The Battery and the Boiler Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables

Excerpt

He was cradled in squalls, and nourished in squalor—a week of dirty weather having converted the fore-cabin of the emigrant ship into something like a pig-sty. Appreciating the situation, no doubt, the baby boy began his career with a squall that harmonised with the weather, and, as the steward remarked to the ship’s cook, “continued for to squall straight on end all that day and night without so much as ever takin’ breath!” It is but right to add that the steward was prone to exaggeration.