Pasacao 256
A Woman’s Journey Through the Philippines
Chapter I
Introductory Statements
Life on a cable-ship would be a lotus-eating dream were it not for the cable. But the cable, like the Commissariat cam-u-el in Mr. Kipling’s “Oonts,” is—
“—a devil an’ a ostrich an’ a orphan child in one.”
Whether we are picking it up, or paying it out; whether it is lying inert, coil upon coil, in the tanks like some great gorged anaconda, or gliding along the propelling machinery into some other tank, or off into the sea at our bow or stern; whether the dynamometer shows its tension to be great or small; whether we are grappling for it, or underrunning it; whether it is a shore end to be landed, or a deep-sea splice to be made, the cable is sure to develop most alarming symptoms, and some learned doctor must constantly sit in the testing-room, his finger on the cable’s pulse, taking its temperature from time to time as if it were a fractious child with a bad attack of measles, the eruption in this case being faults or breaks or leakages or kinks.