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When a man in the boats was hit, another took his place. Sturdy arms at the oars held the boats against the strong current, while others hacked away the tough wires. Then the guns of the ships sent an iron storm among the rocks and trees and the soft sands. They drove the Spaniards to shelter, and then they knocked the cable-house, the fort and the light-house to bits.
When our friends reached the cable-house, native labourers, in picturesque Oriental costume, were busy thatching its roof or painting it blue, while some were screwing its parts together; for the house, with a view to future telegraphic requirements, was built so as to come to pieces for shipment to still more distant quarters of the globe.
Close by the water's edge there stood a cable-house, where one end of a submarine cable, which reached to Santiago, some three hundred miles to the eastward, was secured. On one side of the cable-house was an old fort or lookout, such as the Spaniards used to have all along the coast. On the other side was a light-house.
Between three and four o'clock the work was completed; tests were taken, the portion of cable was pronounced perfect, and communication was thus established between the cable-house and Rampart Row. This was the first link in the great chain of submarine telegraphy between India and England.
At length, on Thursday, August, 5, the Agamemnon, with her consort, the Valorous, arrived at Valentia Island, and the shore end was landed into the cable-house at Knightstown by 3 p.m., and a royal salute announced the completion of the work. The news was received at first with some incredulity, but on being confirmed it caused a universal joy.
The perfection not only achieved but expected, was somewhat absurdly brought out by the electrician in the cable-house at Bombay, who one day complained to the operators on board the Great Eastern that the reply to one of his questions had been from three to twelve seconds late!
The Niagara reached the Newfoundland coast on August 4th, and early the next morning landed the cable in the cable-house at Trinity Bay. The Agamemnon reached the Irish coast but a few hours later, and her end of the cable was landed on the afternoon of the same day. The public, because of the repeated failures, had come to look upon the cable project as a sort of gigantic wild-goose chase.
For the reception of the extreme end of the cable there was provided, in the cable-house, a testing table of solid masonry, with a wooden top on which the testing instruments were to stand; the great delicacy of these instruments rendering a fixed table indispensable.
The road from the head, of the Estrella cove to the crest of the Morro promontory forks at a distance of seventy-five or one hundred yards from the cable-house, one branch of it turning to the left and climbing a steep grade to the summit of the ridge east of the castle, where stand the lighthouse and the barracks, while the other branch goes straight on in a rising slant to a rocky buttress situated almost perpendicularly over the point where the southern shore of the cove intersects the eastern margin of the harbor channel.
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