The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 28, 1902, Page 13

THE. SUNTAY CALL. TEOIE, 77 o GEARS BY SARAH COMSTOCK. OST of you who stood on the 1 the belated fairness of y morning and stared tk bau Miss Gage of how she lays a cable If 1 hadn’t spent half a d SITXEZET Nl \TA | x\\‘ ,"\ \ ) n waters in the bottom c. No they are cen the big one, stored the ocea #fferent thi 1ll, weighing s to the mile a more sectio ellity will It was on Miss Gage crashed bottle. Near the coast the wear and tear »n & cable is far greater than in the deep sea, for tides and storms reach It instead »f passing fathoms above it. So the great strand was unwound in the very first of the voyage When the Silvertown arrived In port af- ter her long weeks of voyaging by way of !he Hogn that cable lay wound round and round in its tank as neatly as thread ’m & spool. Men came and went in the climbing . unconcernedly over Its They looked like those of any othe Steel wires and jute form thé o sovering of the cable. Far away within, ander an Infinite » ber of layers, lie fine copper wires that play all the presto tricks. The elusive fiuid fiows through - - : In to-day’s issue of The Sunday Call appears the con- cluding chapters of “The Gos- pel of Judas Iscariot,” by Asron Dwight Baldwin—a novel that is proving the sen- sation of two continents, | This book is published com- plete in the three issues of | The Sunday Call’s Magazine | Section — December 14, 21 | and 28. BE SURE TO READ IT. IT IS THE NOVEL OF | THE HOUR. Our mnext novel will be “When Xnighthood Was in Flower,” by Charles Major, illustrated by photographs of scenes :in Julia Marlowe’s play of the same name. | Read the short story on page 6, and see our announce- ment of special short fiction on page 14. ts enough for any g them The ends of 1 together in a small Hundreds of miles of tween those ends, coiled in the hald. Every day while the ship traveled from Liverpool to San Francisco an expert elec- trician sat in the testing room and sent messages to himself from end to end of the three cables to make sure that they were perfectly sound “Dot right, dot-dot right, dot-dot-dot left” and so on ran the messages that he sent by the cable code whereln dot right and dot left take the place of dash and dot in the Morse system. “How are you, old chap? This Is beast- ly weather, is it not?” he cabled to him- self, “How are you, old chap? This is beast- Iy weather, s it not?”’ came the miessage to him over those hundreds of miles of deep sea cable. The wire remained flawless. Day after day those cablegrams came back to him like echoes. All the time that the ship was traveling and the cable belng tested as she lay aboard, work was going on here in San Francisco to make ready for the sensa- tional arrival. Most San Franciscans knew very little of this work. They first roused to the fact that we were to have a cable when the Silvertown and Clarence Mackay arrived and all the fuss began. But for many weeks before that digging had been going on between the beach and Market street. The land extension of the cable had to be lald in order that mes- sages may be sent to the office down town. A gang of men broke ground on Geary street and nobody noticed it. Hun- dreds of other men went on quletly dig- ging on Point Lobos avenue. The trench was made, then a cable encased in pipe was laid. Another lot of men were at work on the testing. station that lies a little distance from the beach point where the sea cable began its trip to Honolulu. A dapper, compact little brick building suddenly ap- peared on the bleak stretch of sandy ground. It is so small an affair that the cable people dignify it by no greater name than hut, but without it there would be no cable messages received. It gets them from the ocean cable, and from it they are transmitted to the Market street office, where the ‘commercial end of the t on the ship. = rope lay be- JHE GREAT CA DL =L TH T OT OS5 STANFORD STTDIO - affair is attended to. If the man in the hut gets a message twisted, then there is no such thing as straightening it, and the word may be given that Laura -has mar- ried Fred Instead of Jack, or that Dick needs only a five whereas he really cabled for five hundred. Shortly before the arrival of the vessel the last bit of land cable was lald. It reached from the testing station to the surf. There it lay, walting for the great sea section which was to be spliced to it. All San Francisco remembers that day when the Silvertown cleared and swung around to the 'Cliff end of the beach, ready to set sail. Everybody saw her big silhouetted figure lying out there in the gray of that unlucky Friday's sky while the fretful little bafled tugs whimpered about her, fussing over the vain efforts they had made to help land the cable. The pretty plan of lightly floating the rope ashore did not take into account the treachery of that water. It was not until Sunday that the landing could be made, and then it was done in an unexpected way, & way mothered by necessity.. The steam schooner took from the Silvertown six miles of cable and proceeded to show the great/ship how it should be laid. It steamed in with these six miles as near shore as possible, then dropped an end overboard with a balloon buoy attached. Little by little the cable was let out, a buoy attached at every ten fathoms reeled out, and the cable lay floating on the sea. The lifeboat from the Government station attached a towline and in came the long line of buoys. Horses were ready for the rope when it came ashore and they dragged it up the beach until the end of the cable at last lay on the sand. Then came the picturesque christening. “To the memory of John W, Mackay T christen thee Pacific cable,” said little Miss Gage. ‘‘Good luck to thee. May you Doz DI T TESTIrT Fornsis always carry messages of happiness.”™ Then the splicing went on. The land section was joined to the sea section, the Newsboy returned, aggressively proud eof her American success, to the heavy Brit- ish ship, another splicing was made and the trip to Honolulu began. Then the paying-out gear, which had lain idle for the most part, was put to work. Over the leads of this gear the cable passes when it is unwound, finally reeling itself out |nto the sea over the stern sheaves. The windings of the cable in and out, over and under the spool- like contrivances, are as complex as the threading of a sewing machine, and, as in a sewing machine, the thread comes out all right in the end. The picking-up gear was put in perfect readiness for emergency. In case of ac- cident, if the cable should break or kink itself out of position, the huge grapnel was ready to claw over the sea bottom to find ft. Once caught, there is no dan- ger of the monster claw letting go. The sounding gear. on board the Silver- town Is equipped to take soundings to the depth of five miles. It Is always ready in case the chart and the situation appear to clash. It stands, looming and mysterious, near the stern sheaves. All this wonderful machinery, besides the mechanism of the ship proper, Is un- der the guidance of thirty-two officers and 127 crew. Compact.in that one vessel lies what represents three million dollars, the compléte cost of laying this section of the great cable that will connect us event- ually with our Philippine possessions, Thousands and thousands of tons of pre- clous wire lay stored away In that grimy hold—for the smallest cable Itself weighs as much as two tons a mile. All this was trusted upon the high seas and sent off t0 Honolulu with a godspeed. But the Silvertown risks little, for she (@ \ N ; ) ¥nows her powers and has tested them. Since 78 she has been in the business of cable laying. So the dollars and the lives that are Intrusted to her on this Paecifie journey are In safe keeping. DESIGNING JEWELRY A REMUNERATIVE OCCUPATION FOR WOMEN. IME was, not so very far bach either, when the woman of artistie talents who sought to earn her own living found no outlook beyond selling an oocasional picture or giving lessons in painting. Now, the artistic sphere for woman has widened to include so many departments that there Is almost an em- barrassment of riches from which to make a choice. One of the latest to be taken up by women is the designing of artistic jewelry. In England, particularly, women have been meeting with much success in this line and thers seems to be no reason why it should not be more widely taken up. It is a craft to which & woman’s light and dainty manipulation is peculiarly adapted. Certainly the pres- ent renaissance In the jeweler's art seems to have come to stay. France to England, Deénmark and Belgium. It recognizes the art of the metal worker as an important factor and quite independent of costly stones. It considers beauty of form and color, rather than display of costliness of material. One of its results has been the adop- tion of gertain us stones to roduce harmonious and ploturesque ef- fects. These lend ives readily to expense the artist's design, Wwhereas with expen~ sive precious stones the designer must accommodats his fancy to the stone as it 3 malachite and other cile the idea with the material, as did the anclents who carved their infernal deities in black stones. The Greclans used the aquamarine for the engraving of marine gods and the amethyst for representing Bacchus, the god of the grape. The art of enameling has experienced a revival with that of jewelry. Extreme- ly beautiful effects are produced with transiucent enamel. Oxidations are also used with artistic results. A characteris- tic of the new movement is its liversity. It is based on principles of aovelty and freshness and the study of nature. At the head of the movement standS Rens Laligue, the Parisian, who has made himseif justiy famous by the Iinfinite fancy, originality and the perfection of his work. His imitators have been le= glon. It Is a hopeful sign that in many of the technical schools studeénts are tak~ ing up jewelry designing. In the list ‘of feminine ornaments buckles, brooches and pendants particu- larly commend* themselves to the de- signer. Watch eyses, which have been quite neglected, are also beginning to at- tract attention. Women who have taken up this art frequently make a specialty of certaln articles .. naterials—one makes a success with epameled buckles and brooches, another with silver hat- pins and combs. Several have confined themselves to figure work or floral forms and others imitated to some extent Japa- nese, Oriental er Egyptian designs. It is wourthy of note that the demand for this new artistic jewelry comes not as muech from the wealthy classes as from those possessed of more moderate means.