"Just so," returned Smith, pleased with his pupil"s apt.i.tude. "Well, on that table stands Professor Thomson"s delicate and wonderful galvanometer. On that instrument a ray of light, reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet, travels along a scale and indicates the resistance to the pa.s.sage of the current along the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. Now, d"you understand that, Robin?"
"I--I"m afraid not quite, sir."
"Well, no matter," rejoined Smith, with a laugh.
"At all events you can understand that if that speck of light keeps within bounds--on its index--all is going well, but if it travels beyond the index--bolts out of bounds--an escape of the electric current is taking place somewhere in the cable, or what we call a _fault_ has occurred."
"Ah, indeed," exclaimed Robin, casting a serious look at the cable as it rose from the after-tank, ran smoothly over its line of conducting wheels, dropped over the stern of the ship and glided into the sea like an an endless snake of stealthy habits. "And what," he added, with a sudden look of awe, "if the cable should break?"
"Why, it would go to the bottom, of course," replied Smith, "and several hearts would break along with it. You see these two gentlemen conversing near the companion-hatch?"
"Yes."
"One is the chief of the electricians; the other the chief of the engineers. Their hearts would probably break, for their position is awfully responsible. Then my heart would break, I know, for I feel it swelling at the horrible suggestion; and your heart would break, Robin, I think, for you are a sympathetic donkey, and couldn"t help yourself.
Then you see that stout man on the bridge--that"s Captain Anderson-- well, _his_ heart would--no--perhaps it wouldn"t, for he"s a sailor, and you know a sailor"s heart is too tough to break, but it would get a pretty stiff wrench. And you see that gentleman looking at the paying-out gear so earnestly?"
"What--Cyrus Field?" said Robin.
"Yes; well, his heart and the Atlantic Cable are united, so as a matter of course the two would snap together."
Now, while Smith and his young a.s.sistant were conversing thus facetio-scientifically, the electricians on duty in the testing-room were watching with silent intensity the indications on their instruments. Suddenly, at 3:15 a.m., when exactly eighty-four miles of cable had been laid out, he who observed the galvanometer saw the speck of light glide to the end of the scale, and vanish!
If a speck of fire had been seen to glide through the key-hole of the powder-magazine it could scarcely have created greater consternation than did the disappearance of that light! The commotion in the testing-room spread instantly to every part of the ship; the whole staff of electricians was at once roused, and soon afterwards the engines of the Great Eastern were slowed and stopped, while, with bated breath and anxious looks, men whispered to each other that there was "a fault in the cable."
A fault! If the cable had committed a mortal sin they could scarcely have looked more horrified. Nevertheless there was ground for anxiety, for this fault, as in moral faults, indicated something that _might_ end in destruction.
After testing the cable for some time by signalling to the sh.o.r.e, Monsieur de Sauty concluded that the fault was of a serious character, and orders were at once given to prepare the picking-up apparatus at the bow for the purpose of drawing the cable back into the ship until the defective portion should be reached and cut out.
"O _what_ a pity!" sighed Robin, when he understood what was going to be done, and the feeling, if not the words, was shared by every one on board with more or less intelligence and intensity; but there were veterans of submarine telegraphy who spoke encouragingly and treated the incident as a comparatively small matter.
Two men-of-war, the Terrible and the Sphinx, had been appointed to accompany and aid the Great Eastern on her important mission. A gun was fired, and signals were made, to acquaint these with what had occurred while the fires were being got up in the boilers of the picking-up machinery.
Electricians as well as doctors differ, it would seem, among themselves, for despite their skill and experience there was great difference of opinion in the minds of those on board the big ship as to the place where the fault lay. Some thought it was near the sh.o.r.e, and probably at the splice of the sh.o.r.e-end with the main cable. Others calculated, from the indications given by the tests, that it was perhaps twenty or forty or sixty miles astern. One of the scientific gentlemen held that it was not very far from the ship, while another gentleman, who was said to be much experienced in "fault"-finding, a.s.serted that it was not more than nine or ten miles astern.
While the doctors were thus differing, the practical engineers were busy making the needful preparations for picking-up--an operation involving great risk of breaking the cable, and requiring the utmost delicacy of treatment, as may be easily understood, for, while the cable is being payed out the strain on it is comparatively small, whereas when it is being picked up, there is not only the extra strain caused by stoppage, and afterwards by hauling in, but there is the risk of sudden risings of the ship"s stern on the ocean swell, which might at any moment snap the thin line like a piece of packthread.
The first difficulty and the great danger was to pa.s.s the cable from the stern to the bow, and to turn the ship round, so as to enable them to steam up to the cable while hauling it in. Iron chains were lashed firmly to the cable at the stern, and secured to a wire-rope carried round the outside of the ship to the picking-up apparatus at the bows.
The cable was down in 400 fathoms of water when the paying-out ceased, and nice management was required to keep the ship steady, as she had now no steerage-way; and oh! with what intense interest and curiosity and wonder did Robin Wright regard the varied and wonderful mechanical appliances, with which the whole affair was accomplished!
Then the cable was cut, and, with its shackles and chains, allowed to go plump into the sea. Robin"s heart and soul seemed to go along with it, for, not expecting the event, he fancied it was lost for ever.
"Gone!" he exclaimed, with a look of horror.
"Not quite," said Jim Slagg, who stood at Robin"s elbow regarding the operations with a quiet look of intelligence. "Don"t you see, Robin, that a wire-rope fit a"most to hold the big ship herself is holdin" on to it."
"Of course; how stupid I am!" said Robin, with a great sigh of relief; "I see it now, going round to the bows."
At first the rope was let run, to ease the strain while the ship swung round; then it was brought in over the pulley at the bow, the paddles moved, and the return towards Ireland was begun. The strain, although great, was far from the breaking-point, but the speed was very slow--not more than a mile an hour being considered safe in the process of picking-up.
"Patience, Robin," observed Mr Smith, as he pa.s.sed on his way to the cabin, "is a virtue much needed in the laying of cables. We have now commenced a voyage at the rate of one mile an hour, which will not terminate till we get back to Owld Ireland, unless we find the fault."
Patience, however, was not destined to be so severely tried. All that day and all night the slow process went on. Meanwhile--as the cable was not absolutely unworkable, despite the fault--the chief engineer, Mr Canning, sent a message to Mr Gla.s.s in Ireland, asking him to send out the Hawk steamer, in order that he might return in her to search for the defect in the sh.o.r.e-end of the cable, for if that were found he purposed sacrificing the eighty odd miles already laid down, making a new splice with the sh.o.r.e-end, and starting afresh. A reply was received from Mr Gla.s.s, saying that the Hawk would be sent out immediately.
Accordingly, about daybreak of the 25th the Hawk appeared, but her services were not required, for, about nine that morning, when the cable was coming slowly in and being carefully examined foot by foot--nay, inch by inch--the fault was discovered, and joy took the place of anxiety. Ten and a quarter miles of cable had been picked up when the fault came inboard, and a strange unaccountable fault it turned out to be--namely, a small piece of wire which had been forced through the covering of the cable into the gutta-percha so as to injure, but not quite to destroy, the insulation. How such a piece of wire could have got into the tank was a mystery, but the general impression was that it had been carried there by accident and forced into the coil by the pressure of the paying-out machinery as the cable flew through the jockey-wheels.
Signals were at once made to the fleet that the enemy had been discovered. Congratulatory signals were returned. The fault was cut out and a new splice made. The Hawk was sent home again. The big ship"s bow was turned once more to the west, and the rattling of the machinery, as the restored and revived cable pa.s.sed over the stern, went merrily as a marriage bell.
The detention had been only about twelve hours; the great work was going on again as favourably as before the mishap occurred, and about half a mile had been payed out, when--blackness of despair--the electric current suddenly ceased, and communication with the sh.o.r.e was ended altogether.
CHAPTER NINE.
IN WHICH JOYS, HOPES, ALARMS, GHOSTS, AND LEVIATHANS TAKE PART.
That man who can appreciate the feelings of one who has become suddenly bankrupt may understand the mental condition of those on board the Great Eastern when they were thus tossed from the pinnacle of joyous hope to the depths of dark despair. It was not, however, absolute despair. The cable was utterly useless indeed--insensate--but it was not broken.
There was still the blessed possibility of picking it up and bringing it to life again.
That, however, was scarcely an appreciable comfort at the moment, and little could be seen or heard on board the Great Eastern save elongated faces and gloomy forebodings.
Ebenezer Smith and his _confreres_ worked in the testing-room like Trojans. They connected and disconnected; they put in stops and took them out; they intensified currents to the extent of their anxieties they reduced them to the measure of their despair--nothing would do.
The cable was apparently dead. In these circ.u.mstances picking-up was the only resource, and the apparatus for that purpose was again rigged up in the bows.
In the meantime the splice which had been made to connect the tanks was cut and examined, and the portions coiled in the fore and main tanks were found to be perfect--alive and well--but the part between ship and sh.o.r.e was speechless.
So was poor Robin Wright! After Mr Field--whose life-hope seemed to be doomed to disappointment--the blow was probably felt most severely by Robin. But Fortune seemed to be playfully testing the endurance of these cable-layers at that time, for, when the despair was at its worst, the tell-tale light reappeared on the index of the galvanometer, without rhyme or reason, calling forth a shout of joyful surprise, and putting an abrupt stoppage to the labours of the pickers-up!
They never found out what was the cause of that fault; but that was a small matter, for, with restored sensation in the cable-nerve, renewed communication with the sh.o.r.e, and resumed progress of the ship towards her goal, they could afford to smile at former troubles.
Joy and sorrow, shower and sunshine, fair weather and foul, was at first the alternating portion of the cable-layers.
"I can"t believe my eyes!" said Robin to Jim Slagg, as they stood next day, during a leisure hour, close to the whirling wheels and never-ending cable, about 160 miles of which had been laid by that time.
"Just look at the Terrible and Sphinx; the sea is now so heavy that they are thumping into the waves, burying their bows in foam, while we are slipping along as steadily as a Thames steamer."
"That"s true, sir," answered Slagg, whose admiration for our hero"s enthusiastic and simple character increased as their intimacy was prolonged, and whose manner of address became proportionally more respectful, "She"s a steady little duck is the Great Eastern! she has got the advantage of length, you see, over other ships, an" rides on two waves at a time, instead of wobblin" in between "em; but I raither think she"d roll a bit if she was to go along in the trough of the seas.
Don"t the cable go out beautiful, too--just like a long-drawn eel with the consumption! Did you hear how deep the captain said it was hereabouts?"
"Yes, I heard him say it was a little short of two miles deep, so it has got a long way to sink before it reaches its oozy bed."
"How d"ee know what sort o" bed it"s got to lie on?" asked Slagg.
"Because," said Robin, "the whole Atlantic where the cable is to lie has been carefully sounded long ago, and it is found that the ocean-bed here, which looks so like mud, is composed of millions of beautiful sh.e.l.ls, so small that they cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. Of course, they have no creatures in them. It would seem that these sh.e.l.l-fish go about the ocean till they die, and then fall to the bottom like rain." See note one.
"You _don"t_ say so!" returned Slagg, who, being utterly uneducated, received suchlike information with charming surprise, and regarded Robin as a very mine of knowledge. "Well now, that beats c.o.c.k-fighting. But, I say, how is it that the electricity works through the cable? I heerd one o" your electrical fellers explaining to a landlubber t"other evenin" that electricity could only run along wires when the _circuit was closed_, by which he meant to say that it would fly from a battery and travel along a wire ever so far, if only that wire was to turn right round and run back to the same battery again. Now, if that"s so, seems to me that when you"ve got your cable to Newfoundland you"ll have to run another one back again to Ireland before it"ll work."
"Ah, Slagg, that would indeed be the case," returned Robin, "were it not that we have discovered the important fact that the earth--the round globe on which we stand--itself acts the part of a grand conductor. So we have only to send down _earth-wires_ at the two ends--one into the earth of Ireland, the other into the earth of Newfoundland, and straightway the circuit is closed, and the electricity generated in our batteries pa.s.ses through the cable from earth to earth."
"Robin," said Slagg doubtingly, "d"you expect me for to believe _that_?"