lever fellow!"

"Bottom!" sang out one of the men standing near the derrick and watching
the operations.

The Captain and the Lieutenant immediately advanced to question him.

"What's the depth, Coleman?" asked the Lieutenant.

"21,762 feet," was the prompt reply, which Brownson immediately
inscribed in his note-book, handing a duplicate to the Captain.

"All right, Lieutenant," observed the Captain, after a moment's
inspection of the figures. "While I enter it in the log, you haul the
line aboard. To do so, I need hardly remind you, is a task involving
care and patience. In spite of all our gallant little donkey engine can
do, it's a six hours job at least. Meanwhile, the Chief Engineer had
better give orders for firing up, so that we may be ready to start as
soon as you're through. It's now close on to four bells, and with your
permission I shall turn in. Let me be called at three. Good night!"

"Goodnight, Captain!" replied Brownson, who spent the next two hours
pacing backward and forward on the quarter deck, watching the hauling in
of the sounding line, and occasionally casting a glance towards all
quarters of the sky.

It was a glorious night. The innumerable stars glittered with the
brilliancy of the purest gems. The ship, hove to in order to take the
soundings, swung gently on the faintly heaving ocean breast. You felt
you were in a tropical clime, for, though no breath fanned your cheek,
your senses easily detected the delicious odor of a distant garden of
sweet roses. The sea sparkled with phosphorescence. Not a sound was
heard except the panting of the hard-worked little donkey-engine and the
whirr of the line as it came up taut and dripping from the ocean depths.
The lamp, hanging from the mast, threw a bright glare on deck,
presenting the strongest contrast with the black shadows, firm and
motionless as marble. The 11th day of December was now near its last
hour.

The steamer was the _Susquehanna_, a screw, of the United States Navy,
4,000 in tonnage, and carrying 20 guns. She had been detached to take
soundings between the Pacific coast and the Sandwich Islands, the
initiatory movement towards laying down an Ocean Cable, which the
_Pacific Cable Company_ contemplated finally extending to China. She lay
just now a few hundred miles directly south of San Diego, an old Spanish
town in southwestern California, and the point which is expected to be
the terminus of the great _Texas and Pacific Railroad_