As may be imagined everyone on the ship got to think in megohms, and scientific terms clung to our conversation just as the tar from the cable tanks clung to our wearing apparel, while few among us but had wild nightmares wherein the cable became a sentient thing, and made faces at us as it leapt overboard in a continuous suicidal frenzy.
The cable-ship _Burnside_, as some may remember, was one of the first prizes captured in the Spanish War. She had been a Spanish merchant ship, the _Rita_, trading between Spain and all Spanish ports in the West Indies, and when captured by the _Yale_, early in April, 1898, was on her way to Havana with a cargo of goods. There is little about her now, however, to suggest a Spanish coaster, save the old bell marked "Rita" in front of the captain's cabin. The sight of this bell always brings to mind the wild patriotism of those early days of our war with Spain, when love of country was grown to an absorbing passion which made one eager to surrender all for the nation's honour, and stifled dread of impending separation--a separation that might be forever--despite the rebel heart's fierce protest. The _Rita's_ bell reminds one also of a country less fortunate than our own, and sometimes when looking at it, one can almost fancy the terror and excitement of those aboard the Spanish coaster when the _Yale_ swept down upon her on that memorable April afternoon. But it is a far cry from that day to this, and the _Burnside_, manned by American sailors, flying Old Glory where once waved the red and yellow of Spain's insignia, and laying American cable in American waters, is a very different ship from the _Rita_, fleeing before her pursuers in the West Indies.
When the _Burnside_ left Manila on December 23, 1900, for the cable laying expedition in the far South Seas, there were eight army officers aboard, six of whom belonged to the Signal Corps, the seventh being a young doctor, and the eighth a major and quartermaster in charge of the transport. Besides these there were civilian cable experts, Signal Corps soldiers, Hospital Corps men, Signal Corps natives, and the ship's officers, crew, and servants. The only passengers on the trip were women, two and a half of us, the fraction standing for a young person of nine summers, the quartermaster's little daughter, whom we shall dub Half-a-Woman, letting eighteen represent the unit of grown-up value.