The next extracts, and I am sorry to say the last, are from
Fleeming’s letters of 1860, when he was back at Bona and
Spartivento and for the first time at the head of an
expedition. Unhappily these letters are not only the last,
but the series is quite imperfect; and this is the more to be
lamented as he had now begun to use a pen more skilfully, and in
the following notes there is at times a touch of real distinction
in the manner.
‘Cagliari: October 5,
1860.
‘All Tuesday I spent examining what was on board the
Elba, and trying to start the repairs of the Spartivento
land line, which has been entirely neglected, and no wonder, for
no one has been paid for three months, no, not even the poor
guards who have to keep themselves, their horses and their
families, on their pay. Wednesday morning, I started for
Spartivento and got there in time to try a good many
experiments. Spartivento looks more wild and savage than
ever, but is not without a strange deadly beauty: the hills
covered with bushes of a metallic green with coppery patches of
soil in between; the valleys filled with dry salt mud and a
little stagnant water; where that very morning the deer had
drunk, where herons, curlews, and other fowl abound, and where,
alas! malaria is breeding with this rain. (No fear for those who
do not sleep on shore.) A little iron hut had been placed
there since 1858; but the windows had been carried off, the door
broken down, the roof pierced all over. In it, we sat to
make experiments; and how it recalled Birkenhead! There was
Thomson, there was my testing board, the strings of gutta-percha;
Harry P— even, battering with the batteries; but where was
my darling Annie? Whilst I sat feet in sand, with Harry
alone inside the hut—mats, coats, and wood to darken the
window—the others visited the murderous old friar, who is
of the order of Scaloppi, and for whom I brought a letter from
his superior, ordering him to pay us attention; but he was away
from home, gone to Cagliari in a boat with the produce of the
farm belonging to his convent. Then they visited the tower
of Chia, but could not get in because the door is thirty feet off
the ground; so they came back and pitched a magnificent tent
which I brought from the Bahiana a long time ago—and
where they will live (if I mistake not) in preference to the
friar’s, or the owl- and bat-haunted tower. MM.
T— and S— will be left there: T—, an
intelligent, hard-working Frenchman, with whom I am well pleased;
he can speak English and Italian well, and has been two years at
Genoa. S— is a French German with a face like an
ancient Gaul, who has been sergeant-major in the French line and
who is, I see, a great, big, muscular
fainéant. We left the tent pitched and some
stores in charge of a guide, and ran back to Cagliari.
‘Certainly, being at the head of things is pleasanter
than being subordinate. We all agree very well; and I have
made the testing office into a kind of private room where I can
come and write to you undisturbed, surrounded by my dear, bright
brass things which all of them remind me of our nights at
Birkenhead. Then I can work here, too, and try lots of
experiments; you know how I like that! and now and then I
read—Shakespeare principally. Thank you so much for
making me bring him: I think I must get a pocket edition of
Hamlet and Henry the Fifth, so as never to be without them.
‘Cagliari: October 7.
‘[The town was full?] . . . of red-shirted English
Garibaldini. A very fine looking set of fellows they are,
too: the officers rather raffish, but with medals Crimean and
Indian; the men a very sturdy set, with many lads of good birth I
should say. They still wait their consort the Emperor and
will, I fear, be too late to do anything. I meant to have
called on them, but they are all gone into barracks some way from
the town, and I have been much too busy to go far.
‘The view from the ramparts was very strange and
beautiful. Cagliari rises on a very steep rock, at the
mouth of a wide plain circled by large hills and three-quarters
filled with lagoons; it looks, therefore, like an old island
citadel. Large heaps of salt mark the border between the
sea and the lagoons; thousands of flamingoes whiten the centre of
the huge shallow marsh; hawks hover and scream among the trees
under the high mouldering battlements.—A little lower down,
the band played. Men and ladies bowed and pranced, the
costumes posed, church bells tinkled, processions processed, the
sun set behind thick clouds capping the hills; I pondered on you
and enjoyed it all.
‘Decidedly I prefer being master to being man: boats at
all hours, stewards flying for marmalade, captain enquiring when
ship is to sail, clerks to copy my writing, the boat to steer
when we go out—I have run her nose on several times;
decidedly, I begin to feel quite a little king. Confound
the cable, though! I shall never be able to repair it.
‘Bona: October 14.
‘We left Cagliari at 4.30 on the 9th and soon got to
Spartivento. I repeated some of my experiments, but found
Thomson, who was to have been my grand stand-by, would not work
on that day in the wretched little hut. Even if the windows
and door had been put in, the wind which was very high made the
lamp flicker about and blew it out; so I sent on board and got
old sails, and fairly wrapped the hut up in them; and then we
were as snug as could be, and I left the hut in glorious
condition with a nice little stove in it. The tent which
should have been forthcoming from the curé’s for the
guards, had gone to Cagliari; but I found another, [a] green,
Turkish tent, in the Elba and soon had him up. The
square tent left on the last occasion was standing all right and
tight in spite of wind and rain. We landed provisions, two
beds, plates, knives, forks, candles, cooking utensils, and were
ready for a start at 6 p.m.; but the
wind meanwhile had come on to blow at such a rate that I thought
better of it, and we stopped. T— and S— slept
ashore, however, to see how they liked it, at least they tried to
sleep, for S— the ancient sergeant-major had a toothache,
and T— thought the tent was coming down every minute.
Next morning they could only complain of sand and a leaky
coffee-pot, so I leave them with a good conscience. The
little encampment looked quite picturesque: the green round tent,
the square white tent and the hut all wrapped up in sails, on a
sand hill, looking on the sea and masking those confounded
marshes at the back. One would have thought the
Cagliaritans were in a conspiracy to frighten the two poor
fellows, who (I believe) will be safe enough if they do not go
into the marshes after nightfall. S— brought a little
dog to amuse them, such a jolly, ugly little cur without a tail,
but full of fun; he will be better than quinine.
‘The wind drove a barque, which had anchored near us for
shelter, out to sea. We started, however, at 2 p.m., and had a quick passage but a very
rough one, getting to Bona by daylight [on the 11th]. Such
a place as this is for getting anything done! The health
boat went away from us at 7.30 with W— on board; and we
heard nothing of them till 9.30, when W— came back with two
fat Frenchmen who are to look on on the part of the
Government. They are exactly alike: only one has four bands
and the other three round his cap, and so I know them. Then
I sent a boat round to Fort Gênois [Fort Genova of 1858],
where the cable is landed, with all sorts of things and
directions, whilst I went ashore to see about coals and a room at
the fort. We hunted people in the little square in their
shops and offices, but only found them in cafés. One
amiable gentleman wasn’t up at 9.30, was out at 10, and as
soon as he came back the servant said he would go to bed and not
get up till 3: he came, however, to find us at a café, and
said that, on the contrary, two days in the week he did not do
so! Then my two fat friends must have their breakfast after
their “something” at a café; and all the shops
shut from 10 to 2; and the post does not open till 12; and there
was a road to Fort Gênois, only a bridge had been carried
away, &c. At last I got off, and we rowed round to Fort
Gênois, where my men had put up a capital gipsy tent with
sails, and there was my big board and Thomson’s number 5 in
great glory. I soon came to the conclusion there was a
break. Two of my faithful Cagliaritans slept all night in
the little tent, to guard it and my precious instruments; and the
sea, which was rather rough, silenced my Frenchmen.
‘Next day I went on with my experiments, whilst a boat
grappled for the cable a little way from shore and buoyed it
where the Elba could get hold. I brought all back to
the Elba, tried my machinery and was all ready for a start
next morning. But the wretched coal had not come yet;
Government permission from Algiers to be got; lighters, men,
baskets, and I know not what forms to be got or got
through—and everybody asleep! Coals or no coals, I
was determined to start next morning; and start we did at four in
the morning, picked up the buoy with our deck engine, popped the
cable across a boat, tested the wires to make sure the fault was
not behind us, and started picking up at 11. Everything worked
admirably, and about 2 p.m., in came
the fault. There is no doubt the cable was broken by coral
fishers; twice they have had it up to their own knowledge.
‘Many men have been ashore to-day and have come back
tipsy, and the whole ship is in a state of quarrel from top to
bottom, and they will gossip just within my hearing. And we
have had, moreover, three French gentlemen and a French lady to
dinner, and I had to act host and try to manage the mixtures to
their taste. The good-natured little Frenchwoman was most
amusing; when I asked her if she would have some apple
tart—“Mon Dieu,” with heroic
resignation, “je veux bien”; or a little
plombodding—“Mais ce que vous voudrez,
Monsieur!”
‘S. S. Elba, somewhere not far from Bona: Oct.
19.
‘Yesterday [after three previous days of useless
grappling] was destined to be very eventful. We began
dredging at daybreak and hooked at once every time in rocks; but
by capital luck, just as we were deciding it was no use to
continue in that place, we hooked the cable: up it came, was
tested, and lo! another complete break, a quarter of a mile
off. I was amazed at my own tranquillity under these
disappointments, but I was not really half so fussy as about
getting a cab. Well, there was nothing for it but grappling
again, and, as you may imagine, we were getting about six miles
from shore. But the water did not deepen rapidly; we seemed
to be on the crest of a kind of submarine mountain in
prolongation of Cape de Gonde, and pretty havoc we must have made
with the crags. What rocks we did hook! No sooner was
the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then came such a
business: ship’s engines going, deck engine thundering,
belt slipping, fear of breaking ropes: actually breaking
grapnels. It was always an hour or more before we could get
the grapnel down again. At last we had to give up the
place, though we knew we were close to the cable, and go further
to sea in much deeper water; to my great fear, as I knew the
cable was much eaten away and would stand but little
strain. Well, we hooked the cable first dredge this time,
and pulled it slowly and gently to the top, with much
trepidation. Was it the cable? was there any weight on? it
was evidently too small. Imagine my dismay when the cable
did come up, but hanging loosely, thus
Sketch of cable coming up hanging loosely
instead of taut, thus
Sketch of cable coming up hanging taut
showing certain signs of a break close by. For a moment
I felt provoked, as I thought, “Here we are in deep water,
and the cable will not stand lifting!” I tested at
once, and by the very first wire found it had broken towards
shore and was good towards sea. This was of course very
pleasant; but from that time to this, though the wires test very
well, not a signal has come from Spartivento. I got the
cable into a boat, and a gutta-percha line from the ship to the
boat, and we signalled away at a great rate—but no signs of
life. The tests, however, make me pretty sure one wire at
least is good; so I determined to lay down cable from where we
were to the shore, and go to Spartivento to see what had happened
there. I fear my men are ill. The night was lovely,
perfectly calm; so we lay close to the boat and signals were
continually sent, but with no result. This morning I laid
the cable down to Fort Gênois in style; and now we are
picking up odds and ends of cable between the different breaks,
and getting our buoys on board, &c. To-morrow I expect
to leave for Spartivento.’
