CABLE FISHING cv 



permission from Algiers to be got ; lighters, men, baskets, and 

 I know not what forms to be got or got through and everybody 

 asleep ! Coals or no coals, I was determined to start next 

 morning ; and start we did at four in the morning, picked up 

 the buoy with our deck engine, popped the cable across a boat, 

 tested the wires to make sure the fault was not behind us, and 

 started picking up at 11. Everything worked admirably, and 

 about 2 P.M., in came the fault. There is no doubt the cable 

 was broken by coral fishers ; twice they have had it up to 

 their own knowledge. 



' Many men have been ashore to-day and have come back 

 tipsy, and the whole ship is in a state of quarrel from top to 

 bottom, and they will gossip just within my hearing. And we 

 have had moreover three French gentlemen and a French lady 

 to dinner, and I had to act host and try to manage the mixtures 

 to their taste. The good-natured little Frenchwoman was most 

 amusing ; when I asked her if she would have some apple tart 

 " Mon Dieu" with heroic resignation, " je veux lien ; " or a little 

 plombodding " Mais ce que vous voudrez, Monsieur ! " 



* S.S. Elba, somewhere not far from Bona : Oct. 19. 



Yesterday [after three previous days of useless grappling] 

 was destined to be very eventful. We began dredging at day- 

 break and hooked at once every time in rocks ; but by capital 

 luck, just as we were deciding it was no use to continue in that 

 place, we hooked the cable : up it came, was tested, and lo ! 

 another complete break, a quarter of a mile off. I was amazed 

 at my own tranquillity under these disappointments, but I was 

 not really half so fussy as about getting a cab. Well, there was 

 nothing for it but grappling again and, as you may imagine, 

 we were getting about six miles from shore. But the water did 

 not deepen rapidly ; we seemed to be on the crest of a kind of 

 submarine mountain in prolongation of Cape de Gonde, and 

 pretty havoc we must have made with the crags. What rocks 

 we did hook ! No sooner was the grapnel down than the 

 ship was anchored ; and then came such a business : ship's 

 engines going, deck engine thundering, belt slipping, fear of 



