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 sh.o.r.e-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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 sh.o.r.e!"
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 Pa.r.s.ee 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 ill.u.s.trated in the following manner.
Captain Halpin, antic.i.p.ating 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 Pa.r.s.ees, 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, cl.u.s.tering 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 Pa.r.s.ee, "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 pa.s.s, 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 G.o.d, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.o.r.e-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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sa.s.sination of the operators in wild districts, through which the land wires pa.s.s, 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 sh.o.r.e-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."