By July 5 the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered, and a portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for use, owing to its twisted condition. Their work was over, but an unfortunate accident marred its conclusion. On the evening of the 2nd the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of languages made him useful as an interpreter; but in mentioning this incident to Miss Austin, he writes, 'For no fortune would I be a doctor to witness these scenes continually. Pain is a terrible thing.'
In the beginning of 1859 he made the acquaintance of Sir William Thomson, his future friend and partner. Mr. Lewis Gordon, of Messrs. R.
S. Newall & Co., afterwards the earliest professor of engineering in a British University, was then in Glasgow seeing Sir William's instruments for testing and signalling on the first Atlantic cable during the six weeks of its working. Mr. Gordon said he should like to show them to 'a young man of remarkable ability,' engaged at their Birkenhead Works, and Jenkin, being telegraphed for, arrived next morning, and spent a week in Glasgow, mostly in Sir William's class-room and laboratory at the old college. Sir William tells us that he was struck not only with Jenkin's brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything spoken of; to see, if possible, thoroughly into every difficult question, and to slur over nothing. 'I soon found,' he remarks, 'that thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as in the moral side of his character.' Their talk was chiefly on the electric telegraph; but Jenkin was eager, too, on the subject of physics. After staying a week he returned to the factory; but he began experiments, and corresponded briskly with Sir William about cable work.
That great electrician, indeed, seems to have infected his visitor during their brief contact with the magnetic force of his personality and enthusiasm.
The year was propitious, and, in addition to this friend, Fortune about the same time bestowed a still better gift on Jenkin. On Saturday, February 26, during a four days' leave, he was married to Miss Austin at Northiam, returning to his work the following Tuesday. This was the great event of his life; he was strongly attached to his wife, and his letters reveal a warmth of affection, a chivalry of sentiment, and even a romance of expression, which a casual observer would never have suspected in him. Jenkin seemed to the outside world a man without a heart, and yet we find him saying in the year 1869, 'People may write novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of marriage.' Five weeks before his death he wrote to her, 'Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure --for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.'
During the summer he enjoyed another telegraph cruise in the Mediterranean, a sea which for its classical memories, its lovely climate, and diversified scenes, is by far the most interesting in the world. This time the Elba was to lay a cable from the Greek islands of Syra and Candia to Egypt. Cable-laying is a pleasant mode of travel.
Many of those on board the ship are friends and comrades in former expeditions, and all are engaged in the same venture. Some have seen a good deal of the world, both in and out of the beaten track ; they have curious 'yarns to spin,' and useful hints or scraps of worldly wisdom to bestow. The voyage out is like a holiday excursion, for it is only the laying that is arduous, and even that is lightened by excitement.
Glimpses are got of hide-away spots, where the cable is landed, perhaps.
on the verge of the primeval forest or near the port of a modern city, or by the site of some ruined monument of the past. The very magic of the craft and its benefit to the world are a source of pleasure to the engineer, who is generally made much of in the distant parts he has come to join. No doubt there are hardships to be borne, sea-sickness, broken rest, and anxiety about the work--for cables are apt suddenly to fail, and the ocean is treacherous; but with all its drawbacks this happy mixture of changing travel and profitable labour is very attractive, especially to a young man.
The following extracts from letters to his wife will illustrate the nature of the work, and also give an idea of Jenkin's clear and graphic style of correspondence :-May 14.--'Syra is semi-eastern. The pavement, huge shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter; from this base two-storeyed houses, sometimes plaster, many-coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows, with signs in Greek letters; dogs, Greeks in blue, baggy, Zouave breeches and a fez, a few narghilehs, and a sprinkling of the ordinary continental shop-boys. In the evening I tried one more walk in Syra with A----, but in vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend money, the first effort resulting in singing DOODAH to a passing Greek or two, the second in spending--no, in making A---- spend--threepence on coffee for three.'
Canea Bay, in Candia (or Crete), which they reached on May 16, appeared to Jenkin one of the loveliest sights that man could witness.
May 23.--'I spent the day at the little station where the cable was landed, which has apparently been first a Venetian monastery and then a Turkish mosque. At any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little ones hold batteries capitally. A handsome young Bashi-Bazouk guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so I draw them and the monastery and the hill till I'm black in the face with heat, and come on board to hear the Canea cable is still bad.'
