Then it was pulled up very slowly, for we could not afford to have it break a second time, when suddenly it slipped the grapnel and was again lost at the sea-bottom. As it was getting dark we put lights on our two buoys, one placed where the cable had slipped the grapnel, the other, as I said before, attached to the captured end. Now it is by no means easy to jump from a small boat to a buoy in such rough water as that in Iligan harbour, and we watchers on the ship felt some little uneasiness until the lights from both buoys proclaimed that it had been accomplished by the young native who always did that work.
In the morning our scientific fishermen were rewarded for their patience. They had a bite, and everyone on board watched with interest the heavy machinery as it slowly and steadily pulled the sea end of the cable out of the water. It was hooked at half after eight, and not until an hour later was it landed, the dynamometer showing a strain at times of from one to two tons.
Immediately after getting the cable on board, Cagayan was called over and over again without response, which would have indicated that the trouble was farther out at sea, had not tests shown the resistances were what they should have been, from which it was easily inferred that the operator at Cagayan was not attending strictly to business. “Gone to Sunday school, probably!” ironically observed the Powers-that-Be, chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, as he always did when worried, and, Sunday though it was, we felt the sarcasm to be a just one, Sunday schools not being a chief industry of Cagayan.
Reasoning on the premise that all was right at that end of the line, the splice was made, and we paid out the cable until reaching the buoyed shore end, which in turn was spliced to the deep-sea cable, and the bight dropped overboard. Then a Signal Corps man returning from shore reported all communicating lines in good order, at which there was great rejoicing on board the Burnside, and, our Cagayan friend having condescended meanwhile to communicate with us, we were soon under way for Zamboanga, Mindanao.
The next day was a perfect one for sailing, and eventful, in that while turning over cable the long objurgated fault in the tanks came to light, proving to be the result of carelessness on the part of the manufacturer, a carelessness which had caused much agony of mind to the Signal Corps, and many groans and imprecations from all concerned. But at last the fault was cut out, and a nice healthy splice substituted by the reparative surgery which has been so often mentioned.
It seemed such a small thing, the fault, only a little break in the armour wire, and yet it had induced the most severe nerve paralysis in that sentient thread of copper in the cable’s centre. “Words and words of men” could not “flicker and flutter and beat” until the wound had been healed, which was promptly done, accompanied by vigorous language concerning the aforesaid careless manufacturer.
Chapter VII
Zamboanga
Zamboanga! The very name brings back our first daylight glimpse of Mindanao’s principal town—an adorable water-colour sketch, what with the soft, deep blue of sky and sea, the tropical freshness of green foliage, amidst which nestled picturesque white houses with overhanging balconies, the red and blue sails on the sunlit water, and to the right of the picture an old Spanish fort, gray and stern and forbidding.