! they died at once, with their little bells and
delicate bright tints.'

JUNE 19.--'Hour after hour I stand on the fore-castle-head picking off
little specimens of polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck reading
back numbers of the TIMES, till something hitches, and then all is
hurly-burly once more. There are awnings all along the ship, and a most
ancient and fish-like smell (from the decaying polypi) beneath.'

JUNE 22.--'Yesterday the cable was often a lovely sight, coming out of
the water one large incrustation of delicate net-like corals and long
white curling shells. No portion of the dirty black wire was visible;
instead we had a garland of soft pink, with little scarlet sprays and
white enamel intermixed. All was fragile, however, and could hardly
be secured in safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to
atoms.'

JUNE 24.--'The whole day spent in dredging, without success. This
operation consists in allowing the ship to drift slowly across the line
where you expect the cable to be, while at the end of a long rope,
fast either to the bow or stern, a grapnel drags along the ground. The
grapnel is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied back to back.
When the rope gets taut the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to
the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs. I am much
discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading WESTWARD
HO! for the second time instead of taking to electricity or picking up
nautical information.'

During the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be
looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid, and
two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the
mast-head and fore-yard tackle. Photographs of this ravelled cable
were for a long time exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Messrs.
Newall & Co's. shop in the Strand, where we remember to have seen them.

By July 5 the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered, and a
portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit
for use, owing to its twisted condition. Their work was over, but an
unfortunate accident marred its conclusion. On the evening of the 2nd
the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in
the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely
injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of
languages made him useful as an interpreter;