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

The next wave lifted the Gleam like a cork, and let her down on the rocks like fifty-six tons of lead. A flash of lightning revealed for a moment a range of frowning cliffs, as if to add horror to a scene that was already sufficiently appalling. Then all was again dark as Erebus.

In a frenzy of resolution Captain Rik seized an axe with the view of extemporising a raft, when the Gleam parted amidships, and we might almost say went out, leaving her crew struggling in the waves.

Sam had seized his wife with his strong left arm—he happened to be left-handed—and buffeted the waves with his right. Madge held on to Sammy with the power of maternal love. Sam was aware of that, and felt comparatively at ease in regard to his first-born.

Robin’s arm had been round Letta’s waist—unknown to himself or her!—when the Gleam struck. It did not relax when he felt that they were afloat. Frank Hedley gallantly offered to take charge of Mrs Langley.

Ebenezer Smith, being unable to swim, confessed the fact, with something of a gasp, to Captain Rik, who considerately told him never to mind.

“I can swim for both,” he said, tying a piece of rope-yarn tight round his waist, for he had long before cast off coat, vest, and braces; “but you ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man come to your time o’ life, an’ not able to swim!”

“I never lived near the sea, and had no one to teach me,” pleaded Ebenezer in a tremblingly apologetic voice, for the roar of united wind, waves, and thunder was really tremendous even to those who could swim.

“What o’ that?” returned Captain Rik, sternly. “Was there no river or pond nigh? Even a horse-trough or a washing-tub would have sufficed to make a man of you. As for teaching—what teaching did you want? Swimmin’ ain’t Latin or Greek. It ain’t even mathematics—only aquatics. All the brute beasts swim—even donkeys swim without teaching. Boh! bah! There, lay hold o’ me—so. Now, mind, if you try to take me round the neck with your two arms I’ll plant my fist on the bridge of your nose, an’ let you go to Davy Jones’s locker.”

A flash of lightning revealed Captain Rik’s face in such a way that Ebenezer Smith resolved to obey him to the letter.

It was at this point of their conversation that the Gleam went down—or out—and they sank with a gurgle, coming up next moment, however, with a gasp.

Strange to say, after the first plunge and overthrow amid the boiling waves, the swimmers found themselves in almost still water.

“You’d better let me take Sammy, ma’am,” said Captain Slagg, swimming quietly alongside of Madge, and speaking in the calm tone of a man taking an evening stroll.

“Is that you, Slagg?” asked Sam, who was striking out vigorously.

“Yes, sir, it is,” said Slagg. “You’ve no need to exert yourself, sir, so violently. I know the spot well. We’ve bin washed clean over the reef by the wave that sank us, into a sort o’ nat’ral harbour, an’ we ain’t far from shore. I can feel bottom now, sir, which, bein’ a six-footer, you’ll touch easy.”

“So I do!” exclaimed Sam, letting down his feet. “Madge, darling, cheer up, we’ve got soundings. Give Sammy to Slagg. There, we’ll do famously now.”

Only those who have been for a few moments in deadly peril can understand the feeling of intense relief that came to Sam Shipton’s heart when he felt his toes touch ground on that eventful night. The feeling was expressed in his tone of voice as he asked Slagg whether he had seen any of the others.

“No, sir, I ain’t seen ’em for want o’ light, but I’ve heerd ’em. Stumps is splutterin’ behind us like a grampus. If you’ll hold on a bit an’ listen you’ll hear him. He’s a bad swimmer, and it’s all he can do to save hisself. If he only knowed he could reach bottom with his long legs, he’d find it easier. Not quite so tight, Sammy, my boy, and keep off the wind-pipe—so; you’re quite safe, my lad. As for the rest of ’em, sir, they all swim like ducks except Mr Ebbysneezer Smith, but he’s took charge on by Captin Rik, so you may keep your mind easy. There’s a bit o’ flat beach hereabouts, an’ no sea inside the reef, so we’ll git ashore easy enough—let’s be thankful.”

Jim Slagg was right. They got ashore without difficulty, and they were thankful—profoundly so—when they had time to think of the danger they had escaped.

After a few minutes’ rest and wringing of salt water from their garments, they proceeded inland to search for shelter, and well was it for the shipwrecked party that the captain of the lost yacht was acquainted with the lie of the land, for it was a rugged shore, with intermingled fields and morasses, and wooded rocky heights, among which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to thread one’s way in the dark without severe damage to the shins. But Jim Slagg led them to a cottage not far from the sea, where they received from the family resident there at the time a warm and hearty Scottish welcome.

It is not uncommon, we suspect, for eccentric natures to undertake the most important matters at the most unsuitable times and in the most ridiculous manners. At all events Robin Wright, while stumbling among the rocks and rugged ground of that midnight march in Mull, dripping wet and with the elements at war around him, conceived the idea of declaring his unalterable, not to say unutterable, attachment to Letta Langley, who leant heavily on the arm of her preserver. But Robin was intensely sensitive. He shrank from the idea, (which he had only got the length of conceiving), as if it had been a suggestion from beneath. It would be unfair, mean, contemptible, he thought, to take advantage of the darkness and the elemental noise to press his suit at such a time. No, he would wait till the morrow.

He did wait for the morrow. Then he waited for the morrow afterwards, and as each morrow passed he felt that more morrows must come and go, for it was quite obvious that Letta regarded him only as a brother.

At last, unable to bear it, our unhappy hero suddenly discovered that one of the morrows was the last of his leave of absence, so he said good-bye in despair, and parted from his companions, who could not resist the genial hospitality of their new friends in the cottage on the west of Mull.

Ten days later Sam got a letter from Robin, telling him that he had received a cable-telegram from India, from their friend Redpath, offering him a good situation there, and that, having reached the lowest depths of despair, he had resolved to accept it, and was sorry he should not have an opportunity of saying good-bye, as he was urged to start without a day’s delay.

Sam was staying with his friends at the Oban Hotel at the time, having at last managed to tear himself away from the cottage in Mull.

He instantly ran out and telegraphed—

“Don’t accept on any account.”

Then he sought Mrs Langley, and opened Robin’s case to her. Mrs Langley listened with a smile of intelligence, and soon after went to her daughter’s room, the window of which commanded a splendid view of the western sea.

“Letta, dear, are you moralising or meditating?”

“Both, mamma.”

“Well, I will try to help you,” said Mrs Langley, seating herself by the window. “By the way, did you hear that Mr Wright has been offered a lucrative appointment in the Telegraph Department of India, and is going off at once;—has not time even to say good-bye to his old friend Sam Shipton?”

Letta turned very pale, then extremely red, then covered her face with both hands and burst into tears.

“So, Letta, you love him,” said her mother, gently. “Why did you not let me know this sooner?”

“Oh, mamma!” said poor Letta, “why do you put it so—so—suddenly. I don’t love him—that is—I don’t know that I love him. I’ve never thought about it seriously. He has never opened his lips to me on the subject—and—and—”

“Letta, dear,” said her mother, tenderly, “would you wish to prevent his going away if you could? Open your heart to your mother, darling.”

Letta laid her head on her mother’s shoulder, but spoke not.

A few minutes later Mrs Langley went to Sam and said—

“Robin must not go to India.”

Sam instantly went by the shortest conceivable route to London, where he found Robin in his room feverishly packing his portmanteau, and said—

“Robin, you must not go to India.”

From that text he preached an eloquent lay-sermon, which he wound up with the words, “Now, my boy, you must just propose to her at once.”

“But I can’t, Sam. I haven’t got the pluck. I’m such a miserable sort of fellow—how could I expect such a creature to throw herself away on me? Besides, it’s all very well your saying you have good ground for believing she cares for me; but how can you know? Of course you have not dared to speak to her?”

Robin looked actually fierce at the bare idea of such a thing.

“No, I have not dared,” said Sam.

“Well, then. It is merely your good-natured fancy. No, my dear fellow, it is my fate. I must bow to it. And I know that if I were to wait till I see her again, all my courage would have oozed away—”

“But I don’t intend that you shall wait, Robin,” interrupted Sam. “You need not go on talking so selfishly about yourself. You must consider the girl. I’m not going to stand by and see injustice done to her. You have paid marked attention to her, and are bound in honour to lay yourself at her feet, even at the risk of a refusal.”

“But how, Sam? I tell you if I wait—”

“Then don’t wait,—telegraph.”

Robin gazed at his friend in stupefied amazement. “What! make a proposal of marriage by telegraph?”

“Even so, Robin. You began life with electricity, so it is quite in keeping that you should begin a new departure in life with it.”

Sam rose, sought for paper, and with pencil wrote as follows:— “From Mr R. Wright, London, to Miss Letta Langley, — Hotel, Oban.—I can stand it no longer. May I come to see you?”

Presenting this to his friend, Sam said, “May I despatch it?”

Robin nodded, smiled, and looked foolish.

An hour later Mrs Langley, sitting beside her daughter, took up a pen, and wrote as follows:—

“From Miss Letta Langley, Oban, to R. Wright, London.—Yes.”

Presenting this to her daughter, she said. “May I send it?”

Letta once more covered her face with her hands, and blushed.

Thus it came to pass that our hero’s fate in life, as well as his career, was decided by the electric telegraph.

But the best of it was that Robin did go to India after all—as if to do despite to his friends, who had said he must not go. Moreover, he took Letta with him, and he hunted many a day through the jungles of that land in company with his friend Redpath, and his henchman Flinn. And, long afterwards, he returned to England, a sturdy middle-aged man, with a wife whose beauty was unabated because it consisted, chiefly, in that love of heart to God and man which lends never-fading loveliness to the human countenance.

Awaiting them at home was a troop of little ones—the first home-instalment of a troop of lesser ones who accompanied the parent stems. All of these, besides being gifted with galvanic energy and flashing eyes, were impressed with the strong conviction, strange to say, that batteries, boilers, and submarine cables, were the most important things in the whole world, and the only subjects worth being played at by reasonable human children.