“Oh, please, have pity on the tea-cups, uncle Rik,” cried the hostess.
“Beg pardon, sister, but I can’t help getting riled when I hear younkers talkin’ stuff. Why, do you really suppose,” said the captain, turning again to Robin, “that because they managed in ’58 to lay a cable across the Atlantic, and exchange a few messages, which refused to travel after a few days, that they’ll succeed in layin’ down a permanent speakin’ trumpet between old England and Noof’nland—2000 miles, more or less—in spite o’ gales an’ currents, an’ ships’ anchors, an’ insects, an’ icebergs an’ whales, to say nothing o’ great sea-sarpints an’ such like?”
“Uncle Rik, I do,” said Robin, with intensely earnest eyes and glowing cheeks.
“Bravo! Robin, you’ll do it, I do believe, if it is to be done at all; give us your hand, lad.”
The old sailor’s red countenance beamed with a huge smile of kindness as he shook his enthusiastic nephew’s hand.
“There,” he added, “I’ll not say another word against iron kettles or Atlantic cables. If you succeed I’ll give batteries and boilers full credit, but if you fail I’ll not forget to remind you that I said it would all bu’st up in course of time.”
With note-book and pencil in hand Robin went down the very next day to the works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, where the great cable was being made.
Presenting his letter of introduction from Mr Smith, Robin was conducted over the premises by a clerk, who, under the impression that he was a very youthful and therefore unusually clever newspaper correspondent, treated him with marked respect. This was a severe trial to Robin’s modesty; nevertheless he bore up manfully, and pulling out his note-book prepared for action.
The reader need not fear that we intend to inflict on him Robin’s treatise on what he styled the “Great Atlantic Cable,” but it would be wrong to leave the subject without recording a few of those points which made a deep impression on him.
“The cable when completed, sir,” said the clerk, as he conducted his visitor to the factory, “will be 2300 nautical miles in length.”