The bight of the Cable was slipped from the Caroline, at 7·15 p.m., and the Great Eastern stood slowly on her course N.W.¼W. Then the Terrible and Sphinx, which had ranged up alongside, and sent their crews into the shrouds and up to the tops to give her a parting cheer, delivered their friendly broadsides with vigour, and received a similar greeting. Their colours were hauled down, and as the sun set a broad stream of golden light was thrown across the smooth billows towards their bows as if to indicate and illumine the path marked out by the hand of Heaven. The brake was eased, and as the Great Eastern moved ahead the machinery of the paying-out apparatus began to work, drums rolled, wheels whirled, and out spun the black line of the Cable, and dropped in a graceful curve into the sea over the stern wheel. The Cable came up with ease from the after tank, and was payed-out with the utmost regularity from the apparatus. The system of signals to and from the ship was at once in play between the electricians on board and those at Foilhummerum. On board there were two representative bodies--the electricians of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, under M. de Sauty, and the electricians of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, Mr. Varley, Professor Thomson, and assistants. The former were to test the electrical state of the Cable as it was being payed-out, and to keep up signals between the ship and the shore. The latter, who had no power of interference or control, were simply to report on the testing, and to certify, on their arrival in Newfoundland, whether the Cable fulfilled the conditions specified in the contract. The mechanical arrangements for paying-out the cable were in charge of Mr. Canning, engineer-in-chief to the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, who might be considered as having supreme control over the ship _ad hoc._ In the space on deck between the captain’s state-room and the entrance to the grand saloon, was the Testing-Room--a darkened chamber, into which were led conducting wires from the ends of the Cable, for the ordeal to which they were subjected by the electricians, at a table whereon were placed galvanometers and insulation and resistance-testing machines. The instructions for signalling, determined upon by the electricians of the Telegraphic Construction and Maintenance Company, were as follows:-- 1. During the paying-out of the Cable, from the moment of starting until the end is landed at Newfoundland, electrical tests will be applied without intermission. 2. The tests will be for insulation, for continuity, and to determine the resistance of the conductor, the whole length of Cable being joined up in one length. 3. Each series of tests will commence at the hour (Greenwich time), and will last one hour.