When Mr John Shanks realised the full extent of his loss, his first
impulse was to seize hold of the nearest passer-by and strangle him; his
next, to dash down a narrow street close beside him in pursuit of some
one; his next, to howl "stop thief!" and "murder!" and his next, to
stare into a shop window in blank dismay, and meditate.
Of these various impulses, he gave way only to the last. His
meditations, however, were confused and unsatisfactory. Turning from
them abruptly, he hurried along the street at a furious walk, muttering,
"I'll go an' tell Slagg." Then, pausing abruptly, "No, I won't, I'll go
an' inform the pleece."
Under this new impulse he hurried forward again, jostling people as he
went, and receiving a good deal of rough-handling in return. Presently
he came to a dead halt, and with knitted brows and set teeth, hissed,
"I'll go and drown myself."
Full of this intention he broke into a run, but, not being acquainted
with the place, found it necessary to ask his way to the port. This
somewhat sobered him, but did not quite change his mind, so that when he
eventually reached the neighbourhood of the shipping, he was still going
at a quick excited walk. He was stopped by a big and obviously
eccentric sea-captain, or mate, who asked him if he happened to know of
any active stout young fellow who wanted to ship in a tight little craft
about to sail for old England.
"No, I don't," said Stumps, angrily.
"Come now, think again," said the skipper, in no degree abashed, and
putting on a nautical grin, which was meant for a winning smile. "I'm
rather short-handed; give good wages; have an amiable temper, a good
craft, and a splendid cook. You're just the active spirited fellow that
I want. You'll ship now, eh?"
"No, I won't," said Stumps, sulkily, endeavouring to push past.
"Well, well, no offence. Keep an easy mind, and if you should chance to
change it, just come and see me, Captain Bounce, of the Swordfish.
There she lies, in all her beauty, quite a picture. Good-day."
The eccentric skipper passed on, but Stumps did not move. He stood
there with his eyes riveted on the pavement, and his lips tightly
compressed. Evidently the drowning plan had been abandoned for
something else--something that caused him to frown, then to smile, then
to grow slightly pale, and then to laugh somewhat theatrically. While
in this mood he was suddenly pushed to one side by some one who said--
"The track's made for walkin' on, not standin', young--Hallo!"
It was Slagg who had thus roughly encountered his mate.
"Why, Stumps, what's the matter with yon?"
"Nothing."
"Where 'ave you bin to?"
"Nowhere."
"Who's bin a-frightenin' of you!"
"Nobody."
"Nothin', nowhere, an' nobody," repeated his friend; "that's what I
calls a coorious combination for a man who's as white as a sheet one
moment, and as red as a turkey-cock the next."
"Well, Slagg," said Stumps, recovering himself a little, "the fact is,
I've been taken in and robbed."
Hereupon he related all the circumstances of his late adventure to his
astonished and disgusted comrade, who asserted roundly that he was a big
booby, quite unfit to take care of himself.
"Hows'ever, we must do the best we can for you," he continued, "so come
along to the police-office."
Information of the robbery was given, and inquiries instituted without
delay, but without avail. Indeed the chief officer held out little hope
of ultimate success; nevertheless, Slagg endeavoured to buoy up his
friend with assurances that they must surely get hold of the thief in
the long-run.
"And if we don't," he said to Robin and Sam, during a private
conversation on the subject that same night, "we must just give him each
a portion of what we have, for the poor stoopid has shared our trials,
and ought to share our luck."
While Stumps was being thus fleeced in the lower part of the city, Robin
and Sam had gone to make inquiries about Mrs Langley, and at the
Government House they discovered a clerk who had formerly been at
Sarawak, and had heard of the fire, the abduction of the little girl,
and of Mrs Langley having afterwards gone to Bombay; but he also told
them, to their great regret, that she had left for England six months
before their arrival, and he did not know her address, or even the part
of England to which she had gone.
"But," continued the clerk, who was a very friendly fellow, "I'll make
inquiries, and let you know the result, if you leave me your address.
Meanwhile you can amuse yourself by paying a visit to that wonderful
ship, the Great Eastern, which has come to lay a submarine telegraph
cable between this and Aden. Of course you have heard of her arrival--
perhaps seen her."
"O yes," replied Robin. "We intend to visit her at once. She is an old
acquaintance of mine, as I was in her when she laid the Atlantic cable
in 1865. Does Captain Anderson still command her?"
"No," answered the clerk, who seemed much interested in what Robin said.
"She is now commanded by Captain Halpin."
That evening Robin tried to console poor Letta in her disappointment at
not finding her mother, and Sam sought to comfort Stumps for the loss of
his treasure. Neither comforter was very successful. Letta wept in
spite of Robin, and Stumps absolutely refused to be comforted!
Next day, however, the tears were dried, and Letta became cheery again
in the prospect of a visit to the Great Eastern.
But Stumps was no better. Indeed he seemed worse, and flatly refused to
accompany them on their trip, although all the world of Bombay was
expected to go.
"Stumps, Stumps,
Down in the dumps!
Down in the dumps so low--O!"
Sang Jim Slagg as he waved his hand in farewell on quitting the hotel.
"Good-bye, my boy, and get your spirits up before we return, if you
can."
"I'll try," replied Stumps with a grim smile.
The event which stirred the city of Bombay to its centre at this time
was indeed a memorable one. The connecting of India with England direct
by a deep-sea cable was a matter of the greatest importance, because the
land telegraph which existed at the time was wretchedly worked, passing,
as it did, through several countries, which involved translation and
re-translation, besides subjecting messages to needless delay on the
part of unbusiness-like peoples. In addition to the brighter prospects
which the proposed cable was opening up, the presence of the largest
ship that had ever yet been constructed was a point of overwhelming
attraction, and so great were the crowds that went on board to see the
marine wonder, that it was found somewhat difficult to carry on the
necessary work of coaling and making preparations for the voyage.
"Robin," said Sam, an they walked along with Letta between them, "I've
just discovered that the agent of the Telegraph Construction and
Maintenance Company is an old friend of mine. He has been busy erecting
a cable landing-house on the shores of Back Bay, so we'll go there first
and get him to accompany us to the big ship."
"Good," said Robin, "if it is not too far for Letta to walk."
The landing-house, which they soon reached, stood near to the "green"
where the Bombay and Baroda Railway tumbled out its stream of cotton
until the region became a very sea of bales. It was a little edifice
with a thatched roof and venetian blinds, commanding a fine view of the
whole of Back Bay, with Malabar Point to the right and the governor's
house imbedded in trees. Long lines of surf marked the position of ugly
rocks which were visible at low water, but among these there was a
pathway of soft sand marked off by stakes, along which the shore-end of
the cable was to lie.
For the reception of the extreme end of the cable there was provided, in
the cable-house, a testing table of solid masonry, with a wooden top on
which the testing instruments were to stand; the great delicacy of these
instruments rendering a fixed table indispensable.
When our friends reached the cable-house, native labourers, in
picturesque Oriental costume, were busy thatching its roof or painting
it blue, while some were screwing its parts together; for the house,
with a view to future telegraphic requirements, was built so as to come
to pieces for shipment to still more distant quarters of the globe.
Sam's friend could not go with him, he said, but he would introduce him
to a young acquaintance among the working engineers who was going on
with a party in half an hour or so. Accordingly, in a short time they
were gliding over the bay, and ere long stood on the deck of the big
ship.
"Oh, Letta!" said Robin, with a glitter of enthusiasm in his eyes, as he
gazed round on the well-remembered deck, "it feels like meeting an old
friend after a long separation."
"How nice!" said Letta.
This "how nice" of the child was, so to speak, a point of great
attraction to our hero. She always accompanied it with a smile so full
of sympathy, interest, and urbanity, that it became doubly significant
on her lips. Letta was precocious. She had grown so rapidly in
sympathetic capacity and intelligence, since becoming acquainted with
her new friends, that Robin had gradually come to speak to her about his
thoughts and feelings very much as he used to speak to cousin Madge when
he was a boy.
"Yes," he continued, "I had forgotten how big she was, and she seems to
me actually to have grown bigger. There never was a ship like her in
the world. Such huge proportions, such a vast sweep of graceful lines.
The chief difference that I observe is the coat of white paint they have
given her. She seems to have been whitewashed from stem to stern. It
was for the heat, I fancy."
"Yes, sir, it wor," said a bluff cable-man who chanced to overhear the
remark, "an' if you wor in the tanks, you'd 'ave blessed Capt'n Halpin
for wot he done. W'y, sir, that coat o' whitewash made a difference o'
no less than eight degrees in the cable-tanks the moment it was putt on.
Before that we was nigh stooed alive. Arter that we've on'y bin
baked."
"Indeed?" said Robin, but before he could say more the bluff cable-man
had returned to his bakery.
"Just look here," he continued, turning again to Letta; "the great ships
around us seem like little ones, by contrast, and the little ones like
boats,--don't they?"
"Yes, and the boats like toys," said Letta, "and the people in them like
dolls."
"True, little one, and yonder comes a toy steamer," said Sam, who had
been contemplating the paying-out gear in silent admiration, "with some
rather curious dolls on it."
"Oh!" exclaimed Letta, with great surprise, "look, Robin, look at the
horses--just as if we were on shore!"
Among the many surprising things on board of the big ship, few were more
striking for incongruity than the pair of grey carriage-horses, to which
Letta referred, taking their morning exercise composedly up and down one
side of the deck, with a groom at their heads.
The steamer referred to by Sam was one which contained a large party of
Hindu and Parsee ladies and children who had come off to see the ship.
These streamed into her in a bright procession, and were soon scattered
about, making the decks and saloons like Eastern flower-beds with their
many-coloured costumes--of red, pink, white, and yellow silks and
embroideries, and bracelets, brooches, nose-rings, anklets, and other
gold and silver ornaments.
The interest taken by the natives in the Great Eastern was naturally
great, and was unexpectedly illustrated in the following manner.
Captain Halpin, anticipating difficulties in the matter of coaling and
otherwise carrying on the work of the expedition, had resolved to
specify particular days for sight-seers, and to admit them by ticket, on
which a small fee was charged--the sum thus raised to be distributed
among the crew at the end of the voyage. In order to meet the
convenience of the "upper ten" of English at Bombay, the charge at first
was two rupees (about 4 shillings), and it was advertised that the ship
would afterwards be thrown open at lower rates, but to the surprise of
all, from an early hour on the two-rupee day the ship was beset by
Parsees, Hindus, and Mohammedans, so that eventually, on all sides--on
the decks, the bridge, the paddle-boxes, down in the saloon, outside the
cable-tanks, mixed up with the machinery, clustering round the huge red
buoys, and at the door of the testing-room--the snowy robes, and strange
head-dresses, bright costumes, brighter eyes, brown faces, and turbans
far outnumbered the stiff and sombre Europeans. These people evidently
regarded the Great Eastern as one of the wonders of the world. "The
largest vessel ever seen in Bombay," said an enthusiastic Parsee, "used
to be the Bates Family, of Liverpool, and now there she lies alongside
of us looking like a mere jolly-boat."
While Sam and his friends were thus standing absorbed by the
contemplation of the curious sights and sounds around them, one of the
engineer staff, who had served on board during the laying of the 1866
Atlantic cable, chanced to pass, and, recognising Robin as an old
friend, grasped and shook his hand warmly. Robin was not slow to return
the greeting.
"Frank Hedley," he exclaimed, "why, I thought you had gone to
California!"
"Robin Wright," replied the young engineer, "I thought you were dead!"
"Not yet," returned Robin; "I'm thankful to report myself alive and
well."
"But you ought to be dead," persisted Frank, "for you've been mourned as
such for nigh a couple of years. At least the vessel in which you
sailed has never been heard of, and the last time I saw your family, not
four months since, they had all gone into mourning for you."
"Poor mother!" murmured Robin, his eyes filling with tears, "but, please
God, we shall meet again before long."
"Come--come down with me to the engine-room and have a talk about it,"
said Frank, "and let your friends come too."
Just as he spoke, one of the little brown-faced Mohammedan boys fixed
his glittering eyes on an opening in the bulwarks of the ship, through
which the water could be seen glancing brightly. That innate spirit of
curiosity peculiar to small boys all the world over, induced him to
creep partly through the opening and glance down at the sparkling fluid.
That imperfect notion of balance, not infrequent in small boys, caused
him to tip over and cleave the water with his head. His Mohammedan
relatives greeted the incident with shrieks of alarm. Robin, who had
seen him tip over, being a good swimmer, and prompt to act, went through
the same hole like a fish-torpedo, and caught the brown boy by the hair,
as he rose to the surface with staring eyes, outspread fingers, and a
bursting cry.
Rope-ends, life-buoys, and other things were flung over the side; oars
were plunged; boats darted forward; fifty efforts at rescue were made in
as many seconds, for there was wealth of aid at hand, and in a
wonderfully brief space of time the brown boy was restored to his
grateful friends, while Robin, enveloped in a suit of dry clothes much
too large for him, was seated with his friend the engineer down among
the great cranks, and wheels, and levers, of the regions below.
"It's well the sharks weren't on the outlook," said Frank Hedley, as he
brought forward a small bench for Letta, Sam, and Jim Slagg. "You won't
mind the oily smell, my dear," he said to Letta.
"O no. I rather like it," replied the accommodating child.
"It's said to be fattening," remarked Slagg, "even when taken through
the nose."
"Come now, let me hear all about my dear mother and the rest of them,
Frank," said Robin.
Frank began at once, and, for a considerable time, conversed about the
sayings and doings of the Wright family, and of the world at large, and
about the loss of the cable-ship; but gradually and slowly, yet surely,
the minds and converse of the little party came round to the
all-absorbing topic, like the needle to the pole.
"So, you're actually going to begin to coal to-morrow?" said Sam.
"Yes, and we hope to be ready in a few days to lay the shore-end of the
cable," answered the young engineer.
"But have they not got land-lines of telegraph which work well enough?"
asked Robin.
"Land-lines!" exclaimed Frank, with a look of contempt. "Yes, they
have, and no doubt the lines are all right enough, but the people
through whose countries they pass are all wrong. Why, the Government
lines are so frequently out of order just now, that their daily
condition is reported on as if they were noble invalids. Just listen
to this," (he caught up a very much soiled and oiled
newspaper)--"`Telegraph Line Reports, Kurrachee, 2nd February, 6 p.m.--
Cable communication perfect to Fao; Turkish line is interrupted beyond
Semawali; Persian line interrupted beyond Shiraz.' And it is constantly
like that--the telegraphic disease, though intermittent, is chronic.
One can never be sure when the line may be unfit for duty. Sometimes
from storms, sometimes from the assassination of the operators in wild
districts, through which the land wires pass, and sometimes from the
destruction of lines out of pure mischief, the telegraph is often beaten
by the mail."
"There seems, indeed, much need for a cable direct," said Sam, "which
will make us independent of Turks, Persians, Arabs, and all the rest of
them. By the way, how long is your cable?"
"The cable now in our tanks is 2375 nautical miles long, but our
companion ships, the Hibernia, Chiltern, and Hawk, carry among them 1225
miles more, making a total of 3600 nautical miles, which is equal, as
you know, to 4050 statute miles. This is to suffice for the
communication between Bombay and Aden, and for the connecting of the
Malta and Alexandria lines. They are now laying a cable between
England, Gibraltar, and Malta, so that when all is completed there will
be one line of direct submarine telegraph unbroken, except at Suez."
"Magnificent!" exclaimed Robin, "why, it won't be long before we shall
be able to send a message to India and get a reply in the same day."
"In the same day!" cried Sam, slapping his thigh; "mark my words, as
uncle Rik used to say, you'll be able to do that, my boy, within the
same hour before long."
"Come, Sam, don't indulge in prophecy. It does not become you," said
Robin. "By the way, Frank, what about uncle Rik? You have scarcely
mentioned him."
"Oh! he's the same hearty old self-opinionated fellow as ever. Poor
fellow, he was terribly cut up about your supposed death. I really
believe that he finds it hard even to smile now, much less to laugh. As
for Madge, she won't believe that you are lost--at least she won't admit
it, though it is easy to see that anxiety has told upon her."
"I wonder how my poor old mother has took it," said Slagg, pathetically.
"But she's tough, an' can't be got to believe things easy. She'll hold
out till I turn up, I dessay, and when I present myself she'll say, `I
know'd it!'"
"But to return to the cable," said Sam, with an apologetic smile. "Is
there any great difference between it and the old ones?"
"Not very much. We have found, however, that a little marine wretch
called the teredo attacks hemp so greedily that we've had to invent a
new compound wherewith to coat it, namely, ground flint or silica,
pitch, and tar, which gives the teredo the toothache, I suppose, for it
turns him off effectually. We have also got an intermediate piece of
cable to affix between the heavy shore-end and the light deep-sea
portion. There are, of course, several improvements in the details of
construction, but essentially it is the same as the cables you have
already seen, with its seven copper wires covered with gutta-percha, and
other insulating and protecting substances."
"It's what I calls a tremendious undertakin'," said Slagg.
"It is indeed," assented Frank, heartily, for like all the rest of the
crew, from the captain downwards, he was quite enthusiastic about the
ship and her work. "Why, when you come to think of it, it's
unbelievable. I sometimes half expect to waken up and find it is all a
dream. Just fancy. We left England with a freight of 21,000 tons. The
day is not long past when I thought a ship of 1000 tons a big one; what
a mite that is to our Leviathan, as she used to be called. We had 5512
tons of cable, 3824 tons of fuel, 6499 tons of coal and electric
apparatus and appliances when we started; the whole concern, ship
included, being valued at somewhere about two millions sterling. It may
increase your idea of the size and needs of our little household when I
tell you that the average quantity of coal burned on the voyage out has
been 200 tons a day."
"It's a positive romance in facts and figures," said Sam.
"A great reality, you should have said," remarked Robin.
And so, romancing on this reality of facts and figures in many a
matter-of-fact statement and figurative rejoinder, they sat there among
the great cranks, and valves, and pistons, and levers, until the
declining day warned them that it was time to go ashore.