In places the mountains were bare of trees, suggesting forest fires in the past, but in the distant past, as the patches of ground were covered with grass, the exact tender shade in which the young Spring clothes herself at home. In many of these rifts between the trees nipa houses were tucked away, adding to the charm of the landscape, and the multifarious shades of green to be found on these hillsides were further diversified by shrub-like trees with a faint red tinge like furze, and by still others with a silvery sheen to their leaves.
It was while paying this long-laid line into the tanks, when looking for faults, that wonderful sea growths were brought up on the cable, especially in comparatively shallow water, revealing varieties of submarine life undreamed of in our philosophy. There was white coral, and coral in shades of pink, and red, and violet; there were sea-cucumbers and jellyfish; shrimp of tiny proportions and scarlet in colouring; barnacles of every description; curious shells of fairy-like proportions; seaweeds and grasses and moss of exquisite delicacy, making the cable look in places as if it were a rope of tiny many coloured blossoms. The small girl of the Burnside was enchanted with the pretty playthings sent her by the mermaids, and gathered the gaily tinted wonders into a box for safe-keeping, but before the passing of another day they had lost their beauty, and, moreover, smelled up to very heaven, and had to be thrown overboard.
But at last the Signal Corps completed its work on the Pasacao-Guinayangan cable, the final splice was made, and the bight dropped overboard, whereupon we were off for Manila, stopping en route at Pasacao to ascertain if all were well with the line. This was on Good Friday, and the officers who went ashore said that natives, dressed to represent the Twelve Apostles, roamed the streets and at given intervals flagellated one poor chap who had been elected to represent Judas for the time being. The native padre assisted in the semi-religious function, and all seemed more interested in it as a diversion than impressed by its devotional significance.
The rest of the day we sailed over absolutely peaceful water, with scarcely a ripple on its crystal surface, swinging in and out of the myriad wooded islands, peninsulas, and capes that make the southern part of Luzon so ragged and uneven on the map, and thence into the China Sea, where we floated, sky above and sky below, for hours, anchoring off Manila on the following forenoon, just in time to spend Easter Sunday, April 7th, at the capital.
And so ended our cable trip and those pleasant days in the far South Seas. The huge tanks on the forward deck of the Burnside yawned hungrily for the five hundred knots of cable now lying in those distant waters, linking together the strange lands we had seen en route, and as we stood for the last time looking down into those empty tanks, tar-stained and reeking with moisture, I was strongly reminded of Mr. Kipling’s “Song of the Cable:”
“The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar— Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, On the great, gray, level plains of ooze, where the shell-burred cables creep. Here in the womb of the world—here on the tie-ribs of earth— Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat.”
The End.
