The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

But their anxiety was not over. Now that they had regained the lost cable of 1865, was it good for any thing? It had been lying more than a year at the bottom of the deep. What if it should prove to have been broken somewhere in the eleven hundred miles between the ship and Ireland? What if some sharp rock had worn it away, or some marine insect had eaten into its heart? If there were but a pin's point, anywhere in its covering of flesh, the vital current might escape through it into the sea. Fears like these restrained their exultation. It was yet too soon to proclaim their victory. So, as the cable was passed along the deck to the testing room, where the chief electrician was to operate upon it, to see whether it was alive or dead, it was followed by an anxious group, who stood around him as he sat down at the instrument, watching his countenance as friends watch the face of a physician, when he feels the pulse of a patient to see if the heart is still beating. The scene is thus described by Mr. Robert Dudley, the artist of the expedition, whose spirited sketches in the London Illustrated News have made known to the world many incidents of this memorable voyage: