Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/105

 ago, and it is found that the ocean-bed here, which looks so like mud, is composed of millions of beautiful shells, so small that they cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. Of course, they have no creatures in them. It would seem that these shell-fish go about the ocean till they die, and then fall to the bottom like rain."

"You don't say so!" returned Slagg, who, being utterly uneducated, received suchlike information with charming surprise, and regarded Robin as a very mine of knowledge. "Wellnow [sic], that beats cock-fighting. But, I say, how is it that the electricity works through the cable? I heerd one o' your electrical fellers explaining to a landlubber t'other evenin' that electricity could only run along wires when the circuit was closed, by which he meant to say that it would fly from a battery and travel along a wire ever so far, if only that wire was to turn right round and run back to the same battery again. Now, if that 's so, seems to me that when you 've got your cable to Newfoundland you 'll have to run another one back again to Ireland before it 'll work."

"Ah, Slagg, that would indeed be the case," returned Robin, "were it not that we have