!" he exclaimed, with a look of horror.

"Not quite," said Jim Slagg, who stood at Robin's elbow regarding the
operations with a quiet look of intelligence. "Don't you see, Robin,
that a wire-rope fit a'most to hold the big ship herself is holdin' on
to it."

"Of course; how stupid I am!" said Robin, with a great sigh of relief;
"I see it now, going round to the bows."

At first the rope was let run, to ease the strain while the ship swung
round; then it was brought in over the pulley at the bow, the paddles
moved, and the return towards Ireland was begun. The strain, although
great, was far from the breaking-point, but the speed was very slow--not
more than a mile an hour being considered safe in the process of
picking-up.

"Patience, Robin," observed Mr Smith, as he passed on his way to the
cabin, "is a virtue much needed in the laying of cables. We have now
commenced a voyage at the rate of one mile an hour, which will not
terminate till we get back to Owld Ireland, unless we find the fault."

Patience, however, was not destined to be so severely tried. All that
day and all night the slow process went on. Meanwhile--as the cable was
not absolutely unworkable, despite the fault--the chief engineer, Mr
Canning, sent a message to Mr Glass in Ireland, asking him to send out
the Hawk steamer, in order that he might return in her to search for the
defect in the shore-end of the cable, for if that were found he purposed
sacrificing the eighty odd miles already laid down, making a new splice
with the shore-end, and starting afresh. A reply was received from Mr
Glass, saying that the Hawk would be sent out immediately.

Accordingly, about daybreak of the 25th the Hawk appeared, but her
services were not required, for, about nine that morning, when the cable
was coming slowly in and being carefully examined foot by foot--nay,
inch by inch--the fault was discovered, and joy took the place of
anxiety. Ten and a quarter miles of cable had been picked up when the
fault came inboard, and a strange unaccountable fault it turned out to
be--namely, a small piece of wire which had been forced through the
covering of the cable into the gutta-percha so as to injure, but not
quite to destroy, the insulation. How such a piece of wire could have
got into the tank was a mystery, but the general impression was that it
had been carried there by accident and forced into the coil by the
pressure of the paying-out machinery as the c