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Their achievement was great; but unless Headquarters could be informed of their exact position and needs, they were all dead men. So Corporal Greig set out to find them, unreeling wire as he went. He was blown to pieces by an eight-inch shell, but another signaller was never lacking to take his place.
"Was, hey?" snapped the object of this commiseration, as he went on unreeling his line; "you just wait and see whether I've lost my mind, or if I ain't as bright as a button. See that buster of a trout alying there on top? Well, that beats the record so far; and if I can only tip my hook under his gill I'm meaning to yank him up here the quickest you ever saw.
Perhaps five hundred feet below, friction had checked its plunge, and meanwhile the velvet-running drum, spinning at its maximum velocity by reason of the whirling bull wheel, was unreeling its cable down upon the derrick platform. Down it poured in giant loops, and within those coils, either unconscious of his danger or paralyzed by its suddenness, stood Calvin Gray.
Like a swiftly unreeling three-dimensional film, Hanlon saw the Minister working at his desk, walking about the room, receiving callers, playing with the bird, eating and sharing his food with it talking to it confidentially as he might have done to a well-trusted aide. For over an hour Hanlon sat there, and the bird, seemingly asleep, sat on the chair arm without making a move.
Its silk is said to be much stronger than the fibre of cotton, and is a mean between fine wool and ordinary silk. The worm is very hardy, and can be reared in the open air both in this country and in Europe. The main drawback to its culture is the difficulty in unreeling the tough cocoon, and the shortness of the thread, the cocoon being open at one end.
There were rays of gigantic size, five meters long and with muscles so powerful they could leap above the waves, sharks of various species including a fifteen-foot glaucous shark with sharp triangular teeth and so transparent it was almost invisible amid the waters, brown lantern sharks, prism-shaped humantin sharks armored with protuberant hides, sturgeons resembling their relatives in the Mediterranean, trumpet-snouted pipefish a foot and a half long, yellowish brown with small gray fins and no teeth or tongue, unreeling like slim, supple snakes.
Captain Grantly looked over everything. His assistants signified that every connection was made. "Send her up," ordered the commander, and as the catch, holding the balloon, was released the spherical bag of gas shot into the air, carrying with it the aerials, and unreeling the connecting wires.
"I should like that better," he said; and she followed him lightly up the stairs that led to the telegraph office. A young man stood at the machine with a cigar in his mouth, and his eyes intent upon the ribbon of paper unreeling itself before him. "Just hold on," he said to Libby, without turning his head. "I've got something here for you." He read: "Despatch received yesterday.
First the outer lines of the structure were woven across the edges of the opening and made fast at points around its imperfect circle. Then the weaver dropped to opposite points, unreeling his slender rope behind him and making it taut and fast. He was no slow and clumsy workman.
For, just above this ravine, the water ended: the Staubbach poured its full, icy volume directly downward into the bowels of the earth with a hollow, thundering sound; the bed of the stream was bone-dry beyond. And now the blue-devils were unreeling wire and plumbing this chasm into which the Staubbach thundered. On the end of the wire was an electric bulb, lighted.
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