the wire to the ground, and were to wet
itself thoroughly, it might perhaps draw off some of the current, but
fortunately the tails of monkeys are limited. We often find rows of
birds lying dead below our telegraph lines, but these have been killed
by flying against them, the wires being scarcely visible among trees."

"And what about savages, sir?" asked Jim Slagg, who had become deeply
interested in the telegraphist's discourse; "don't they bother you
sometimes?"

"Of course they do," replied Redpath, with a laugh, "and do us damage at
times, though we bother them too, occasionally."

"How do you manage that, sir?" asked Jim.

"Well, you must know we have been much hindered in our work by the
corruptness and stupidity of Eastern officials in many places, and by
the destructive propensities and rapacity of Kurds and wandering Arabs
and semi-savages, who have found our posts in the desert good for
firewood and our wires for arrow-heads or some such implements. Some of
our pioneers in wild regions have been killed by robbers when laying the
lines, while others have escaped only by fighting for their lives.
Superstition, too, has interfered with us sadly, though sometimes it has
come to our aid."

"There was one eccentric Irishman--one of the best servants I ever had,"
continued Redpath, "who once made a sort of torpedo arrangement which
achieved wonderful success. The fellow is with me still, and it is a
treat to hear Flinn, that's his name, tell the story, but the fun of it
mostly lies in the expressive animation of his own face, and the
richness of his brogue as he tells it.

"`I was away in the dissert somewheres,' he is wont to say, `I don't
rightly remimber where, for my brain's no better than a sive at
geagraphy, but it was a wild place, anyhow--bad luck to it! Well, we
had sot up a line o' telegraph in it, an' wan the posts was stuck in the
ground not far from a pool o' wather where the wild bastes was used to
dhrink of a night, an' they tuk a mighty likin' to this post, which they
scrubbed an' scraped at till they broke it agin an' agin. Och! it's me
heart was broke intirely wi' them. At last I putt me brains in steep
an' got up an invintion. It wouldn't be aisy to explain it, specially
to onscientific people. No matter, it was an electrical arrangement,
which I fixed to the post, an' bein' curious to know how it would work,
I wint down to the pool an' hid mesilf in a hole of a rock, wid a big
ston