the Great Eastern drifted to N.E, right across the Cable, before a light breeze from S.W. At first there was only a strain of 42 cwt. shown, and the ship went quite steadily and slowly towards the Cable. At 3·30 p.m. the strain increased, and then the Great Eastern gave some little sign of feeling a restraint on her actions from below, her head describing unsteady lines from W.N.W. to W. by S. The screw engines were gently brought into play to keep her head to the wind. The machinery and capstan, which had been put in motion some time previously to haul in the grapnel cable, now took it in easily and regularly, except when a shackle or swivel jarred it for a moment. Every movement of the ship was most keenly watched, till the increasing strain on the dynamometer showed that the same grip on the bottom which had twice turned the head of the Great Eastern, was again placed on the grapnel she was dragging along the bottom of the Atlantic. The index of the dynamometer rose: it marked 60 cwt., then it jerked up to 65 cwt., then it reached 70 cwt., then 75 cwt.: at last its iron finger pointed to 80 cwt. It was too much to stand by and witness the terrible struggle between the crisping, yielding hawser, which was coming in fast, the relentless iron-clad capstan, and the fierce resolute power in the black sea, which seemed endued with demoniacal energy as it tugged and swerved to and fro on the iron hook. But it was beyond peradventure that the Atlantic Cable had been hooked and struck, and was coming up from its oozy bed. What alternations of hope and fear--what doubts, what sanguine dreams, dispelled by a moment’s thought, only to revive again! What need to say how men were agitated on board the ship? There was in their breasts, those who felt at all, that intense quiet excitement with which we all attend the utterance of a supreme decree, final and irrevocable. Some remained below in the saloons--fastened their eyes on unread pages of books, or gave expression to their feelings in fitful notes from piano or violin. Others went aft to the great Sahara of deck where all was lifeless now, and whence the iron oasis had vanished. Some walked to and fro in the saloon; others paced the deck amidships. None liked to go forward, where every jar of the machinery, every shackle that passed the drum, every clank, made their hearts leap into their mouths. Captain Anderson, Mr. Canning, Mr. Clifford, and the officers and men engaged in working the ship and taking in the grapnel, were in the bows of course, and shared in the common anxiety. At dinner-time 500 fathoms of grapnel rope had been taken in, and the strain was mounting beyond 82 cwt. Nothing else could be talked of. The boldest ventured to utter the words “Heart’s Content” and “Newfoundland” once more. All through the unquiet meal we could hear the shrill whistle through the acoustic tube from the bow to the bridge, which warned the quartermasters to stop, reverse, or