Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables

“‘Bosh!’ whispered Stumps; thus politely intimating his disbelief, but I felt him trembling all over notwithstanding.

“At that moment we saw a dim shadowy whitish object at the other end of the dark passage. ‘Wha’—wha’—what’s that?’ said I.

“Stumps gasped. I heard his teeth chattering, and I think his knees were knocking together. Jeff made no sound, and it was too dark to see his face. Suddenly the object rushed at us. There was no noise of footsteps—only a muffled sound and a faint hissing. I stood still, unable to move. So did Jeff. I felt the hair of my head rising. Stumps gasped again—then turned and fled. The creature, whatever it was, brushed past us with a hideous laugh. I guessed at once that it was Jim Slagg, but evidently Stumps didn’t, for he uttered an awful yell that would have roused the whole ship if she had been of an ordinary size; at the same moment he tripped and fell on the thing that had upset me, and the ghost, leaping over him, vanished from our sight.

“To my surprise, on returning to our cabin, we found Slagg as we had left him, with both hands on his forehead poring over his book. I was almost as much surprised to see Jeff sit down and laugh heartily.—Now, what do you think it could have been?”

“It was Slagg, of course,” answered the sporting electrician.

“Yes, but what causes the tapping?”

“Oh, that is no doubt some little trifle—a chip of wood, or bit of wire left hanging loose, which shakes about when the ship heaves.”

A sudden tramping of feet overhead brought this ghostly discussion to an abrupt close, and caused every man in the saloon to rush on deck with a terrible feeling in his heart that something had gone wrong.

“Not broken?” asked an electrician with a pale face on reaching the deck.

“Oh no, sir,” replied an engineer, with an anxious look, “not quite so bad as that, but a whale has taken a fancy to inspect us, and he is almost too attentive.”

So it was. A large Greenland whale was playing about the big ship, apparently under the impression that she was a giant of his own species, and it had passed perilously close to the cable.

A second time it came up, rolling high above the waves. It went close past the stern—rose again and dived with a gentle flop of its great tail, which, if it had touched the cable, would have cut it like a thread. At that trying moment, as they saw its huge back glittering in the moonlight, the hearts of the helpless spectators appeared absolutely to stand still. When the monster dived its side even touched the cable, but did not damage it. Being apparently satisfied by that time that the ship was not a friend, the whale finally disappeared in the depths of its ocean home.

Those who visited the Crystal Palace at Sydenham during the recent Electrical Exhibition had an opportunity of seeing the shells here referred to under a powerful microscope.

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.”

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