250 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



them, and patience alone was feebly recommended. 

 Wonderful, too, and sad, indeed, was the change in 

 the aspect of the ship. Wandering astern, it seemed 

 like the deserted hive of a once-flourishing community. 

 The long line of lights extending along the paying-out 

 trough from the fore-tank, and ending aft in a brilli- 

 ant illumination of which a theatrical manager might 

 well be envious, is extinct No blaze from the black- 

 smith's forge illumines with ruddy glow the erst-re- 

 volving wheels of the paying-out machinery, or the 

 cheery faces of the workmen once around it. The 

 very machine is getting rusty from disuse ; the jack- 

 daw has left his accustomed post, and, as if angry 

 at its complete stoppage, has never since been seen. 

 It is a vast solitude, with the signalman for the sole 

 inhabitant ; and even he, baffled by the ever-recur- 

 ring fog, has little or nothing to do. True, there is 

 work going on in the fore-part of the ship, but the 

 men are busy there in making appliances to raise the 

 dead, and not to help the living, Cable. The hope 

 that excites man's best energies is fast slipping away, 

 and, hour by hour and day by day, stronger grows the 

 impression that all human efforts (at least with such 

 tackle as we had) are unavailing to bring to light our 

 lost Cable. 



Yet not until those efforts have been tried to their 

 utmost strength will the pluck of such men as Captain 

 Anderson, Messrs Canning and Clifford, and all under 

 them, give way ; so, the weather at last clearing up, 



