Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/31

 "Behold! fat is dis?" he exclaimed, with glaring eyes, uplifted brows, shoulders shrugged, hands spread out, and fingers expanded. "The sea-sarpint grow'd thin," suggested the Englishman.

"Non; c'est seaveed—veed de most 'strordinair in de vorld. Oui, donnez-moi de hache, de hax, mon ami."

His friend handed him the axe, wherewith he cut off a small portion of the cable and let the end go. Little did that fisherman know that he had also let our Spark go free, and cruelly dashed, for a time at least, the budding hopes of two nations—but so it was. He bore his prize in triumph to Boulogne, where he exhibited it as a specimen of rare seaweed with its centre filled with gold, while the telegraph clerks at both ends sat gazing in dismay at their useless instruments.

Thus was the first submarine electric cable destroyed. And with the details of its destruction little Robin was intimately acquainted, for cousin Sam had been a member of the staff that had worked that telegraph—at least he had been a boy in the office,—and in after years he so filled his cousin's mind with the importance of that cable, and the grandeur and difficulty of the enterprise, that Robin became powerfully sympathetic—so much so that when Sam, in telling the story, came