The Battery and the Boiler: Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables

“Madge, Madge, cousin Madge!” he shouted, seizing both the extended little hands and kissing the musical wrinkles from her brow, “why am I like a magnet? You’ll never guess.”

“Because you attract everybody to you,” said Madge promptly.

“Pooh! not at all. A magnet doesn’t attract every body. It has two poles, don’t you know, and repels some bodies. No, Madge, it’s because I have been electrified.”

“Indeed? and what has electrified you, Robin?”

“The Atlantic Cable, Madge.”

“Well, that ought to be able to do it powerfully,” returned Madge, with a laugh; “but tell me all about it, and don’t make more bad conundrums. I’m sure something has happened. What is it?”

Mrs Wright, entering at the moment, her son calmed himself as well as he could, and sat down to tell his tale and talk the matter over.

“Now, what think you, mother? Will father consent?”

“I think he will, Robin, but before going into the matter further, I will lay it before our Father in heaven. He must show us the way, if we are to go right.”

According to invariable custom, Robin’s mother retired to her own room to consider the proposal. Thereafter she had a long talk with her husband, and the result was that on the following day our hero found himself in a train with a small new portmanteau by his side, a new billy-cock hat on his head, a very small new purse in his pocket, with a remarkably small sum of money therein, and a light yet full heart in his breast. He was on his way to the Nore, where the Great Eastern lay, like an antediluvian macaroni-eater, gorging itself with innumerable miles of Atlantic Cable.

To say truth, Robin’s breast—capacious though it was for his size—could hardly contain his heart that day. The dream of his childhood was about to be realised! He had thirsted for knowledge. He had acquired all that was possible in his father’s limited circumstances. He had, moreover, with the valuable assistance of Sam Shipton, become deeply learned in electrical science. He had longed with all his heart to become an electrician—quite ready, if need were, to commence as sweeper of a telegraph-office, but he had come to regard his desires as too ambitious, and, accepting his lot in life with the quiet contentment taught him by his mother, had entered on a clerkship in a mercantile house, and had perched himself, with a little sigh no doubt, yet cheerfully, on the top of a three-legged stool. To this stool he had been so long attached—physically—that he had begun to regard it almost as part and parcel of himself, and had made up his mind that he would have to stick to it through life. He even sometimes took a quaint view of the matter, and tried to imagine that through long habit it would stick to him at last, and oblige him to carry it about sticking straight out behind him; perhaps even require him to take it to bed with him, in which case he sometimes tried to imagine what would be the precise effect on the bedclothes if he were to turn from one side to the other. Thus had his life been projected in grey perspective to his mental eye.

But now—he actually was an electrician-elect on his way to join the biggest ship in the world, to aid in laying the greatest telegraph cable in the world, in company with some of the greatest men in the universe! It was almost too much for him. He thirsted for sympathy. He wanted to let off his feelings in a cheer, but life in a lunatic asylum presented itself, and he refrained. There was a rough-looking sailor lad about his own age, but much bigger, on the seat opposite, (it was a third class). He thought of pouring out his feelings on him—but prudence prevented. There is no saying what might have been the result, figuratively speaking, to his boiler if the sailor lad had not of his own accord opened a safety-valve.

“You seems pretty bobbish this morning, young feller,” he said, after contemplating his vis-à-vis, for a long time in critical silence. “Bin an’ took too much, eh?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Robin, somewhat puzzled.

“You’re pritty considerable jolly, I say,” returned the lad, who had an honest, ugly face; and was somewhat blunt and gruff in manner.

“I am indeed very jolly,” said Robin, with a bland smile, “for I’m going to help to lay the great Atlantic Cable.”

“Wot’s that you say?” demanded the lad, with sudden animation.

Robin repeated his remark.

“Well, now, that is a go! Why, I’m goin’ to help lay the great Atlantic Cable too. I’m one the stooard’s boys. What may you be, young feller?”

“Me? Oh! I’m—I—why, I’m on the electrical staff—I’m—” he thought of the word secretary, but a feeling of modesty induced him to say—“assistant to one of the electricians.”

“Which ’un?” demanded the lad curtly.

“Mr Smith.”

“Mr Smith, eh? Well—it ain’t an unusual name—Smith ain’t. P’r’aps you’ll condescend on his first name, for there’s no less than three Smiths among the electricians.”

“Ebenezer Smith, I believe,” said Robin.

“Ebbysneezer Smith—eh? well, upon my word that’s a Smith-mixtur that I’ve never heerd on before. I don’t know ’im, but he’s all right, I dessay. They’re a rum lot altogether.”

Whether this compliment was meant for the great Smith family in general, or the electrical branch in particular, Robin could not guess, and did not like to ask. Having thus far opened his heart, however, he began to pour out its contents, and found that the ugly sailor lad was a much more sympathetic soul than he had been led to expect from his looks. Having told his own name, he asked that of his companion in return.

“My name—oh! it’s Slagg—Jim Slagg; James when you wants to be respeckful—Slagg when familiar. I’m the son o’ Jim Slagg, senior. Who he was the son of is best known to them as understands the science of jinnylology. But it don’t much matter, for we all runs back to Adam an’ Eve somehow. They called me after father, of course; but to make a distinction they calls him Jimmy—bein’ more respeckful-like,—and me Jim. It ain’t a name much to boast of, but I wouldn’t change it with you, young feller, though Robert ain’t a bad name neither. It’s pretty well-known, you see, an’ that’s somethin’. Then, it’s bin bore by great men. Let me think—wasn’t there a Robert the Great once?”

“I fear not,” said Robin; “he is yet in the womb of Time.”

“Ah, well, no matter; but there should have bin a Robert the Great before now. Anyhow, there was Robert the Bruce—he was a king, warn’t he, an’ a skull-cracker? Then there was Robert Stephenson, the great engineer—he’s livin’ yet; an’ there was Robert the—the Devil, but I raither fear he must have bin a bad ’un, he must, so we won’t count him. Of course, they gave you another name, for short; ah, Robin! I thought so. Well, that ain’t a bad name neither. There was Robin Hood, you know, what draw’d the long-bow a deal better than the worst penny-a-liner as ever mended a quill. An’ there was a Robin Goodfellow, though I don’t rightly remember who he was exactly.”

“One of Shakespeare’s characters,” interposed Robin.

“Jus’ so—well, he couldn’t have bin a bad fellow, you know. Then, as to your other name, Wright—that’s all right, you know, and might have bin writer if you’d taken to the quill or the law. Anyhow, as long as you’re Wright, of course you can’t be wrong—eh, young feller?”

Jim Slagg was so tickled with this sudden sally that he laughed, and in so doing shut his little eyes, and opened an enormous mouth, fully furnished with an unbroken set of splendid teeth.

Thus pleasantly did Robin while away the time with his future shipmate until he arrived at the end of his journey, when he parted from Jim Slagg and was met by Ebenezer Smith.

That energetic electrician, instead of at once taking him on board the Great Eastern, took him to a small inn, where he gave him his tea and put him through a rather severe electrical examination, out of which our anxious hero emerged with credit.

“You’ll do, Robin,” said his examiner, who was a free-and-easy yet kindly electrician, “but you want instruction in many things.”

“Indeed I do, sir,” said Robin, “for I have had no regular education in the science, but I hope, if you direct me what to study, that I shall improve.”

“No doubt you will, my boy. Meanwhile, as the big ship won’t be ready to start for some time, I want you to go to the works of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, see the making of the cable, learn all you can, and write me a careful account of all that you see, and all that you think about it.”

Robin could not repress a smile.

“Why, boy, what are you laughing at?” demanded Mr Smith, somewhat sternly.

Robin blushed deep scarlet as he replied—

“Pardon me, sir, but you said I am to write down all that I think about it.”

“Well, what then?”

“I—I’m afraid, sir,” stammered Robin, “that if I write down all I think about the Atlantic Cable, as well as all that I see, I shall require a very long time indeed, and a pretty large volume.”

Mr Smith gazed at our hero for some time with uplifted brows, then he shook his head slowly and frowned, then he nodded it slightly and smiled. After that he laughed, or rather chuckled, and said—

“Well, you may go now, and do what I have told you—only omitting most of what you think. A small portion of that will suffice! Don’t hurry back. Go home and make a fair copy of your observations and thoughts. I’ll write when I require you. Stay—your address? Ah! I have it in my note-book. What’s your first name, Mister Wright?”

Robin grew two inches taller, or more, on the spot; he had never been called Mister before, except in jest!

“Robert, sir,” he replied.

“Robert—ha! h’m! I’ll call you Bob. I never could stand ceremony, so you’ll accustom yourself to the new name as quickly as you can—but perhaps it’s not new to you?”

“Please, sir, I’ve been used to Robin; if you have no objection, I should—”

“No objection—of course not,” interrupted Mr Smith; “Robin will do quite as well, though a little longer; but that’s no matter. Good-bye, Robin, and—and—don’t think too hard. It sometimes hurts digestion; good-bye.”