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

Now, it is not in the nature of things that man, in his present state, should attain to full satisfaction. He may, indeed he should, attain to contentment, but as long as there...

It was the habit of Robin and his friends at this time, the weather being extremely fine and cool, to sit at the mouth of their cavern of an evening, chatting about the events o...

Next morning Sam Shipton awoke from a sound and dreamless slumber. Raising himself on the soft ottoman, or Eastern couch, on which he had spent the night, he looked round in a s...

On reaching the first rising-ground that lay before them, Robin and his friend received a great disappointment, for, instead of a richly wooded country, which the coast scenery...

The office is dingy. Many offices are so. Two clerks are sitting in it making faces at each other across their desk. They are not lunatics. They are not imbeciles or idlers. On...

At the breakfast-table next morning a telegram was handed to Redpath. There was nothing unusual in this. On the contrary, it seemed peculiarly natural that telegrams should be f...

Thus happily and smoothly all things went, with little bursts of anxiety and little touches of alarm, just sufficient, as it were, to keep up the spirits of all, till the mornin...

Events of the most singular description are often prefaced by incidents of the most commonplace character. Who is so inexperienced in the vicissitudes of life as not to know this!

Seated on a chair, with his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his nails between his teeth, he stared at a corner of the room, nibbled and meditated. There was noth...

When Mr John Shanks realised the full extent of his loss, his first impulse was to seize hold of the nearest passer-by and strangle him; his next, to dash down a narrow street c...

That man who can appreciate the feelings of one who has become suddenly bankrupt may understand the mental condition of those on board the Great Eastern when they were thus toss...

The vessel of which Robin and his friends had thus become possessed, was one of those numerous native pirate-ships which did, and we believe still do, infest some parts of the M...

For the first few days of their stay on what they styled Pirate Island, our castaways were too much taken up with the wondrous and varied contents of the robbers' cave, and the...

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,...

When the raft was launched over the side, as described, the carpenters had embarked upon it with the rest of the ship's crew, dropping their tools on the deck beside the mass of...

How often it has been said, "Good for man that he does not know what lies before him." If he did we fear he would face his duty with very different feelings from those which usu...

Robin Wright returned home with a bounding heart. Since his electrical appointment he had become, figuratively speaking, an indiarubber ball--a sort of human "squash." His heart...

Come with us now, good reader, to another and very different scene--out upon the boundless sea. The great Atlantic is asleep, but his breast heaves gently and slowly like that o...

In a small wayside cottage in the outskirts of one of those picturesque villages which surround London, an old woman sat at the head of a small deal table, with a black teapot,...

When our hero at last reached the Great Eastern, he soon found himself in what may be termed a lost condition. At first he was disappointed, for he saw her at a distance, and it...

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 s...

The Chiltern carried the great coil in her tanks. After rounding Colaba Point into Back Bay, she found a barge waiting to receive some two-and-a-half miles of the cable, with wh...

To awake "all at sea"--in other words, ignorant of one's locality--is a rather common experience, but to awaken both at and in the sea, in a similar state of oblivion, is not so...

A few weeks after the utterance of Captain Rik's famous prophecy, Robin, Sam, Stumps, and Slagg found themselves on board of a large submarine cable steam-ship, named the Triton...

Time continued to roll additional years off his reel, and rolled out Robin and Madge in length and breadth, though we cannot say much for thickness. Time also developed their mi...

Sparks, as a rule, are looked upon as a race of useless and disreputable fellows. Their course is usually erratic. They fly upward, downward, forward, and backward--here, there,...

"I say, Robin," said Samuel Shipton, as he encountered our hero and Slagg that same evening in the streets of Bombay, "the government land telegraph was reported this morning to...

Now, although we have said that Jim Slagg knew how to pull a trigger, it does not follow that he knew how to avoid pulling that important little piece of metal. He was aware, of...

It is a great day for Bombay. Natives and Europeans alike are unusually excited. Something of an unwonted nature is evidently astir. Down at the sea the cause of the excitement...

Somewhere about the middle of this nineteenth century, a baby boy was born on the raging sea in the midst of a howling tempest. That boy was the hero of this tale.

Chief among the lunatics was uncle Rik, the retired sea-captain. That madman's case, however, was not temporary derangement, like the others'. It was confirmed insanity, somewha...

"George," answered the composed wife, "don't you think it is rather soon to trouble ourselves with that question? Robin is a mere child yet. We must first give him a good educat...