"No. But a lot of the work was actually done. Parties of men were sent through these mountains to hunt out the easiest passes and defiles, and blaze the straightest route to the Behring shore. Later, construction crews came in and unreeled miles of cable through the wilderness, ready to string. But before the job was finished the first successful trans-Atlantic cable was laid by another company. Europe was connected with America by a shorter route, and the need for the longer, all-land line was ended over night. The promoters of the great project were forced to pocket their loss. They stopped operations, abandoned materials and equipment and cleared out of the forest, leaving hundreds of miles of cable wire on the ground behind them."
It was a curious tale of failure—of a magnificent dream gone wrong—and a meditative silence fell upon the group about the table as the colonel broke off speech and sat with a gloomy, retrospective frown and slowly puffed his pipe.
"You mean—they came up through these valleys—" Brunswick started to ask, but he was interrupted by a sharp exclamation from Dexter's side of the table.
"Wait! Just a minute!" The corporal half raised himself from his stool, gripping the table with his hand. "You said they left this wire—strung out through the wilderness?"
"Thousands of dollars' worth of copper wire—wasted," said Devreaux. "Just left out to—"
"Copper is not affected by weather," remarked Dexter before the colonel could finish. "The wire might remain just as it was for years—for centuries. Only it would be buried under an accumulation of forest trash, turning to mold and earth—buried deeper and deeper—"
He stopped, drew a short breath and got up from his stool. For a moment his glance searched about the room, and then without a word of apology he left the table, and picked up a rusted spade he found standing in the corner. There was a scraping of stool legs behind him, and as he turned towards the doorway he was aware that his companions were on their feet, trooping after him.
Passing out of doors, Dexter stopped in front of the cabin, and with his one useful hand he thrust his spade into the soft ground and started to dig. Before he had taken out a shovelful of earth, however, Colonel Devreaux came up to him and laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
"Funny I didn't think of this myself," the old officer remarked depreciatingly. "But it didn't occur to me until you jumped up from the table. And—by jinks!—I'll bet you've struck the answer to everything! You'd better let a two-armed man do the labor." Devreaux glanced over his shoulder. "Here, Devlin," he commanded—"dig a trench across here."
The constable moved forward, took the spade, and set industriously to work. While the others stood by in tense curiosity he spaded up the yielding loam, and presently had excavated a narrow hole that went down two or three feet in the ground. Under the colonel's directions the digger started to carry his trench forward along the front of the cabin, but he had advanced only a pace or two, when the edge of his shovel caught against some hidden object under the loosened dirt, and refused to come up.