The Great Eastern dropped to leeward when her engines stopped. When the end of the Cable was got in over the bows, and the picking-up engine was set to work, it was discovered that the locomotive boiler intended to keep up a head of steam for the machinery, was defective. Steam was then supplied by one of the boilers of the ship: the drums and wheels of the picking-up machinery began to revolve, slowly dragging in the Cable over the bows, with a strain which at times rose from 10 cwt. to 30 cwt., leaving a very large margin before the breaking point was reached. The ship's bows were kept up to the line of the Cable with great cleverness, and Mr. Canning and his assistants were perfectly satisfied with their progress. It would be too much to expect that all on board should be so easily contented; for in fact the process of picking-up is of the slowest--a mile an hour was considered to be a fair rate of speed, and a mile and a-quarter was something to be very thankful for. Still, the prospect of returning to Ireland and getting back to the shore end, at the highest of these retrogressive celerities, did not prove attractive. Our position, by observation at noon, was Lat. 52° 2' 30'', Long. 12° 17' 30''. As the Cable was in fair working order, Mr. Canning transmitted a message to Mr. Glass at Knightstown, to send out the Hawk, in order that he might return in her, and ascertain if the shore end of the Cable were defective. If that were not the case, he proposed to sacrifice the portion of Cable already laid, to return and make a new splice of the main line with the shore end, and to start afresh. In the course of the evening a message was received from Mr. Glass, informing Mr. Canning that the Hawk should be sent out as soon as she had coaled the Caroline. The Terrible sent her First Lieutenant, Mr. Prowse, on board, to see if she could render us any assistance. The Sphinx was busied in taking soundings all round the ship, which showed depths varying from 400 to 480 fathoms. The operation of picking up proceeded all day and all night--the weather being fine but cloudy.
_Tuesday, July 25th._--The Hawk was observed soon after daybreak coming towards the Great Eastern. The wind was still light and the sea moderate. All during the night the process of picking up was carefully carried on, the Big Ship behaving beautifully, and hanging lightly over the Cable, as if fearful of breaking the slender cord which swayed up and down in the ocean. Indeed, so delicately did she answer her helm and coil in the film of thread-like Cable over her bows, that she put one in mind of an elephant taking up a straw in its proboscis. At 7·15 a.m., Greenwich time, 9½ miles of Cable had been picked up from the sea, and the thin greyish coating of mud which dropped from it showed that the bed of the Atlantic here was of a soft ooze. The Cable had been cut twice on board, to enable the electricians to apply tests separately to the coils in the tanks. At 9 a.m., ship's time, when somewhat more than 10¼ miles had been hauled in, to the joy of all the "fault" was discovered. The Cable came in with flagrant evidence of the mischief. The cause of so much anxiety, delay, and bitter disappointment turned out to be a piece of wire of the same kind as that used in the protecting strands of the Cable itself. It was two inches long or so--rather bent in the middle, with one end sharp and bright, as if from a sharp fracture or being cut by a pair of pliers--the other end blunt and jagged. This piece of wire had been forced through the outer covering of the Cable into the gutta percha, so as to injure the insulation, but no one could tell how it got into the tank. The general impression was, that it was a piece of Cable or other wire which had been accidently carried into the tank, and forced into the coil by the pressure of the paying-out machinery as the Cable flew between the jockey-wheels.