Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/372

 the Company has undertaken—the cable that is soon to connect India with England."

The merchant sat down amid thunders of applause, during which the reckoning of breakages was lost, and finally abandoned by the lugubrious waiter.

At first Robin and Sam listened with great interest and profound attention, and the former treasured in his memory, or made pencil notes of, such facts and expectations as the following:—That only nine months previously had they commenced the construction of the cable which was now about to be laid; that Captain Halpin in the Great Eastern had laid the French Atlantic cable; that in a few weeks they hoped to connect Bombay with Malta, and two months later with England; that, a few months after that, England would be connected with the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. "In short," said one gentleman at the close of his speech, "we hope that in 1871 India will be connected, chiefly by submarine telegraph, with China, Australia, Europe, and America, and that your morning messages will reach home about the same hour at which they are sent from here, allowing, of course, for the difference in time; and that afternoon and evening messages from Europe will be in your hands at an early hour next morning."

At this point the heat and unpleasant fumes