Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Battery and the Boiler: Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Uncle Rik’s Adventures
Uncle Rik seated in Mr Wright’s drawing-room; Mr Wright in an easy-chair near the window; Mrs Wright—with much of the lustre gone out of her fine eyes—lying languidly on the sofa; Madge Mayland at work on some incomprehensible piece of netting beside her aunt,—all in deep mourning.
Uncle Rik has just opened a telegram, at which he stares, open eyed and mouthed, without speaking, while his ruddy cheeks grow pale.
“Not bad news, I trust, brother,” said poor Mrs Wright, to whom the worst news had been conveyed when she heard of the wreck of the Triton. Nothing could exceed that, she felt, in bitterness.
“What is it, Rik?” said Mr Wright, anxiously.
“Oh! nothing—nothing. That is to say, not bad news, certainly, but amazing news. Boh! I’m a fool.”
He stopped short after this complimentary assertion, for uncle Rik had somewhere read or heard that joy can kill, and he feared to become an accomplice in a murder.
“Come, Rik, don’t keep us in suspense,” said his brother, rising; “something has happened.”
“O yes, something has indeed happened,” cried Rik, “for this telegram is from Sam Shipton.”
“Then Robin is alive!” cried Mrs Wright, leaping up, while Madge turned perfectly white.
“No—that is to say—yes—it may be so—of course must be so—for,—bah! what an ass I am! Listen.”
He proceeded to read Sam’s telegram, while Mrs Wright covered her face with her hands and sank trembling on the sofa.
The telegram having suffered rather severe mutilation at the hands of the foreigners by whom it was transmitted, conveyed a very confusing idea of the facts that were intended, but the puzzling over it by the whole party, and the gradual, though not perfect, elucidation of its meaning, had perhaps the effect of softening the joyful intelligence to a bearable extent.
“Now,” said uncle Rik, while the perspiration of mental effort and anxiety stood on his bald forehead, “this is the outcome of it all. Sam clearly says ‘all well,’ which means, of course, that Robin is alive—thank God for that! Then he refers to a previous telegram, which, of course, must be lost, for it hasn’t come to hand. Bah! I wonder the nasty things ever do come to hand. Anyhow, that telegram must have been meant to announce their safe arrival at Bombay, undoubtedly.”
“Of course—I see it now,” said Mrs Wright, with a deep sigh.
“Of course,” echoed Rik. “Then there’s some queer reference to a ship and a Fiery Queen, and a Stamps and a Shunks, and a Gibson, and a thief, and three bags, and the port of London, which of course means London, and a public-house named, apparently, Torture—”
“Tartar, I think, uncle,” said Madge.
“Well, Tartar if you like, it’s much the same if you catch him. And it winds up with a girl—which is not surprisin’—who is to be expectorated—”
“Expected, surely,” said Madge, with a rather hysterical laugh, for the conflicting feelings within her tended rather to tears.
“So be it, Madge—expected, with an unreadable name beginning with an L,—and that’s all; and a pretty penny he must have paid to send us such a lot o’ rubbish.”
“It has brought the oil of gladness to our hearts, brother,” said Mr Wright, “and is worth its cost. But, now, what do you intend to do?”
“Do!” exclaimed Rik, who was never happier than when he could explode his feelings in action. “I’ll go this moment to the port of London, find out the owners of the Fiery Queen, make particular inquiries about the Stampses, Shunkses, and Gibsons, visit Torture public-houses—though they’re all that, more or less—and see if I can hear anything about girls to be expectorated, with names beginning with L. There—these are my sailing directions, so—up anchor and away!”
Uncle Rik immediately obeyed his own commands, and spent the remainder of that day in what he styled cruising. And he cruised to some purpose, for although he failed to obtain any information as to the girl, he discovered the owners of the Fairy—not Fiery—Queen, who said that she was expected home in a few weeks, but that they knew nothing whatever about the rather remarkable names which he submitted for their consideration. With this amount of information he was fain to rest content, and returned in an elevated state of mind to his brother’s house.
Some weeks after these events, the Wright family was again seated round the social board, as uncle Rik called it, when two visitors were announced. The social meal happening to be tea, and the drawing-room at that time in dishabille, owing to carpet disturbances, the visitors were shown into the dining-room—a lady, accompanied by a pretty little girl.
“Excuse my calling at an unusual hour,” said the lady, “but I trust the occasion of my visit will be a sufficient excuse. I have just arrived from Bombay, and hasten to present a letter from your son, and to deliver over my interesting charge, this dear child, Letta Langley, whom—”
“The expectorated girl!” shouted uncle Rik, leaping up, “begins with an L,—two L’s indeed. Bah, I’m an idiot! Excuse my excitement, madam—pray go on.”
Slightly surprised, but more amused, the lady went on to tell all she knew about Robin and his friends, while the happy mother read snatches of Robin’s letter through her tears, and Mr Wright and Madge plied the lady with questions and tea, and Letta, taking at once to uncle Rik, ecstatified, amazed and horrified that retired sea-captain with her charming earnest little ways, her wonderful experiences, and her intimate acquaintance with pirates and their habits.
A letter from Robin to his mother, and another from Sam to Mr Wright, arrived next morning, and proved to be those which had been written immediately after their landing at Bombay, and had been posted, so the writers thought, at the time their first telegram was despatched. But the letters had been given to Stumps to post, and Stumps was not blessed with a good memory, which may account for the delay in transmission. These letters corroborated all the lady had said. Thus was Letta formally installed in the Wright family, and uncle Rik solemnly charged himself with the discovery of her mother!
“Depend upon it, my dear,” he said, with an amount of self-sufficient assurance and indomitable resolution that carried sweet consolation to the child’s heart, “that I’ll find your mother if she’s above ground, though the findin’ of her should cost me the whole of my fortune and the remainder of my life.”
And nobly did Rik redeem his promise. He obtained special introduction to the British Museum, consulted every Directory in existence, hunted up every widow of the name of Langley in the kingdom, and found the right one at last, not three miles distant from his own door in London. Captain Rik, it must be known, had a room in London furnished like a cabin, which he was wont to refer to as his “ship” and his “bunk,” but he paid that retreat only occasional visits, finding it more agreeable to live with his brother.
It was a fine Sabbath morning when Rik took Letta’s hand and led her into the presence of her mother. He would not let himself be announced, but pushed the child into the drawing-room and shut the door.
With similar delicacy of feeling we now draw a curtain over the meeting of the mother and the long-lost child.
“It’s almost too much for me, tough old sea-dog though I am, this perpetual cruisin’ about after strange runaway craft,” said uncle Rik, as he and Letta walked hand in hand along the streets one day some weeks later. “Here have I been beatin’ about for I don’t know how long, and I’m only in the middle of it yet. We expect the Fairy Queen in port to-night or to-morrow.”
“But you won’t hurt poor Stumps when you catch him, will you?” pleaded Letta, looking earnestly up into her companion’s jovial face. “He was very nice and kind to me, you know, on Pirate Island.”
“No, I’ll not hurt him, little old woman,” said Rik. “Indeed, I don’t know yet for certain that Stumps is a thief; it may be Shunks or it may be Gibson, you see, who is the thief. However, we’ll find out before long. Now then, good-bye, I’ll be back soon.”
He shook hands with Letta at Mr Wright’s house, she and her mother having agreed to reside there until Robin’s return home.
Wending his way through the streets until he reached one of the great arteries of the metropolis, he got into a ’bus and soon found himself on the banks of the Thames. Arrived at the docks, one of the first vessels his eyes fell on was the Fairy Queen.
Going on board, the first man he met was the captain, to whom he said, touching his hat—
“Excuse me, captain; may I ask if you have a man in your crew named Stumps?”
“No, sir, no such name on my books.”
“Nor one named Shunks?”
“No, not even Shunks,” replied the captain, with a sternly-humorous look, as if he thought the visitor were jesting.
“Nor Gibson?” continued Rik.
“Yes, I’ve got one named Gibson. What d’ye want with him?”
“Well, I have reason to believe that he is—or was—a friend of a friend of mine, and I should like to see him.”
“Oh! indeed,” responded the captain, regarding his visitor with a doubtful look. “Well, Gibson has just got leave to go ashore, and I heard him say to one of his mates he was going to the Tartar public-house, so you’ll see him there, probably, for he is not invisible or’narily. But I don’t know where the Tartar is.”
“But I know,” returned Captain Rik; “thank you. I’ll go seek him there.”
Stumps sat alone in one of the boxes of the Tartar public-house, which at that hour chanced to be nearly empty. His face was buried in his hands, and a pot of untasted beer stood at his elbow. Poor Stumps! Conscience had been remarkably busy with him on the voyage home. He would have given worlds to have got back to Bombay, return the ill-gotten bags, and confess his guilt, but it was too late—too late.
There is something very awful in these words, too late! We read of and hear them often, and we use them sometimes, lightly it may be, but it is only when they can be used by ourselves with reference to something very serious, that we have a glimmering of their terrible significance. There is a proverb, “It is never too late to mend,” which is misleading. When the dream of life is over, and the doom is fixed, it is too late to mend. No doubt the proverb is meant to refer to our condition while this life lasts, but even here it is misleading. When the murderer withdraws the knife and gazes, it may be, horror-struck at the expressionless face of his victim, it is too late. He cannot mend the severed thread of life. When the reckless drunkard draws near the end of his career, and looks in the mirror, and starts to see the wreck of his former self, it is too late. Health will never more return. Not too late, blessed be God, for the salvation of the soul, but too late for the recovery of all that was held dear in the life of earth.
Yes, Stumps had many a time while on the sea muttered to himself, “Too late!” He did so once again in that low public-house near the docks. Uncle Rik overheard him, and a feeling of profound pity arose within him.
“I beg pardon,” he said, and at the first word Stumps looked quickly, almost fiercely, up, “your name, I believe, is Gibson.”
“No, it isn’t—I, that is to say—Well, yes it is. Sailors has got aliases, you know, sometimes. What d’ye want wi’ me?”
“You were acquainted in Bombay,” resumed Captain Wright, very quietly, as he sat down opposite to Stumps, “with a young man named Wright—Robin Wright?”
Stumps’s face became deadly pale.
“Ah! I see you were,” resumed the captain; “and you and he had something to do, now, with bags of some sort?”
The captain was, as the reader knows, profoundly ignorant of everything connected with the bags except their existence, but he had his suspicions, and thought this a rather knowing way of inducing Stumps to commit himself. His surprise, then, may be imagined when Stumps, instead of replying, leaped up and dashed wildly out of the room, overturning the pot of beer upon Captain Rik’s legs.
Stumps shot like an arrow past the landlord, a retired pugilist, who chanced to be in the doorway. Captain Rik, recovering, darted after him, but was arrested by the landlord.
“Not quite so fast, old gen’l’man! As you’ve had some of your mate’s beer, you’d better pay for it.”
“Let me go!—stop him!” cried the captain, struggling.
As well might he have struggled in the grasp of Hercules. His reason asserted itself the instant the fugitive was out of sight. He silently paid for the beer, went back to the Fairy Queen to inform the captain that his man Gibson was a thief—to which the captain replied that it was very probable, but that it was no business of his—and then wandered sadly back to tell the Wright family how Gibson, alias Stumps, alias Shunks, had been found and lost.
Chapter Thirty.
The Wright Family reunited, and Sam becomes highly Electrical
That much-abused and oft-neglected meal called tea had always been a scene of great festivity and good-fellowship in the Wright family. Circumstances, uncontrollable of course, had from the beginning necessitated a dinner at one o’clock, so that they assembled round the family board at six each evening, in a hungry and happy frame of body and mind, (which late diners would envy if they understood it), with the prospect of an evening—not bed—before them.
In the earlier years of the family, the meal had been, so to speak, a riotous one, for both Robin and Madge had uncontrollable spirits, with tendencies to drop spoons on the floor, and overturn jugs of milk on the table. Later on, the meal became a jolly one, and, still later, a chatty one—especially after uncle Rik and cousin Sam began to be frequent guests.
But never in all the experience of the family had the favourite meal been so jolly, so prolific of spoony and porcelain accidents, so chatty, and so generally riotous, as it was on a certain evening in June of the year 1870, shortly after the return home of Robin and his companions.
Besides the original Wright family, consisting of father, mother, Robin, and Madge, there were assembled uncle Rik, Sam Shipton, Mrs Langley, Letta, and—no—not Jim Slagg. The circle was unavoidably incomplete, for Jim had a mother, and Jim had said with indignant emphasis, “did they suppose all the teas an’ dinners an’ suppers, to say nothin’ o’ breakfasts, an’ mess-mates an’ chums an’ friends, crammed and jammed into one enormous mass temptation, would indooce him to delay his return to that old lady for the smallest fraction of an hour?” No, Jim Slagg was not at the table, but the household cat was under it, and the demoralising attentions that creature received on that occasion went far to undo the careful training of previous years.
The occasion of the gathering was not simple. It was compound. First, it was in commemoration of Robin’s birthday; second, it was to celebrate the appointment of Sam Shipton to an influential position on the electrical staff of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and Sam’s engagement to Marjory Mayland; third, to celebrate the appointment of Robin Wright to a sufficiently lucrative and hopeful post under Sam; and, lastly, to enjoy the passing hour.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said uncle Rik, getting on his feet with some difficulty, when the tea, toast, muffins, eggs, and other fare had blunted the appetites, “I rise to propose the toast of the evening, and mark you, I don’t mean to use any butter with this toast,” (Hear, from Sam), “unless I’m egged on,” (Oh!), “to do it—so I charge you to charge your cups with tea, since we’re not allowed grog in this tee-total ship—though I’m free to confess that I go in with you there, for I’ve long since given, up the use o’ that pernicious though pleasant beverage, takin’ it always neat, now, in the form of cold water, varied occasionally with hot tea and coffee. My toast, ladies and gentlemen, is Rob—” (Rik put his hand to his throat to ease off his necktie), “is Robin Wright, whom I’ve known, off an’ on, as a babby, boy, an’ man, almost ever since that night—now twenty years ago, more or less—when he was launched upon the sea in thunder, lightning, and in rain. I’ve known him, I say—ever since—off an’ on—and I’m bound to say that—”
The captain paused. He had meant to be funny, but the occasion proved too much for him.
“Bless you, Robin, my lad,” he gasped, suddenly stretching his large hand across the table and grasping that of his nephew, which was quickly extended. After shaking it with intense vigour he sat promptly down and blew his nose.
The thunders of applause which burst from Sam and Mr Wright were joined in even by the ladies, who, in the excess of their sympathy, made use of knife-handles and spoons with such manly vigour that several pieces of crockery went “by the board,” as the captain himself remarked, and the household cat became positively electrified and negatively mad,—inasmuch as it was repelled by the horrors around, and denied itself the remaining pleasure of the tea-table by flying wildly from the room.
Of course, Robin attempted a reply, but was equally unsuccessful in expressing his real sentiments, or the true state of his feelings, but uncle Rik came to the rescue by turning sharply on Sam and demanding—
“Do you really mean to tell me, sir, that, after all your experience, you still believe in telegraphs and steamboats?”
Sam promptly asserted that he really did mean that.
“Of course,” returned the captain, “you can’t help believing in their existence—for facts are facts—but are you so soft, so unphilosophical, so idiotical as to believe in their continuance? That’s the point, lad—their continuance. Are you not aware that, in course o’ time, rust they must—”
“An’ then they’ll bu’st,” interpolated Robin.
“Hee! hee! ha!” giggled Letta, who, during all this time, had been gazing with sparkling eyes and parted lips, from one speaker to another, utterly forgetful of, and therefore thoroughly enjoying, her own existence.
“Yes, then they’ll bu’st,” repeated Rik, with an approving nod at Robin; “you’re right, my boy, and the sooner they do it the better, for I’m quite sick of their flashings and crashings.”
“I rather suspect, Sam,” said Mr Wright, “that the gentlemen with whom you dined the other day would not agree with uncle Rik.”
“Whom do you refer to, George?” asked Mrs Wright.
“Has he not yet told you of the grand ‘inaugural fête,’ as they call it, that was given at the house of Mr Fender, chairman of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, to celebrate the opening of direct submarine telegraphic communication with India?”
“Not a word,” replied Mrs Wright, looking at Sam.
“You never mentioned it to me,” said Madge, with a reproachful glance in the same direction.
“Because, Madge, we have been so busy in talking about something else,” said Sam, “that I really forgot all about it.”
“Do tell us about it now,” said Mrs Langley, who, like her daughter, had been listening in silence up to this point.
“A deal o’ rubbish was spoken, I daresay,” observed the captain, commencing to another muffin, and demanding more tea.
“A deal of something was spoken, at all events,” said Sam, “and what is more to the point, an amazing deal was done. Come, before speaking about it, let me propose a toast—Success to Batteries and Boilers!”
“Amen to that!” said Robin, with enthusiasm.
“If they deserve it,” said the captain, with caution.
The toast having been drunk with all the honours, Sam began by saying that the fête was a great occasion, and included brilliant company.
“There were present, of course,” he said, “nearly all the great electrical and engineering lights of the day, also the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, with a lot of aristocrats, whom it is not necessary to mention in the presence of a democratic sea-dog like uncle Rik.”
“Don’t yaw about to defame me, but keep to your course, Sam.”
“Well, you have no idea what an amount of interest and enthusiasm the affair created. You all know, of course, that the Indian cable, which Robin and I had a hand in laying, is now connected with the lines that pass between Suez, Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and England; and the company assembled at Mr Pender’s house witnessed the sending of the first messages direct from London to Bombay; and how long, do you think, it took to send the first message, and receive a reply?—only five minutes!”
“You don’t mean it, Sam!” exclaimed Rik, getting excited, in spite of his professed unbelief.
“Indeed I do,” replied Sam, warming with his subject. “I tell you the sober truth, however difficult it may be for you to believe it. You may see it in the papers of the 24th or 25th, I suppose. Here is my note-book, in which I jotted down the most interesting points.
“The proceedings of the evening were opened by the managing director in London sending a telegram to the manager at Bombay.
“‘How are you all?’ was the brief first telegram by Sir James Anderson. ‘All well,’ was the briefer first reply from Bombay. The question fled from London at 9:18 exactly—I had my watch in my hand at the time—and the answer came back at 9:23—just five minutes. I can tell you it was hard to believe that the whole thing was not a practical joke. In fact, the message and reply were almost instantaneous, the five minutes being chiefly occupied in manipulating the instruments at either end. The second message between the same parties occupied the same time. After that Sir Bartle Frere sent a telegram to Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, the Governor of Bombay, as follows:– ‘Sir Bartle Frere wishes health and prosperity to all old friends in Bombay.’ This was received by the Company’s superintendent at Bombay, and the acknowledgment of its receipt sent back in four minutes and fifty seconds! But the reply from the Governor, ‘Your old friend returns your good wishes,’ did not come to us for thirty-six minutes, because the message had to be sent to the Governor’s house, and it found his Excellency in bed.
“Next, a message was sent by Lady Mayo in London to Lord Mayo at Simla, which, with the acknowledgment of it, occupied 15 minutes in transmission. Of course time was lost in some cases, because the persons telegraphed to were not on the spot at the moment. The Prince of Wales telegraphed to the Viceroy of India, ‘I congratulate your Excellency on England and India being now connected by a submarine cable. I feel assured this grand achievement will prove of immense benefit to the welfare of the Empire. Its success is thus matter of imperial interest,’ which telegram passed out, and the acknowledgment of its receipt in India was returned to London, all within eleven minutes, but, as in the former case, the Viceroy was in bed, so that his reply was not received till forty-five minutes had elapsed. Had the Viceroy been at the Indian end of the wire, he and the Prince could have conversed at an average rate of five minutes a sentence.
“Many other messages were sent to and fro,” continued Sam, turning over the leaves of his note-book, “not only from London to India, but to each of the intermediate stations on the cable line, so that we had direct intercourse that night with the King of Portugal, the Governors of Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, and the Khedive of Egypt. But that was not all. We put the old and the new world into communication, so that the ‘press of India sent salaam to the press of America.’ Sir James Anderson also telegraphed to Cyrus W. Field, Esquire, the father of submarine telegraphy in my estimation,” (Hear, hear, from Robin), “and he sent a reply, which began, ‘Your message of this evening received by me before five o’clock this afternoon.’ Mark that, Captain Rik, the message received before it was sent, so to speak!”
“Ay, ay, lad—I know—difference of longitude,—fire away.”
“Well, I have fired away most of my ammunition now,” returned Sam, “and if you don’t haul down your colours, it must be because you have nailed them to the mast and are blind to reason. I may add, however, that the Viceroy of India sent a telegram to the President of the United States, to which he got a reply in seven hours and forty minutes, but the slowness of this message was accounted for by the fact of accidental and partly unavoidable delay in transmission both in Washington and London. At 1:30 a.m. of the 24th the traffic of the line became pressing, and all complimentary messages ceased with one from Bombay, which said, ‘Sun just risen; delightfully cool; raining.’”
“Doesn’t it seem as if the Baron Monkhausen’s tales were possible after all?” remarked Mrs Wright, looking as if her mind had got slightly confused.
“The Baron’s tales are mere child’s-play, mother,” said Robin, “to the grand facts of electricity.”
“That’s so, Robin,” said Sam, still turning over the leaves of his note-book, “and we had some magnificent experiments or illustrations at the fête, which go far to prove the truth of your remark—experiments which were so beautiful that they would have made the eyes of Letta sparkle even more gorgeously than they are doing at present, if she had seen them.”
Letta blushed, returned to self-consciousness for a moment, looked down, laughed, looked up as Sam proceeded, and soon again forgot herself in a fixed and earnest gaze.
“The two telegraph instruments communicating with India and America, which stood on two tables, side by side, in Mr Pender’s house, were supplied by two batteries in the basement of the building. Eighty cells of Daniel’s battery were used upon the Penzance circuit for India, and 100 cells on the Brest circuit for America. The ordinary water-pipes of the house served to connect the batteries with the earth, so as to enable them to pump their electricity from that inexhaustible reservoir.”
“I was not aware that electricity had to be pumped up through pipes like water,” interrupted Mrs Wright, on whose mild countenance a complication of puzzled expressions was gradually gathering.
“It is not so pumped up,” said Sam. “The pipes were used, not because they were pipes, but because they were metal, and therefore good conductors.”
“But you haven’t told us about the beautiful experiments yet,” murmured Letta, a little impatiently.
“I’m coming to them, little one,” said Sam. “One battery exhibited the power as well as the beauty of that mysterious force which we call electricity. It was the large Grove battery. A current passed from it to copper wires, in a certain manner, produced a dazzling green light, and the copper melted like wax. With silver a still brighter and purer green flame was the result. With platinum an intense white light was given off, and the molten metal fell in globules of exceeding brilliancy. With iron lovely coruscations were exhibited, the boiling vapour flying and burning in all directions; and a platinum wire three feet long was in an instant melted into thousands of minute globules. All this showed the power of electricity to produce intense heat when resistance is opposed to its passage.”
“It is remarkably human-like in that respect,” said Captain Rik, in an under-tone.
“Then its power to produce magnetism,” continued Sam, “was shown by Lord Lindsay’s huge electro-magnet. This magnet, you must know, is nothing but a bit of ordinary metal until it is electrified, when it becomes a most powerful magnet. But the instant the current is cut off from it, it ceases to be a magnet. If you understood much about electricity,” said Sam, looking round on his rapt audience, “I might tell you that it is upon this power of making a piece of iron a magnet or not at pleasure, that depend the Morse and Digné telegraph instruments; but as you don’t understand, I won’t perplex you further. Well, when a piece of sheet copper was passed between the poles of Lord Lindsay’s giant magnet, it was as difficult to move as if it had been sticking in cheese—though it was in reality touching nothing!—influenced only by attraction.” (“That beats your power over Sam, Madge,” whispered Robin. “No it doesn’t,” whispered Madge in reply.) “Then, one most beautiful experiment I could not hope to get you to understand, but its result was, that a ten-gallon glass jar, coated inside and out with perforated squares of tinfoil, was filled with tens of thousands of brilliant sparks, which produced so much noise as completely to drown the voices of those who described the experiment. A knowledge of these and other deep things, and of the laws that govern them, has enabled Sir William Thomson and Mr Cromwell F. Varley to expedite the transmission of messages through very long submarine cables in an enormous degree. Then the aurora borealis was illustrated by a large long exhausted tube—”
“I say, Sam,” interrupted Rik, “don’t you think there’s just a possibility of our becoming a large long-exhausted company if you don’t bring this interesting lecture to a close?”
“Shame! shame! uncle Rik,” cried Robin.
As the rest of the company sided with him, the captain had to give way, and Sam went on.
“I won’t try your patience much longer; in fact I have nearly come to an end. In this long exhausted tube, ten feet in length and three inches in diameter, a brilliant and beautiful crimson stream was produced, by means of an induction coil. In short, the occasion and the proceedings altogether made it the most interesting evening I have ever spent in my life, e–except—”
Sam paused abruptly, and looked at Madge. Madge blushed and looked down under the table,—presumably for the cat,—and the rest of the company burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, in which condition we will leave them and convey the reader to a very different though not less interesting scene.
