Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/188

 intention, and warned him of the necessity of heaving the heavy wire cable an inch at a time, as it was paid out cautiously by the Iroquois. No buoyancy had this line, like a manila hawser. Like a plummet it would drop to the bottom of the sea, and once it started to run, out it would go its full length.

Steadily the rope hawser was paid out, and steadily it was pulled aboard the Capitol City. Then the end of the wire cable, bent to the hawser, was lowered, and foot by foot, with a caution hardly credible, the handful of men on the Iroquois responded to the tug on the line and let the wire cable slide through the quarter chock. At the same time Captain Hardwick drifted the Iroquois closer and closer to the vessel on the shoals.

At last the steel cable was aboard the Capitol City, and safe about her bitts. The other end was now made fast to the bitts of the Iroquois. The great, unbreakable, steel cable now stretched from ship to ship. With all the power at her command, the little cutter would presently strain at this line. At this same time she would heave in her anchor-chain, and the vast length of this enormous chain, reaching hundreds of fathoms out into the ocean, and weighing tons upon tons, would add to the anchor a gripping force that would hold like the rock of Gibraltar. Like a