“Whatcha mean by tapping it?”
“Sucking the news out of it. Or maybe they’re going to use it for sending some lying message that’ll upset the stock markets, or grain markets, or railway people. Lord bless you, there’s a hundred things to be done if one has the business end of a real deep-sea cable with a big city like Frisco or maybe Sydney at the other end.”
“Well, maybe there is,” said Harman. “There’s a good many things to be done in Frisco off the square, without a cable, and there’s no sayin’ what mightn’t be done with one.”
“I reckon you’re a judge of that,” laughed the Captain.
“Oh, I’m pretty well up to the tricks of Frisco,” said the other complacently. “But this is a new traverse, fooling folk from the middle of the ocean, one might say. I reckon Wolff is a German, ain’t he?”
“Yes, he’s a Dutchman, all right; so’s Shiner, I reckon. German Jew. It lands me how those sort of chaps get on and make money, and the likes of us has to take their orders and their leavings. I’d like to get even with them once.”
“Well, maybe you will,” said Harman.
The Captain grunted.
There was a fellow on board named Bowers. He had been given the post of bos’n, and he knew something of navigation and could keep a watch on the bridge.