A Womans Journey through the Philippines | Page 2

Florence Kimball Russel

At last the fault is discovered, cut out, and a splice made, the tests
showing the cable as good as new, whereupon the women return to
their chiffons, the child to her games, and the men, not on duty, to their
cigars, until the cessation of noise from the cable machinery, or the
engine-room bell signalling "full speed astern" warns us something else
may be amiss.
In the testing room, that Holy of Holies on board a cable-ship, the fate
of the Burnside hangs upon a tiny, quivering spark of light thrown upon
the scale by the galvanometer's mirror. If this light jumps from side to
side, or trembles nervously, or perhaps disappears entirely from the
scale, our experts know the cable needs attention, and perhaps the ship
will have to stop for hours at a time until the fault is located. If the
trouble is not in the tanks, the paying-out machinery must be
metamorphosed into a picking-up apparatus, and the cable already laid
will be coiled back into the hold until the fault appears, when it will be
cut out and the two ends of cable spliced. After this splice grows quite

cool, tests are taken, and if they prove satisfactory, we again resume
our paying out, knowing that while the spot of light on the
galvanometer remains quietly in one position, the cable being laid is
electrically sound, and we can proceed without interruption.
As may be imagined everyone on the ship got to think in megohms, and
scientific terms clung to our conversation just as the tar from the cable
tanks clung to our wearing apparel, while few among us but had wild
nightmares wherein the cable became a sentient thing, and made faces
at us as it leapt overboard in a continuous suicidal frenzy.
The cable-ship Burnside, as some may remember, was one of the first
prizes captured in the Spanish War. She had been a Spanish merchant
ship, the Rita, trading between Spain and all Spanish ports in the West
Indies, and when captured by the Yale, early in April, 1898, was on her
way to Havana with a cargo of goods. There is little about her now,
however, to suggest a Spanish coaster, save the old bell marked "Rita"
in front of the captain's cabin. The sight of this bell always brings to
mind the wild patriotism of those early days of our war with Spain,
when love of country was grown to an absorbing passion which made
one eager to surrender all for the nation's honour, and stifled dread of
impending separation--a separation that might be forever--despite the
rebel heart's fierce protest. The Rita's bell reminds one also of a country
less fortunate than our own, and sometimes when looking at it, one can
almost fancy the terror and excitement of those aboard the Spanish
coaster when the Yale swept down upon her on that memorable April
afternoon. But it is a far cry from that day to this, and the Burnside,
manned by American sailors, flying Old Glory where once waved the
red and yellow of Spain's insignia, and laying American cable in
American waters, is a very different ship from the Rita, fleeing before
her pursuers in the West Indies.
When the Burnside left Manila on December 23, 1900, for the cable
laying expedition in the far South Seas, there were eight army officers
aboard, six of whom belonged to the Signal Corps, the seventh being a
young doctor, and the eighth a major and quartermaster in charge of the
transport. Besides these there were civilian cable experts, Signal Corps

soldiers, Hospital Corps men, Signal Corps natives, and the ship's
officers, crew, and servants. The only passengers on the trip were
women, two and a half of us, the fraction standing for a young person
of nine summers, the quartermaster's little daughter, whom we shall
dub Half-a-Woman, letting eighteen represent the unit of grown-up
value.
Half-a-Woman was the queen of the ship, and held her court quite
royally from the Powers-that-Be, our commanding officer, down to the
roughest old salt in the forecastle. Having a child aboard gave the only
real touch of Christmas to our tropical pretence of it. Everything else
was lacking--the snow, the tree, the holly and wreaths, the Christmas
carol, the dear ones so far away--but the little child was with us, and
wherever children are there also will the Christmas spirit come, even
though the thermometer registers ninety in the shade, and at the close
of that long summer-hot day we all felt more than "richer by one
mocking Christmas past."
Half-a-Woman was also obliging enough to have a birthday on the trip,
which we celebrated by a dinner in her honour, a very fine dinner
which opened with clear turtle soup and ended with her favourite
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