Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/120



happily and smoothly all things went, with little bursts of anxiety and little touches of alarm, just sufficient, as it were, to keep up the spirits of all, till the morning of the 30th July. But on that morning an appearance of excitement in the testing-room told that something had again gone wrong. Soon the order was given to slow the engines, then to stop them!

The bursting of a thunder-clap, the explosion of a powder-magazine, could not have more effectually awakened the slumberers than this abrupt stoppage of the ship's engines. Instantly all the hatchways poured forth anxious inquirers.

"Another fault," was the reply to such. "O dear!" said some.

"Horrible!" said others. "Not so bad as a break," sighed the hopeful spirits.

"It is bad enough," said the chief electrician, "for we have found dead earth."