The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph Part 15

Hugest of all G.o.d's works That swim the ocean stream,

could find nothing worthy of her greatness. Here then was the vessel to receive the Atlantic cable.

Seeing her fitness for the purpose, a few of the gentlemen who were active in reviving the Atlantic Telegraph combined to purchase her, as she was about to be sold. One of them went down with all speed to Liverpool, and the next day telegraphed that the big s.h.i.+p was theirs.

The new owners at once put her at the service of the Atlantic Company, with the express agreement that any compensation for her use should depend on the success of the expedition.

Next to the good fortune of finding such a s.h.i.+p ready to their hands, was that of finding an officer worthy to command her. Captain James Anderson, of the China, one of the Cunard steamers, had long been known to the travelling public, both of England and America, and no one ever crossed the sea with him without the strongest feeling of respect for his manly and seamanly qualities. A thorough master of his profession, having followed the sea for a quarter of a century, he was also a man of much general intelligence, and of no small scientific attainments. But it was something more than this which inspired such confidence. It was his ceaseless watchfulness. He always carried with him a feeling of religious responsibility for the lives of all on board, and for every interest committed to him. A man of few words, modest in manner, he was yet clear in judgment and prompt in action. This vigilance was especially marked in moments of danger. When a storm was gathering, all who saw that tall figure on the wheel-house, watching with a keen eye every spar in the s.h.i.+p and every cloud in the horizon, felt a new security from being under his care. Such was the man to be put in charge of a great expedition. He was recommended by Mr. Field in the strongest terms, and was chosen unanimously by the Board. The Cunard Company, with great generosity, consented to give up his services, valuable as they were, to forward an enterprise of such public interest. Being thus free, he accepted the trust, and entered upon it with enthusiasm. How well he fulfilled the expectations of all, the sequel will show.[A]

The work now went on with speed. The wheels began to hum, and the great drums to reel off that line which, considering the distance it was to span, was hardly to be measured by miles, but rather by degrees of the earth's surface. Mere figures give but a vague impression of vast s.p.a.ces. But it is a curious fact, ascertained by an exact computation, that if all the wires of copper and of iron, with the layers that made up the core and the outer covering, and the strands of yarn that were twisted into this one knotted sea-cable, were placed end to end, the whole length would reach from the earth to the moon!

As it came from the works in its completed state, it was plunged in water, to make it familiar with the element which was to be its future home. In the yards of the Company stood eight large tanks, which could hold each a hundred and forty miles. Here the cable was coiled to "hibernate," till it should be wanted for use the coming spring.

Seeing the work thus well under way, with no chance of another disastrous check, Mr. Field left England with heart at rest, and returned to America for the winter. But the first days of spring saw him again on the Atlantic. He reached England on the eighteenth of March.

His visit was more satisfactory than a year before. The work was now well advanced. It was a goodly sight to go down to Morden Wharf at Greenwich, and see the huge machinery in motion, spinning off the leagues of deep-sea line. The triumph apparently was near at hand. It seemed indeed a predestined thing that the cable should finally be laid in the year of grace 1865--the end for which he had so faithfully toiled since 1858--seven weary years--as long as Jacob served for Rachel! But, less fortunate than Jacob, he was doomed to one more disappointment. At present, however, all looked well, and he could not but regard the prospect with satisfaction.

Having no more drudgery of raising money, he had now a few weeks'

leisure to take a voyage up the Mediterranean. The ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus of Suez, which had been so long in progress, under the supervision of French engineers, was at length so far advanced that the waters of the Mediterranean were about to mingle with those of the Red Sea, and delegates were invited to be present from all parts of the world. An invitation had been sent to the Chamber of Commerce in New York, and Mr. Field, then starting for Europe, was appointed as its representative. The visit was one of extraordinary interest. The occasion brought together a number of eminent engineers from every country of Europe, in company with whom this stranger from the New World visited the most ancient of kingdoms to see the spirit of modern enterprise invading the land of the Pyramids.

He returned to England about the first of May to find the work nearly completed. The cable was almost done, and a large part of it was already coiled on board the s.h.i.+p. This was an operation of much interest, which deserves to be described. The manufacture had begun on the first of September, and had gone on for eight months without ceasing, the works turning out fourteen miles a day even during the short days of winter.

As the spring advanced, and the days grew longer, the amount was of course much increased. But by the last of January they had already acc.u.mulated about nine hundred miles of completed cable, when began the long and tedious work of transferring it to the Great Eastern. It was thus slow, because it could not be made directly from the yard to the s.h.i.+p. The depth of water at Greenwich was not such as to allow the Great Eastern to be brought up alongside the wharf. She was lying at Sheerness, thirty miles below, and the cable had to be put on board of lighters and taken down to where she lay in the stream. For this purpose the Admiralty had furnished to the Company two old hulks, the Iris and the Amethyst, which took their loads in turn. When the former had taken on board some two hundred and fifty tons of cable, she was towed down to the side of the Great Eastern, and the other took her place.

This was an operation which could not be done with speed. With all the men who could be employed, they coiled on board only about two miles an hour, or twenty miles a day--at which rate it would take some five months. The work began on the nineteenth of January, early in the morning, and continued till June, before all was safely stowed on board.

The Great Eastern herself had been fitted up to receive her enormous burden. It was an object to stow the cable in as few coils as possible.

Yet it could not be all piled in one ma.s.s. Such a dead weight in the centre of the s.h.i.+p would cause her to roll fearfully. If coiled in one circle, it was computed that it would nearly fill Astley's theatre from the floor of the circus to the roof--making a pile fifty-eight feet wide and sixty feet high. To distribute this enormous bulk and weight, it was disposed in three tanks--one aft, one amids.h.i.+ps, and one forward.

The latter, from the shape of the s.h.i.+p, was a little smaller than the others, and held only six hundred and thirty-three miles of cable, while the two former held a little over eight hundred each. All were made of thick wrought-iron plates, and water-tight, so that the cable could be kept under water till it was immersed in the sea.

Thus with her s.p.a.cious chambers prepared for the reception of her guest, the Great Eastern opened her doors to take in the Atlantic cable; and long as it was, and wide and high the s.p.a.ce it filled, it found ample verge and room within her capacious sides. Indeed, it was the wonder of all who beheld it, how, like a monster of the sea, she devoured all that other s.h.i.+ps could bring. The Iris and the Amethyst came up time after time and disgorged their iron contents. Yet this leviathan swallowed s.h.i.+p-load after s.h.i.+p-load, as if she could never be satisfied. A writer who visited her when the cable was nearly all on board, was at a loss to find it. He looked along the deck, from stem to stern, but not a sign of it appeared. How he searched, and how the wonder grew, he tells in a published letter. After describing his approach to the s.h.i.+p, and climbing up her sides and his survey of her deck, he proceeds:

"But it is time that we should look after what we have mainly come to see, the telegraph cable. To our intense astonishment, we behold it nowhere, although informed that there are nearly two thousand miles of it already on board, and the remaining piece--a piece long enough to stretch from Land's End to John O'Groat's--is in course of s.h.i.+pment. We walk up and down on the deck of the Great Eastern without seeing this gigantic chain which is to bind together the Old and the New World; and it is only on having the place pointed out to us that we find where the cable lies and by what process it is taken on board. On the side opposite to where we landed, deep below the deck of our giant, there is moored a vessel surmounted by a timber structure resembling a house, and from this vessel the wonderful telegraph cable is drawn silently into the immense womb of the Great Eastern. The work is done so quietly and noiselessly, by means of a small steam-engine, that we scarcely notice it. Indeed, were it not pointed out to us, we would never think that that little iron cord, about an inch in diameter, which is sliding over a few rollers and through a wooden table, is a thing of world-wide fame--a thing which may influence the life of whole nations; nay, which may affect the march of civilization. Following the direction in which the iron rope goes, we now come to the most marvellous sight yet seen on board the Great Eastern. We find ourselves in a little wooden cabin, and look down, over a railing at the side, into an immense cavern below. This cavern is one of the three 'tanks' in which the two-thousand-mile cable is finding a temporary home. The pa.s.sive agent of electricity comes creeping in here in a beautiful, silent manner, and is deposited in spiral coils, layer upon layer. It is almost dark at the immense depth below, and we can only dimly discern the human figures through whose hands the coil pa.s.ses to its bed.

Suddenly, however, the men begin singing. They intone a low, plaintive song of the sea; something like Kingsley's

'Three fishers went sailing away to the West, Away to the West as the sun went down--'

the sounds of which rise up from the dark, deep cavern with startling effect, and produce an indescribable impression.

"We proceed on; but the song of the sailors who are taking charge of the Atlantic Telegraph cable is haunting us like a dream. In vain our guide conducts us all over the big s.h.i.+p, through miles of galleries, pa.s.sages, staircases, and promenades; through gorgeous saloons, full of mirrors, marbles, paintings, and upholstery, made 'regardless of expense;' and through buildings crowded with glittering steam apparatus of gigantic dimensions, where the latent power of coal and water creates the force which propels this monster vessel over the seas. In vain our attention is directed to all these sights; we do not admire them; our imagination is used up. The echo of the sailors' song in the womb of the Great Eastern will not be banished from our mind. It raises visions of the future of the mystic iron coil under our feet--how it will roll forth again from its narrow berth; how it will sink to the bottom of the Atlantic, or hang from mountain to mountain far below the stormy waves; and how two great nations, offsprings of one race and pioneers of civilization, will speak through this wonderful coil, annihilating distance and time. Who can help dreaming here, on the spot where we stand? For it is truly a marvellous romance of civilization, this Great Eastern and this Atlantic Telegraph cable. Even should our age produce nothing else, it alone would be the triumph of our age."

As the work approached completion, public interest revived in the stupendous undertaking, and crowds of wonder-seekers came down from London to see the preparations for the expedition. Even if not admitted on board, they found a satisfaction in sailing round the great s.h.i.+p, in whose mighty bosom was coiled this huge sea-serpent. It had also many distinguished visitors. Among others, the Prince of Wales came to see the ocean girdle which was to link the British islands with his future dominions beyond the sea.

At length, on the twenty-ninth of May, almost the last day of Spring, the manufacture of the cable was finished. The machines which for eight months had been in a constant whirl, made their last round. The tinkling of a bell announced that the machinery was empty, and the mighty work stood completed. It only remained that it should be got on board, and the s.h.i.+p prepared for her voyage. Hundreds of busy hands were at work without ceasing, and yet it was six weeks before she was ready to put to sea.

It may well be believed that it was no small affair to equip such an expedition. Beside the enormous burden of the cable itself, the Great Eastern had to take on board seven or eight thousand tons of coal, enough for a fleet, to feed her fires. Then she carried about five hundred men, for whom she had to make provision during the weeks they might be at sea. The stores laid in were enough for a small army.

Standing on the wheel-house, and looking down, one might fancy himself in some large farm-yard of England. There stood the motherly cow that was to give them milk; and a dozen oxen, and twenty pigs, and a hundred and twenty sheep, while whole flocks of ducks and geese, and fowls of every kind, cackled as in a poultry-yard. Beside all this live stock, hundreds of barrels of provisions, of meats and fruits, were stored in the well-stocked larder below. Thus laden for her voyage, the Great Eastern had in her a weight, including her own machinery, of twenty-one thousand tons--a burden almost as great as could have been carried by the whole fleet with which Nelson fought the battle of Trafalgar.

As the time of departure drew near, public curiosity was excited, and there was an extraordinary desire to witness the approaching attempt.

The Company was besieged by applications from all quarters for permission to accompany the expedition. Had these requests been granted, on the scale asked, even the large dimensions of the Great Eastern could hardly have been sufficient for the crowds on board. The demand was most pressing for places for newspaper correspondents. These came not only from England, but from France and America. Almost every journal in London claimed the privilege of being represented. The result was what might have been expected. As it was impossible to satisfy all, and to discriminate in favor of some, and exclude others, would seem partial and unjust, they were finally obliged to exclude all. Of course this gave great offence. There was an outcry in England and in the United States at what was denounced as a selfish and suicidal policy. But it is doubtful whether any other possible course would have given better satisfaction.

Whether the Managers erred in this or not, it should be said that they applied the same inexorable rule to themselves--even Directors of the Company being excluded, unless they had some special business on board.

It should be borne in mind that the expedition was not under the control of the Atlantic Telegraph Company at all, but of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, which had undertaken the work in fulfilment of a contract with the former Company to manufacture and lay down a cable across the Atlantic, in which it a.s.sumed the whole responsibility, not only making the cable, but chartering the s.h.i.+p and appointing the officers, and sending its own engineers to lay it down.

Of course it had an enormous stake in the result. Hence it felt, not only authorized, but bound, to organize the expedition solely with reference to success. It was not a voyage of pleasure, but for business; for the accomplishment of a great and most difficult undertaking. Hence it was right that the most strict rules should be adopted. Accordingly there was not a man on board who had not some business there. As the voyage promised to be one of the utmost practical interest to electricians and engineers, several young men were received as a.s.sistants in the testing-room or in the engineers' department; but there was no person who was not in some way engaged on the business of one or the other company, or connected with the management of the s.h.i.+p.

Except Mr. Field, not an Atlantic Telegraph Director accompanied the expedition; and he represented also the Newfoundland Company. Mr. Gooch, M.P., was at once a Director of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and Chairman of the Board that owned the Great Eastern, and so represented both those companies which had so great a stake in the result.

Thus the whole business was in the hands of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. It had its own officers to man the expedition--the captain and crew to sail the s.h.i.+p--its engineers to lay the cable--and its electricians to test it. Even the eminent electricians, Professor Thomson and Mr. Varley, who were on board in the service of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, were not allowed to interfere, _nor even to give advice_ unless it were asked for in writing, and then it was to be given in writing. Their office was only to test the cable when laid, to pa.s.s messages through it from Newfoundland to Ireland, and to report it complete.

So rigorous were the rules which governed this memorable voyage. The whole enterprise was organized as completely as a naval expedition.

Every man had his place. As when a s.h.i.+p is going into battle, everybody is sent below that has not some business on deck, so it is not strange that in such a critical enterprise they did not want a host of supernumeraries on board.

Yet the Company was not unmindful of the anxiety of the public for news, and since it could not give a place to many correspondents, it engaged one, and that the best--W. H. Russell, LL.D., the well-known correspondent of the London Times in the Crimea and in India. This brilliant writer was engaged to accompany the expedition--not to praise without discrimination, but to report events faithfully from day to day.

He was accompanied by two artists, Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Dudley, to ill.u.s.trate the scenes of the voyage. Thus the Company made every provision to furnish information and even entertainment to the public.

Several of these gentlemen afterward wrote accounts for different magazines--Blackwood, Cornhill, and Macmillan's. Their different reports, and especially the volume of Dr. Russell, which combines the accuracy and minuteness of a diary kept from day to day, with brilliant descriptions, set off by ill.u.s.trations from drawings of Mr. Dudley, furnish the public as full and complete an account as if there had been a special correspondent for every journal of England and America.

But if the public at large were very properly excluded, the organization on board was perfect and complete. At the head was Captain Anderson, of whom we have already spoken. As his duties would be manifold and increasing, he had requested the aid of an a.s.sistant commander, and Captain Moriarty, R. N., who had been in the Agamemnon in 1858, was permitted by the Admiralty to accompany the s.h.i.+p, and to give the invaluable aid of his experience and skill. The government also generously granted two s.h.i.+ps of war, the Sphinx and the Terrible, to attend the Great Eastern. Thus the whole equipment of the expedition was English. Of the five hundred men on board the Great Eastern, there was but one American, and that was Mr. Field.

The engineering department was under charge of Mr. (now Sir) Samuel Canning, who, as the representative of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, was chief in command of all matters relating to laying the cable. For this responsible position no better man could have been chosen. Before the voyage was ended, he had ample opportunity to show his resources. He was ably seconded by Mr. Henry Clifford. Both these gentlemen had been on board the Agamemnon in the two expeditions of 1858. They had since had large experience in laying submarine cables in the Mediterranean and other seas. It was chiefly by their united skill that the paying-out machinery had been brought to such perfection, that throughout the voyage it worked without a single hitch or jar. They had an invaluable helper in Mr. John Temple.

The electrical department was under charge of Mr. De Sauty, who had had long experience in submarine telegraphs, and who was aided by an efficient corps of a.s.sistants. Professor Thomson and Mr. Varley, as we have said, were there to examine and report for the Atlantic Company.

All these gentlemen had been unceasing in their tests of the cable in every form, both while in the process of manufacture and after it was coiled in the Great Eastern. The result of their repeated tests was to demonstrate that the cable was _many times more perfect than the contract required_. With such marvellous delicacy did they test the current of electricity sent through it, that it was determined that of one thousand parts, over nine hundred and ninety-nine came out at the other end!

To complete this organization and equipment caused such delays as excited the impatience of all on board. But at length, when midsummer had fully come--at noon of Sat.u.r.day, July fifteenth--the song of the sailors sounded the _chant du depart_. The Great Eastern was then lying at the Nore, and she seemed to cling to the English soil which she had griped with a huge Trotman weighing seven tons, held fast by a chain whereof every link weighed seventy pounds! To wrench this ponderous anchor from its bed required the united strength of near two hundred men. At last the bottom lets go its hold, the anchor swings to the bow, the gun is fired, and the voyage is begun. A fleet of yachts and boats raise their cheers as the mighty hull begins to move. But mark how carefully she feels her way, following the lead of yonder little steamer, the Porcupine, the same faithful guide that seven years before led the Niagara up Trinity Bay one night when the faint light of stars twinkled on all the surrounding hills. Slowly they near the sea. Now the cliffs of Dover are in sight, and bidding her escort adieu, the Great Eastern glides along by the beautiful Isle of Wight, and then quickening her speed, with a royal sweep, she moves down the Channel. Off Falmouth she picked up the Caroline, a small steamer, which had left several days before with the sh.o.r.e end on board. She was laboring heavily with her burden, and made little headway in the rough waves. But the Great Eastern took her in tow, and she followed like a s.h.i.+p's boat in the wake of the monarch of the seas.

Thus they pa.s.sed round to the coast of Ireland, to that Valentia Bay where, eight years before, the Earl of Carlisle gave his benediction on the departure of the Niagara and the Agamemnon, and where, a year later, the gallant English s.h.i.+p brought her end of the cable safely to the sh.o.r.e.

The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor five or six miles to Foilhommerum Bay, a wild spot where huge cliffs hang over the waves that here come rolling in from the Atlantic. On the top, an old tower of the time of Cromwell tells of the b.l.o.o.d.y days of England's great civil war. It is now but a mossy ruin. Here the peasants who flocked in from the country pitched their booths on the green sward, and looked down from the dizzy heights on the boats dancing in the bay below. At the foot of the cliff, a soft, sandy beach forms a bed for the cable, and here, as it issues from the sea, it is led up a channel which had been cut for it in the rocks.

As the sh.o.r.e end was very ma.s.sive and unwieldy, it could not be laid except in good weather; and as the sea was now rough, the Great Eastern withdrew to Bantry Bay, to be out of the way of the storms which sometimes break with fury on this rock-bound coast.

On Sat.u.r.day this preliminary work was completed, the heavy sh.o.r.e end was carried from the deck of the Caroline across a bridge of boats to the beach, and hauled up the cliffs amid the shouts of the people. When once it was made fast to the rocks, the little steamer began to move, and the huge coil slowly unwound, and like a giant awakened, stretched out its long iron arms. By half-past ten o'clock at night the hold was empty, the whole twenty-seven miles having been safely laid, and the end buoyed in seventy-five fathoms water. A despatch was at once sent across the country to Bantry Bay to the Great Eastern to come around with all speed, and early the next morning her smoke was seen in the offing.

Pa.s.sing the harbor of Valentia, she proceeded to join the Caroline, which she reached about noon, and at once commenced splicing the ma.s.sive sh.o.r.e end to her own deep-sea line. This was a work of several hours, so that it was toward evening before all was completed.

Thus, so many had been the delays of the past week, that it had come on to Sunday before the Great Eastern was ready to begin her voyage.

This--which some might count a desecration of the holy day--the sailors rather accepted as a good omen. Had the sh.o.r.e end been laid forty-eight hours sooner, the voyage might have begun on Friday, which sailors, who are proverbially superst.i.tious, would have thought an unlucky beginning.

But Sunday, in their esteem, is a good day. They like, when a s.h.i.+p is moving out of sight of land, that the last sound from the sh.o.r.e should be the blessed Sabbath bells. If that sacred chime were not heard to-day, at least a Sabbath peace rested on sea and sky. It was a calm summer's evening. The sun was just sinking in the waves, as the Great Eastern, with the two s.h.i.+ps of war which waited on either hand, to attend her royal progress, turned their faces to the West, and caught the sudden glory. Says Russell: "As the sun set, a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows toward their bows, as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of Heaven."

What a sacred omen! Had it been the fleet of Columbus sailing westward, every s.h.i.+p's company would have fallen upon their knees on those decks, and burst forth in an Ave Maria to the gentle Mistress of the Seas. But in that manly crew there was many an eye that took in the full beauty of the scene, and many a reverent heart that invoked a benediction.

In other respects the day was well chosen. It was the twenty-third of July. From the beginning, Captain Anderson had wished to sail on the twenty-third of June, or the twenty-second of July, so as to have the full moon on the American coast. He desired also to take advantage of the westerly winds which prevail at that season, for in going against the wind the Great Eastern was steady as a rock. Every expectation was realized. To the big s.h.i.+p the ocean was as an inland lake. The paying-out machinery--the product of so much study and skill--worked beautifully, and as the s.h.i.+p increased her speed, the cable glided into the water with such ease that it seemed but a holiday affair to carry it across to yonder continent. Such were the reflections of all that evening as the long summer twilight lingered on the sea. At midnight they went to sleep, to dream of an easy triumph.

Yet be not too confident. But a few hours had pa.s.sed before the booming of a gun awoke all on board with the heavy tidings of disaster. The morning breaks early in those high lat.i.tudes, and by four o'clock all were on deck, with anxious looks inquiring for the cause of alarm. The s.h.i.+p was lying still, as if her voyage had already come to an end, and electricians, with troubled countenances, were pa.s.sing in and out of the testing-room, which, as it was always kept darkened, looked like a sick-chamber where some royal patient lay trembling between life and death.

The method used by the electricians to discover a fault is one of such delicacy and beauty as shows the marvellous perfection of the instruments which science employs to learn the secrets of nature. The galvanometer is an invention of Professor Thomson, by which "a ray of light reflected from a tiny mirror suspended to a magnet travels along a scale, and indicates the resistance to the pa.s.sage of the current through the cable by the deflection of the magnet, which is marked by the course of this speck of light. If the light of the mirror travels beyond the index, or out of bounds, an escape of the current is taking place, and what is technically called a fault has occurred." Such was the discovery on Monday morning. At a quarter past three o'clock the electrician on duty saw the light suddenly glide to the end of the scale and vanish.

Fortunately it was not a fatal injury. It did not prevent signalling through the cable, and a message was at once sent back to the sh.o.r.e, giving notice of the check that had been received. But the electric current did not flow freely. There was a leak at some point of the line which it would not be prudent to pa.s.s over. They were now seventy-three miles from sh.o.r.e, having run out eighty-four miles of cable. The tests of the electricians indicated the fault to be ten or a dozen miles from the stern of the s.h.i.+p. The only safe course was to go back and get this on board, and cut out the defective portion. It was a most ungrateful operation thus to be undoing their own work, but there was no help for it.

Such accidents had been antic.i.p.ated, and before the Great Eastern left England, she had been provided with machinery to be used in case of necessity for picking up the cable. But this proved rather an unwieldy affair. It was at the bow, and as the paying-out machine was at the stern, the s.h.i.+p had to be got round, and the cable, which must first be cut, had to be transferred from one end to the other. This was not an easy matter. The Great Eastern was an eighth of a mile long, and to carry the cable along her sides for this distance, and over her high wheel-houses, was an operation at once tedious and difficult.

But at length the s.h.i.+p's head was brought round, and the end of the cable lifted over the bow, and grasped by the pulling-in machine, and the engine began to puff with the labor of raising the cable from the depths of the ocean. Fortunately they were only in four or five hundred fathoms water, so that the strain was not great. But the engine worked poorly, and the operation was very slow. With the best they could do, it was impossible to raise more than a mile an hour! But patience and courage, though it should take all day and all night![B] The Great Eastern did her duty well, steaming slowly back toward Ireland, while the engine pulled, and the cable came up, though reluctantly, from the sea, till on Tuesday morning at seven o'clock, when they had hauled in a little over ten miles, the cause of offence was brought on board. It was found to be a small piece of wire, not longer than a needle, that by some accident (for they did not then suspect a design) had been driven through the outer cover of the cable till it touched the core. There was the source of all the mischief. It was this pin's point which p.r.i.c.ked the vital cord, opening a minute pa.s.sage through which the electricity, like a jet of blood from a pierced artery, went streaming into the sea.

It was with an almost angry feeling, as if to punish it for its intrusion, that this insignificant and contemptible source of trouble was s.n.a.t.c.hed from its place, the wounded piece of cable was cut off, and a splice made and the work of paying out renewed. But it was four o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday before they were ready to resume the voyage. A full day and a half had been lost by this miserable piece of wire.

But the vexatious delay was over at last, and the stately s.h.i.+p, once more turning to the West, moved ahead with a steady composure, as if no petty trouble could vex her tranquil mind. Throughout the voyage the behavior of the s.h.i.+p was the admiration of all on board. While her consorts on either side were pitched about at the mercy of the waves, she moved forward with a grave demeanor, as if conscious of her mission, or as if eager to unburden her mighty heart, to throw overboard the great mystery that was coiled up within her, and to cast her burden on the sea.