CHAPTER VIII.
LAYING THE CABLE—"FAULTS" AND FAULT-FINDING—ANXIETIES, ACCIDENTS, AND OTHER MATTERS.
Come with us now, good reader, to another and very different scene—out upon the boundless sea. The great Atlantic is asleep, but his breast heaves gently and slowly like that of a profound sleeper.
The Great Eastern looks like an island on the water—steady as a rock, obedient only to the rise and fall of the ocean swell, as she glides along at the rate of six knots an hour. All is going well. The complicated-looking paying-out machinery revolves smoothly; the thread-like cable passes over the stern, and down into the deep with the utmost regularity.
The shore-end of the cable—twenty-seven miles in length, and much thicker than, the deep-sea portion—had been laid at Valentia, on the 22d of July, amid prayer and praise, speech-making, and much enthusiasm, on the part of operators and spectators. On the 23d, the end of the shore
