I seized the telephone at my elbow, pressing upon the button which would call the chief engineer to the instrument in the bowels of the ship, only to find him already at the receiver attempting to reach me.
"I shall not know," replied Alvarez, "that the Coldwater passes thirty; nor shall any other man aboard know it," and, with his words, he drew a revolver from his pocket, and before either I or Johnson could prevent it had put a bullet into every instrument upon the bridge, ruining them beyond repair.
With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the numbers round the instrument, to listen.
Knightley had had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were entirely free from peculiar attachmentwhether there were no actual preferenceremained a little longer doubtful.
Once, in an interval of silence upon the part of the receiving instrument, I moved the sending-key up and down a few times.
I became almost frantic as I let my imagination run riot among the possibilities for which this clicking instrument might stand.
The very franticness of the instrument's wild clashing betokened something of the kind.
Well, I sat there all night, listening to that tantalizing clicking, now and then moving the sending-key just to let the other end know that the instrument had been discovered.
The incident of the finding of that buried telegraph instrument upon the lonely Sahara is little short of uncanny, in view of your story of the adventures of David Innes.
If he had ever raised a cairn above the telegraph instrument no sign of it remained now.
When we reached the spot and unearthed the little box the instrument was quiet, nor did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher succeed in winning a response from the other end of the line.
He didn't need to be told what caused my excitement, for the instant he was awake he, too, heard the long-hoped for click, and with a whoop of delight pounced upon the instrument.
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do.
Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the gentlemen, remained at the instrument till her ladyship's carriage was ready to take them all home.
The human eye is an imperfect
instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale.' I am not mad; there are colors that we cannot see.