Clearly the cable-man was right, for, while the picking-up apparatus was being got ready, the cable was cut in no fewer than three places, in order to test the coils that lay in the tanks. These being found all right, the picking-up was begun with anxious care. The moment of greatest danger was when the big ship was swinging round. For a few but apparently endless moments the cable had to bear the strain, and became rigid like a bar of steel. Then it was got in over the bows, where all was bustle, and noise, and smoke, as the picking-up machinery panted and rattled.
All day the work went on. Night descended, but still the cable was coming in slowly, unwillingly,—now jerkily, as if half inclined to yield, anon painfully, as if changing its mind, until the strain was equal to two and a half tons. A row of lanterns lighted it, and the men employed watched and handled it carefully to detect the “fault,” while the clattering wheels played harsh music.
“We’ll never find it,” growled an impatient young electrician.
As if to rebuke him for his want of faith, the “fault” came in then and there—at 9:50 p.m., ship’s time.
“Ah!” said Mr Field, whose chief characteristic was an unwavering faith in ultimate success, “I knew we should find it are long. I have often known cables to stop working for two hours, no one knew why, and then begin again.”
“Well now, Mr Wright, it floors me altogether, does this here talkin’ by electricity.”
The man who made this remark to our hero was one who could not have been easily “floored” by any other means than electricity. He was a huge blacksmith—a stalwart fellow who had just been heaving the sledge-hammer with the seeming powers of Vulcan himself, and who chanced to be near Robin when he paused to rest and mop the streaming perspiration from his brow, while a well-matched brother took his place at the anvil.
“You see,” he continued, “I can’t make out nohow what the electricity does when it gits through the cable from Ireland to Noofun’land. Of course it don’t actooally speak, you know—no more does it whistle, I suppose; an’ even if it did I don’t see as we’d be much the wiser. What do it do, Mr Wright? You seem to be well up in these matters, an’ not above explainin’ of ’em to the likes o’ us as ha’n’t got much edication.”
Few things pleased Robin more than being asked to impart what knowledge he possessed, or to make plain subjects that were slightly complex. He was not always successful in his attempts at elucidation, partly because some subjects were too complex to simplify, and partly because some intellects were obtuse, but he never failed to try.
“You must know,” he replied, with that earnest look which was apt to overspread his face when about to explain a difficulty, “that a piece of common iron can be converted into a magnet by electrifying it, and it can be unconverted just as fast by removing the electricity. Well, suppose I have a bit of iron in America, with an electric battery in Ireland, or vice versa—”