e and we start hauling in. All goes
pretty well, but it is quite dark. Lamps are got at last, and men
arranged. We go on for a quarter of a mile or so from shore and then
stop at about half-past nine with orders to be up at three. Grand work
at last! A number of the _Saturday Review_ here: it reads so hot and
feverish, so tomb-like and unhealthy, in the midst of dear Nature's
hills and sea, with good wholesome work to do. Pray that all go well
to-morrow.

"_June 10._

"Thank heaven for a most fortunate day. At three o'clock this morning,
in a damp, chill mist, all hands were roused to work. With a small
delay, for one or two improvements I had seen to be necessary last
night, the engine started, and since that time I do not think there
has been half an hour's stoppage. A rope to splice, a block to change,
a wheel to oil, an old rusted anchor to disengage from the cable which
brought it up, these have been our only obstructions. Sixty, seventy,
eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty revolutions at last, my little
engine tears away. The even black rope comes straight out of the blue
heaving water; passes slowly round an open-hearted,
good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet diameter; aft past a vicious
nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong; through a gentle
guide; on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body and says,
'Come you must,' as plain as drum can speak: the chattering pauls say,
'I've got him, I've got him, he can't get back': whilst black cable,
much slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a slim V-pulley
and passed down into the huge hold, where half a dozen men put him
comfortably to bed after his exertion in rising from his long bath. In
good sooth, it is one of the strangest sights I know to see that black
fellow rising up so steadily in the midst of the blue sea. We are more
than half way to the place where we expect the fault; and already the
one wire, supposed previously to be quite bad near the African coast,
can be spoken through. I am very glad I am here, for my machines are
my own children, and I look on their little failings with a parent's
eye and lead them into the path of duty with gentleness and firmness.
I am naturally in good spirits, but keep very quiet, for misfortunes
may arise at any instant; moreover, to-morrow my paying-out apparatus
will be wanted should all go well, and that will be