The Battery and the Boiler: Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables by - (top 100 novels TXT) 📕

How often it has been said, “Good for man that he does not know what lies before him.” If he did we fear he would face his duty with very different feelings from those which usually animate him. Certain it is that if Robin Wright and Sam Shipton had known what was before them—when they stood one breezy afternoon on the ship’s deck, casting glances of admiration up at the mountain waves of the southern seas, or taking bird’s-eye views of the valleys between them—their eyes would not have glistened with such flashes of delight, for the fair prospects they dreamed of were not destined to be realised.

What these prospects were was made plain by their conversation.

“Won’t it be a splendid opportunity, Sam, to become acquainted with all the outs and ins of telegraphy, this laying of lines from island to island in the China Seas?”

“It will, indeed, Robin,—a sort of compound or alternating land-and-submarine line. At one time we shall be using palm-trees for posts and carrying wires through the habitations of parrots and monkeys, at another we shall be laying them down among the sharks and coral groves.”

“By the way,” said Robin, “is it true that monkeys may prove to be more troublesome to us in these regions than sparrows and crows are at home?”

“Of course it is, my boy. Have you never heard that on some of our Indian lines, baboons, vultures, and other heavy creatures have sometimes almost broken down the telegraphs by taking exercise and roosting on the wires?”

“Indeed, I hope it won’t be so with us. At all events, sharks won’t be much tempted, I should fancy, by submarine cables.”

“There’s no saying, Robin. They are not particular when hungry. By the way, I saw you talking with unusual earnestness this morning to Jim Slagg; what was the matter with him?”

“Poor fellow! you’d scarcely believe it, to look at him,” replied Robin, “but the lad is actually home-sick.”

“Home-sick! Why, how’s that? If we were only a few days out from port, or even a week or two, I could understand it, but seeing that we are now drawing near to the China Seas, I should have thought—”

“Oh, that’s easily explained,” interrupted Robin. “This is his mother’s birthday, it seems, a day that has always been kept with much rejoicing, he tells me, by his family, and it has brought back home and home-life with unusual force to him. With all his rough off-handedness, Slagg is a tender-hearted, affectionate fellow. Somehow he has taken it into his head that this voyage will be disastrous, and that he will never see his mother again. I had great difficulty in showing him the unreasonableness of such a belief.”

“No doubt you had. It is unreasonable beliefs that people usually hold with greatest tenacity,” replied Sam, with a touch of sarcasm. “But tell me, have he and Stumps never once quarrelled since leaving England?”

“Never.”

“I’m amazed—they are so unlike in every way.”

“You would not be surprised if you knew them as I do,” returned Robin. “Ever since Slagg gave him that thrashing on board the Great Eastern in 1865, Stumps has been a changed man. It saved him from himself, and he has taken such a liking to Slagg that nothing will part them. It was that made me plead so hard for Stumps to be taken with us, because I felt sure Slagg would not go without him, and although we might easily have done without Stumps, we could not have got on so well without Slagg.”

“I’m not so sure of that, my boy. Your opinion of him is too high, though I admit him to be a first-rate youth. Indeed, if it were not so, he should not be here.—Was that a shark’s fin alongside?”

“Yes, I think so. Cook has been throwing scraps overboard, I suppose.—See, there goes an empty meat-tin.”

As he spoke the article named rose into the air, and fell with a splash in the water. At the same time Jim Slagg was seen to clamber on the bulwarks and look over.

“Come here—look alive, Stumps!” he shouted.

Stumps, whose proper name, it is but fair to state, was John Shanks, clambered clumsily to his friend’s side just in time to see a shark open its horrid jaws and swallow the meat-tin.

“Well now, I never!” exclaimed Slagg. “He didn’t even smell it to see if it was to his taste.”

“P’r’aps he’s swallowed so many before,” suggested Stumps, “that he takes for granted it’s all right.”

“Well it’s on’y flavour; and he has caught a Tartar this time,” returned the other, “unless, maybe, tin acts like pie-crust does on human vitals.”

The low deep voice of the captain was heard at this moment ordering a reef to be taken in the top-sails, and then it began to strike Robin and Sam that the breeze was freshening into something like a gale, and that there were some ominous-looking clouds rising on the windward horizon. Gazing at this cloud-bank for a few minutes, the captain turned and ordered the top-sails to be close-reefed, and most of the other sails either furled or reduced to their smallest size.

He was in good time, and the vessel was ready for the gale, when it rushed down on them hissing like a storm-fiend.

The good ship bent before the blast like a willow, but rose again, and, under the influence of able seamanship, went bravely on her course, spurning the billows from her swelling bows.

“What a thing it is to know that there is a good hand at the helm in times of danger!” remarked Sam as he and our hero stood under the shelter of the starboard bulwarks, holding on with both hands to the rigging, while the rushing waves tossed them on high or let them drop in the troughs of the seas; “I should feel safe with our captain in any circumstances.”

“So should I,” said Robin with enthusiasm, his eyes glistening with delight as he gazed on the angry ocean.

There was no thought of danger in the mind of any one at that moment. A good ship, ably commanded, well manned, and with plenty of sea-room,—what more could be desired? Nevertheless, deadly peril was close at hand.

That marvellous little creature—which, in the southern seas, builds its little cell, works its little day and dies, leaving to succeeding generations of its kind to build their little cells and die, each using its predecessor’s mansion as a foundation for its own, until pile on pile forms a mass, and mass on mass makes a mountain—the coral insect, had reared one of its submarine edifices just where the cable-ship Triton had to pass that day. For ages man had traversed that sea without passing exactly over that mountain, and even if he had, it would not have mattered, for the mountain had been always many fathoms below the surface. But now the decree had gone forth. The conjunction of events predestined had come about. The distance between the mountain summit and the ocean surface had been reduced to feet. The Triton rose on the top of