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

Ten days later Sam got a letter from Robin, telling him that he had received a cable-telegram from India, from their friend Redpath, offering him a good situation there, and that, having reached the lowest depths of despair, he had resolved to accept it, and was sorry he should not have an opportunity of saying good-bye, as he was urged to start without a day’s delay.

Sam was staying with his friends at the Oban Hotel at the time, having at last managed to tear himself away from the cottage in Mull.

He instantly ran out and telegraphed—

“Don’t accept on any account.”

Then he sought Mrs Langley, and opened Robin’s case to her. Mrs Langley listened with a smile of intelligence, and soon after went to her daughter’s room, the window of which commanded a splendid view of the western sea.

“Letta, dear, are you moralising or meditating?”

“Both, mamma.”

“Well, I will try to help you,” said Mrs Langley, seating herself by the window. “By the way, did you hear that Mr Wright has been offered a lucrative appointment in the Telegraph Department of India, and is going off at once;—has not time even to say good-bye to his old friend Sam Shipton?”

Letta turned very pale, then extremely red, then covered her face with both hands and burst into tears.

“So, Letta, you love him,” said her mother, gently. “Why did you not let me know this sooner?”

“Oh, mamma!” said poor Letta, “why do you put it so—so—suddenly. I don’t love him—that is—I don’t know that I love him. I’ve never thought about it seriously. He has never opened his lips to me on the subject—and—and—”

“Letta, dear,” said her mother, tenderly, “would you wish to prevent his going away if you could? Open your heart to your mother, darling.”

Letta laid her head on her mother’s shoulder, but spoke not.

A few minutes later Mrs Langley went to Sam and said—

“Robin must not go to India.”

Sam instantly went by the shortest conceivable route to London, where he found Robin in his room feverishly packing his portmanteau, and said—

“Robin, you must not go to India.”

From that text he preached an eloquent lay-sermon, which he wound up with the words, “Now, my boy, you must just propose to her at once.”

“But I can’t, Sam. I haven’t got the pluck. I’m such a miserable sort of fellow—how could I expect such a creature to throw herself away on me? Besides, it’s all very well your saying you have good ground for believing she cares for me; but how can you know? Of course you have not dared to speak to her?”

Robin looked actually fierce at the bare idea of such a thing.

“No, I have not dared,” said Sam.

“Well, then. It is merely your good-natured fancy. No, my dear fellow, it is my fate. I must bow to it. And I know that if I were to wait till I see her again, all my courage would have oozed away—”

“But I don’t intend that you shall wait, Robin,” interrupted Sam. “You need not go on talking so selfishly about yourself. You must consider the girl. I’m not going to stand by and see injustice done to her. You have paid marked attention to her, and are bound in honour to lay yourself at her feet, even at the risk of a refusal.”

“But how, Sam? I tell you if I wait—”

“Then don’t wait,—telegraph.”

Robin gazed at his friend in stupefied amazement. “What! make a proposal of marriage by telegraph?”

“Even so, Robin. You began life with electricity, so it is quite in keeping that you should begin a new departure in life with it.”

Sam rose, sought for paper, and with pencil wrote as follows:– “From Mr R. Wright, London, to Miss Letta Langley, – Hotel, Oban.—I can stand it no longer. May I come to see you?”

Presenting this to his friend, Sam said, “May I despatch it?”

Robin nodded, smiled, and looked foolish.

An hour later Mrs Langley, sitting beside her daughter, took up a pen, and wrote as follows:—

“From Miss Letta Langley, Oban, to R. Wright, London.—Yes.”

Presenting this to her daughter, she said. “May I send it?”

Letta once more covered her face with her hands, and blushed.

Thus it came to pass that our hero’s fate in life, as well as his career, was decided by the electric telegraph.

But the best of it was that Robin did go to India after all—as if to do despite to his friends, who had said he must not go. Moreover, he took Letta with him, and he hunted many a day through the jungles of that land in company with his friend Redpath, and his henchman Flinn. And, long afterwards, he returned to England, a sturdy middle-aged man, with a wife whose beauty was unabated because it consisted, chiefly, in that love of heart to God and man which lends never-fading loveliness to the human countenance.

Awaiting them at home was a troop of little ones—the first home-instalment of a troop of lesser ones who accompanied the parent stems. All of these, besides being gifted with galvanic energy and flashing eyes, were impressed with the strong conviction, strange to say, that batteries, boilers, and submarine cables, were the most important things in the whole world, and the only subjects worth being played at by reasonable human children.

The End