Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/103

 their despair—nothing would do. The cable was apparently dead. In these circumstances picking up was the only resource, and the apparatus for that purpose was again rigged up in the bows.

In the meantime the splice which had been made to connect the tanks was cut and examined, and the portions coiled in the fore and main tanks were found to be perfect—alive and well—but the part between ship and shore was speechless.

So was poor Robin Wright! After Mr. Field—whose life-hope seemed to be doomed to disappointment—the blow was probably felt most severely by Robin. But Fortune seemed to be playfully testing the endurance of these cable-layers at that time, for, when the despair was at its worst, the tell-tale light reappeared on the index of the galvanometer, without rhyme or reason, calling forth a shout of joyful surprise, and putting an abrupt stoppage to the labours of the pickers-up!

They never found out what was the cause of that fault; but that was a small matter, for, with restored sensation in the cable-nerve, renewed communication with the shore, and resumed progress of the ship towards her goal, they could afford to smile at former troubles.

Joy and sorrow, shower and sunshine, fair weather and foul, was at first the alternating portion of the cable-layers.