The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

Now began a work of which there had been no example in the annals of the sea. The intrepid Canning declared his purpose to grapple for the cable! The proposal seemed wild, dictated by the frenzy of despair. Yet he had fished in deep waters before. He had laid his hand on the bottom of the Mediterranean, but that was a shallow lake compared with the depths into which the Atlantic cable had descended. The ocean is here two and a half miles deep. It was as if an Alpine hunter stood on the summit of Mont Blanc and cast a line into the vale of Chamouni. Yet who shall put bounds to human courage? The expedition was not to be abandoned without a trial of this forlorn hope. There were on board some five miles of wire rope, intended to hold the cable in case it became necessary to cut it and lash it to the buoys, to save it from being lost in a storm. This was brought on deck for another purpose. "And now came forth the grapnels, two five-armed anchors, with flukes sharply curved and tapered to a tooth-like end--the hooks with which the Giant Despair was going to fish from the Great Eastern for a take worth, with all its belongings, more than a million." These huge grappling-irons were firmly shackled to the end of the rope, and brought to the bows and thrown overboard. One splash, and the whole has disappeared in the bosom of the ocean. Down it goes--deeper, deeper, deeper still! For two full hours it continued sinking before it struck the earth, and like a pearl-diver, began searching for its lost treasure on the bottom of the sea. What did it find there? The wrecks of ships that had gone down a hundred years ago, with dead men's bones whitening in the deep sea caves? It sought for something more precious to the interest of civilization than gems and gold.