The Battery and the Boiler: Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables by - (world best books to read txt) 📖

Thus happily and smoothly all things went, with little bursts of anxiety and little touches of alarm, just sufficient, as it were, to keep up the spirits of all, till the morning of the 30th July. But on that morning an appearance of excitement in the testing-room told that something had again gone wrong. Soon the order was given to slow the engines, then to stop them!

The bursting of a thunder-clap, the explosion of a powder-magazine, could not have more effectually awakened the slumberers than this abrupt stoppage of the ship’s engines. Instantly all the hatchways poured forth anxious inquirers.

“Another fault,” was the reply to such.

“O dear!” said some.

“Horrible!” said others.

“Not so bad as a break,” sighed the hopeful spirits.

“It is bad enough,” said the chief electrician, “for we have found dead earth.”

By this the chief meant to say that insulation had been completely destroyed, and that the whole current of electricity was escaping into the sea.

About 716 miles had been payed out at the time, and as signals had till then been regularly received from the shore, it was naturally concluded that the fault lay near to the ship.

“Now then, get along,” said an engineer to one of the cable-men; “you’ll have to cut, and splice, and test, while we are getting ready the tackle to pick up.”

“I don’t like that cuttin’ o’ the cable, Bill,” said one of the sailors, as he went forward, “it seems dangerous, it do.”

“No more do I, Dick,” replied his mate; “I feel as if it never could be rightly spliced again.”

“Why, bless you, boys,” said a cable-man near them, “cables is used to that now, like eels to bein’ skinned; and so are we, for that matter. We think nothin’ of it.”

Clearly the cable-man was right, for, while the picking-up apparatus was being got ready, the cable was cut in no fewer than three places, in order to test the coils that lay in the tanks. These being found all right, the picking-up was begun with anxious care. The moment of greatest danger was when the big ship was swinging round. For a few but apparently endless moments the cable had to bear the strain, and became rigid like a bar of steel. Then it was got in over the bows, where all was bustle, and noise, and smoke, as the picking-up machinery panted and rattled.

All day the work went on. Night descended, but still the cable was coming in slowly, unwillingly,—now jerkily, as if half inclined to yield, anon painfully, as if changing its mind, until the strain was equal to two and a half tons. A row of lanterns lighted it, and the men employed watched and handled it carefully to detect the “fault,” while the clattering wheels played harsh music.

“We’ll never find it,” growled an impatient young electrician.

As if to rebuke him for his want of faith, the “fault” came in then and there—at 9:50 p.m., ship’s time.

“Ah!” said Mr Field, whose chief characteristic was an unwavering faith in ultimate success, “I knew we should find it are long. I have often known cables to stop working for two hours, no one knew why, and then begin again.”

“Well now, Mr Wright, it floors me altogether, does this here talkin’ by electricity.”

The man who made this remark to our hero was one who could not have been easily “floored” by any other means than electricity. He was a huge blacksmith—a stalwart fellow who had just been heaving the sledge-hammer with the seeming powers of Vulcan himself, and who chanced to be near Robin when he paused to rest and mop the streaming perspiration from his brow, while a well-matched brother took his place at the anvil.

“You see,” he continued, “I can’t make out nohow what the electricity does when it gits through the cable from Ireland to Noofun’land. Of course it don’t actooally speak, you know—no more does it whistle, I suppose; an’ even if it did I don’t see as we’d be much the wiser. What do it do, Mr Wright? You seem to be well up in these matters, an’ not above explainin’ of ’em to the likes o’ us as ha’n’t got much edication.”

Few things pleased Robin more than being asked to impart what knowledge he possessed, or to make plain subjects that were slightly complex. He was not always successful in his attempts at elucidation, partly because some subjects were too complex to simplify, and partly because some intellects were obtuse, but he never failed to try.

“You must know,” he replied, with that earnest look which was apt to overspread his face when about to explain a difficulty, “that a piece of common iron can be converted into a magnet by electrifying it, and it can be unconverted just as fast by removing the electricity. Well, suppose I have a bit of iron in America, with an electric battery in Ireland, or vice versa—”

“W’ot’s wicey wersa, Mr Wright?”

“Oh, it means the terms being changed—turned the other way, you know—back to the front, as it were—in short, I mean the battery being in America and the bit of iron in Ireland.”

“Well, well, who’d a thought there was so much in wicey wersa; but go on, Mr Wright.”

“Now, you must suppose,” continued Robin, “that a needle, like the mariner’s compass needle, hangs beside my bit of iron, close to it, and that a wire, or conductor of electricity, connects the iron with my electric battery in Ireland. Well, that makes a magnet of it, and the suspended needle, being attracted, sticks to it. Then I disconnect the wire from my battery by touching a handle, the bit of iron ceases to be a magnet, and the needle was free. Again I connect the battery, and the needle flies to the remagnetised bit of iron. Thus, as fast as I choose, I can make the needle wag, and by a simple arrangement we can make it wag right or left, so many beats right or left, or alternately, representing letters. By varying the beats we vary the letters, and thus spell out our messages. Now, do you understand it?”

“I ain’t quite sure that I does,” replied Vulcan; “I’ve got a hazy notion that by touchin’ and removin’ the touch from a conductor, connecting and disconnecting wires and batteries, you can make electricity flow just as you let on or stop water by turnin’ a stopcock—”

“Not exactly,” interrupted Robin, “because, you see, electricity does not really flow, not being a substance.”

“Not a substance, sir! w’y, w’ot is it then?”

“Like light and sound, it is merely an effect, an influence, a result,” answered Robin. “We only use the word flow, and talk of electricity as a fluid, for convenience’ sake.”

“Well, w’otever it is or isn’t,” continued the puzzled Vulcan, gazing at vacancy for a few seconds, “when you’ve set it agoin’—or set agoin’ the things as sets it agoin’—you make a suspended needle wag, and when you stop it you make the needle stop waggin’, and by the way in which that there needle wags you can spell out the letters o’ the alphabit—so many wags to the right bein’ one letter, so many wags to the left bein’ another letter, an’ so on,—so that, what between the number o’ wags an’ the direction o’ the waggin’s, you—you come for to—there, I’m lost again, an’ I must go in for another spell wi’ the sledge, so we’ll have to tackle the subject another time, Mr Wright.”

Thus speaking, Vulcan seized the ponderous hammer in his powerful grasp and proceeded to beat form into a mass of glowing metal with much greater ease than he had been able to thump telegraphy into his own brain.

In the discovery of the “fault” and the cutting out of the injured part of the cable, twenty-six hours were lost. During all the time Captain Anderson was obliged to remain on deck, while the minds and bodies of the engineers and electricians were subjected to a severe strain for the same period. They had scarcely begun to breathe freely again, and to congratulate each other on being able to continue the voyage, when they received another shock of alarm by the cable suddenly flying off the drum, while it was being transferred from the picking-up machinery in the bow to the paying-out arrangements in the stern. Before the machinery could be stopped, some fathoms of cable had become entangled among the wheels and destroyed. This part having been cut out, however, and new splices made, the paying-out process was resumed.

“I’ll turn in now and have a snooze, Robin,” said Ebenezer Smith, “and you had better do the same; you look tired.”

This was indeed true, for not a man or boy in the ship took a more anxious interest in the cable than did our little hero; he had begun to regard it as a living creature, and to watch over it, and dream about it, as if it were a dear friend in extreme danger. The enthusiastic boy was actually becoming careworn and thin, for he not only performed all the duties required of him with zealous application, but spent his leisure, and much of the time that should have been devoted to rest, in the careful study of his idol—intensely watching it, and all that was in the remotest way connected with it.

“You’re a goose,” said Stumps, in passing, when he heard Robin decline to retire as Smith had advised him.

“It may be so, and if so, Stumps, I shall continue to cackle a little longer on deck while they are examining the fault.”

That examination, when finished, produced a considerable sensation. The process was conducted in private. The condemned portion was cut in junks and tested, until the faulty junk was discovered. This was untwisted until the core was laid bare, and when about a foot of it had been so treated, the cause of evil was discovered, drawing from the onlookers an exclamation of horror rather than surprise, as they stood aghast, for treachery seemed to have been at work!

“An enemy in the ship!” murmured one.

“What ship without an enemy?” thought another.

That mischief had been intended was obvious, for a piece of iron wire, bright as if cut with nippers at one end and broken off short at the other, had been driven right through the centre of the cable, so as to touch the