as to your consciousness; but, to be serious, Robin, why should being in love make you miserable?"

"Because it makes me doubt whether Letta cares for me."

"Nonsense, Robin. Take my advice, put an end to your doubts, and make sure of your ground by taking heart and proposing to Letta."

"I dare not, Sam. It is all very well for a fine manly fellow like you to give such advice, but I am such a poor, miserable sort of--"

"Hallo, fasser!" cried a merry voice at that moment, "how red de sun am!"

The owner of the voice--a mere chip of a child, in perfect miniature middy costume--ran up to its father and was hoisted on his shoulder.

"Yes, the sun is very red, like your own face, Sammy, my boy, to say nothing of cousin Robin's. Where is mamma?"

The question was answered by mamma herself, our old friend Madge Mayland, coming up the companion-hatch,--tall, dark, beautiful, like the spirit of departed night. She was followed by Letta,--graceful, fair, sunny, like the spirit of the coming morn.

"Sunbeam, ahoy!" came up through the cabin skylight at that moment, like the sonorous voice of Neptune.

"Well, grunkle Rik, w'at is it?" shouted Sammy, in silvery tones, from his father's shoulder.

"Grunkle" was the outcome of various efforts made to teach Sammy to call the old captain grand-uncle.

"Where have you stowed away my hair-brush, you rascal?" cried the voice of thunder.

"It's under my bunk, grunkle; I was bracking yous boots with it."

The thunder subsided in tempestuous mutterings, and Sammy, feeling that he had begun the day well, struggled out of his father's arms and went careering round the deck into every possible position of danger. He kept them all lively until Stumps caught him and extinguished him, for a time, with breakfast.

"Uncle Rik," said Sam, while that meal was being discussed in the snuggest little cabin that could be imagined, "did you hear of the extraordinary manner in which a whale was caught by a telegraph cable lately?"

"No, I didn't, Sam, an' what's more, I wouldn't believe it if I did."

"It is true, nevertheless," said Sam, breaking his fifth egg--sea breezes being appetising.

"How did it happen, Sam?" asked Madge.

"In a very curious manner Madge. It will amuse Letta, for I know she takes a deep interest in cables."

"Indeed it will," said Letta, who was the soul of earnest simplicity; "I delight in electric cables."

Robin looked at Letta, and wished that he were an electric cable!

"It happened to the Persian Gulf cable, quite recently," continued Sam, addressing himself to Letta. "The cable between Kurrachee and Gwadur, a distance of 300 miles, suddenly failed one evening. Now, you must know that electrical science has advanced with such rapid strides of late, that we have the power to discover pretty nearly the exact position of a fault in a cable. Of course I cannot expect a young lady to understand the technical details of the mode, in which this is done, but you will understand that by tests taken at either end the damage appeared to be about 118 miles from Kurrachee, and a telegraph steamer was sent with an electrical and engineering staff to repair it. The steamer reached the supposed locality early on the morning of the second day out, and proceeded at once to grapple for the cable, though a thick fog prevailed at the time, and a heavy sea was running.

"The soundings at the place were very irregular, implying a rugged bottom of submarine mountain-tops and valleys. On winding in the cable unusual resistance was experienced, as if it were foul of rocks, and when, after great difficulty, they drew it up they found that this was caused by the body of an immense whale, with two and a half turns of the cable round it immediately above the tail."

"Pooh! boh!" exclaimed uncle Rik, "I don't believe it."

"But I do, uncle," returned Sam, as he opened his sixth egg, "for I read the account of it in one of the engineering journals, in which dates and names were given. The steamer was the Amber Witch, commanded by Captain Bishop, and the staff of operators were under Mr Harry Mance. The body of the huge creature was found to be rapidly decomposing, the jaws falling away as it reached the surface, and sharks had evidently been devouring it. The tail, which measured twelve feet across, was covered with barnacles at the extremities."

"But how could it have entangled itself so?" asked Mrs Langley.

"They suppose that at the time the whale had found a part of the cable hanging in a deep loop over a submarine precipice, and, thinking the chance a good one no doubt for scraping off the barnacles and other parasites that annoy whales very much, had probably twisted the cable round him with a flip of his tail. Anyhow, the fact is unquestionable that it held him fast until he was fished up dead by the electricians and engineers."

"How strange!" murmured Letta.

"It is indeed," responded Robin, "the most extraordinary case I ever heard of, though cables are subject to many singular accidents. I remember one case of accident to the cable across the river Yar, in the Isle of Wight. A bullock fell from the deck of a vessel, and, in its struggles, caught the cable and broke it."

"I have read of several very singular cases," said Sam, "in which cables have been attacked and damaged by inhabitants of the sea. The Cuba and Florida cable was once damaged by the bite of some large fish, and a similar accident happened to the China cable. In the Malta-Alexandria cable, a piece of the core from which the sheathing had been worn was found to have been bitten by a shark, and pieces of the teeth were found sticking in the gutta-percha."

"I thought it was to the Singapore cable that that happened," said Robin.

"No, but something similar happened to it. That cable was laid in December. In the following March a stoppage occurred. The fault was spotted at 200 miles from Singapore. When hauled up, the cable was found to have been pierced, and bits of crushed bone were sticking in the hole. The piece was cut out and sent to Mr Frank Buckland, who, after long and careful examination, came to the conclusion that it had been the work of a saw-fish."

"Dear me, Mr Shipton," said Mrs Langley, "you speak as if every part of the world were connected by electric cables."

"And such is the case," said Sam; "we have now direct communication by submarine cable and land telegraph with every part of Europe; with Canada and the United States; down South America, nearly to Cape Horn; with Africa from Algiers to the Cape of Good Hope; with India from Afghanistan to Ceylon; with China from Pekin to Hong-Kong; and down through the Malacca Archipelago, Australia, and Tasmania."

"I say, Sam, are you a member of the Royal Geographical Society, or a walking atlas?" asked uncle Rik.

"In short," continued Sam, not heeding the interruption, "there isn't a civilised quarter of the globe which is not tied to us by telegraph, and from which we might not hear any morning of the events of the preceding day."

"Always excepting Central Africa and the two poles," said the captain.

"I said civilised quarters," retorted Sam, "and, as far as I know, the poles are inhabited only by bears."

"True, I forgot, the poles are barely civilised," said uncle Rik.

"Now, Master Sammy," growled a deep voice from the adjoining galley, "you keep your hands out o' that copper."

"Fasser," shouted a silvery voice from the same region, "'Tumps is naughty. I wants to wass my hands in de soup, an' he won't let me."

"Quite right. Keep him in order, Stumps," said the unfeeling Sam, senior.

"Dere--pa says I's kite right, an' to keep you in order, 'Tumps," said the silvery voice. (Then, after a few minutes), "Grunkle Rik, is you finish bekfist?"

"Ay, ay, Sunbeam, quite finished."

"Den come on deck an' p'ay vid me."

Uncle Rik rose with a laugh, and obediently went on deck to play. But the play did not last long, for that day ominous clouds rose in the west, and, overspreading the sky, soon drenched the little yacht with rain. Towards evening the rain ceased, but the wind increased to a gale, and the weather showed signs of becoming what is known among seamen, we believe, as dirty. Ere long the low mutterings of thunder increased to mighty peals, and the occasional gleams of lightning to frequent and vivid flashes, that lit up the scene with the brilliancy of full moonlight.

"I wish we were nearer shore," said Letta, timidly, to Robin, as they stood looking over the bulwarks; "what is the land we see far away on our left?"

"The Island of Mull," returned Robin.

"Better if it was further away," growled Captain Rik, who overheard the remark. "We want plenty of sea-room on a night like this."

"We've got sea-room enough," observed "Captain" Slagg, with the confidence of a man who knows well what he is about, as he stood by the tiller, balancing himself with his legs well apart.

"You've got a lightning conductor on the mast, of course?" observed Captain Rik to Sam.

"No," replied Sam.

"Sam!" exclaimed the captain in a tone of intense surprise, "you, of all men, without such a safeguard."

"Well, uncle Rik," replied Sam with a laugh, "yachts are not always fitted with conductors. But I'm not