Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/320

 are lost—at least she won't admit it, though it is easy to see that anxiety has told upon her."

"I wonder how my poor old mother has took it," said Slagg, pathetically. "But she 's tough, an' can't be got to believe things easy. She 'll hold out till I turn up, I dessay, and when I present myself she 'll say, 'I know'd it!

"But to return to the cable," said Sam, with an apologetic smile. "Is there any great difference between it and the old ones?"

"Not very much. We have found, however, that a little marine wretch called the teredo attacks hemp so greedily that we've had to invent a new compound wherewith to coat it, namely, ground flint or silica, pitch, and tar, which gives the teredo the toothache, I suppose, for it turns him off effectually. We have also got an intermediate piece of cable to affix between the heavy shore-end and the light deep-sea portion. There are, of course, several improvements in the details of construction, but essentially it is the same as the cables you have already seen, with its seven copper wires covered with gutta-percha, and other insulating and protecting substances."

"It 's what I calls a tremendious undertakin'," said Slagg.

"It is indeed," assented Frank, heartily, for like all the rest of the crew, from the captain