ater strain and a more rapid tendency to
run fast. We could check its speed, but it is a dangerous process. _Too
sudden a check would inevitably snap the cable_. Too slack a rein would
allow of its egress at such a wasting rate and at such a violent speed
that we should lose too great a portion of the cable, and its future
stopping within controllable limits be almost impossible. Hence our
anxiety. All were on the alert; our expert engineers applied the brakes
most judiciously, and at the moment I write--latitude 52 deg. 28'--the cable
is being laid at the depth of two miles in its ocean bed as regularly and
with as much facility as it was in the depth of a few fathoms....

"_Six P.M._ We have just had a fearful alarm. 'Stop her! Stop her!' was
reiterated from many voices on deck. On going up I perceived the cable
had got out of its sheaves and was running out at great speed. All was
confusion for a few moments. Mr. Canning, our friend, who was the
engineer of the Newfoundland cable, showed great presence of mind, and to
his coolness and skill, I think, is due the remedying of the evil. By
rope stoppers the cable was at length brought to a standstill, and it
strained most ominously, perspiring at every part great tar drops. But it
held together long enough to put the cable on the sheaves again."

"_Tuesday, August 11._ Abruptly indeed am I stopped in my letter. This
morning at 3.45 the cable parted, and we shall soon be on our way back to
England."

Thus ended the first attempt to unite the Old World with the New by means
of an electric nerve. Authorities differ as to who was responsible for
the disaster, but the cause was proved to be what Morse had foreseen when
he wrote: "Too sudden a check would inevitably snap the cable."

While, of course, disappointed, he was not discouraged, for under date of
August 13, he writes:--

"Our accident will delay the enterprise but will not defeat it. I
consider it a settled fact, from all I have seen, that it is perfectly
practicable. It will surely be accomplished. There is no insurmountable
difficulty that has for a moment appeared, none that has shaken my faith
in it in the slightest degree. My report to the company as co-electrician
will show everything right in that department. We got an electric current
through till the moment of parting, so that electric connection was
perfect, and yet the farther we paid out the feebler were the currents,
indicating a difficulty which, h