There were thenceforth for the day two parties in the ship--those who believed in malice, and those who attributed all our disasters to accident. In the end the latter school included nearly all on board the ship, and it was generally thought that in the Cable, or, rather, in what had been intended as its protection, was the source of its weakness and ruin. Before the end of the Cable was finally shackled to the wire rope, tests were applied to the portion in tanks. The first cut was made at the old splice, between the main and fore tanks, and the Cable was found perfect. The second cut, at three miles from the end of the Cable, showed the fault to be overboard. Whilst the tests were going on, and the cablemen got the picking-up gear in readiness, the dynamometer showed a strain on the Cable astern varying from 20 to 28 cwt. The chain and rope were at last secured to the Cable, under the eyes of Mr. Canning. It was then 9·53 a.m. The indicator stood at 376·595, showing that 1,186 miles of Cable had been payed-out. At 9·58 a.m. (Greenwich time), the Cable was cut and slipped overboard astern, fastened to its iron guardians. The depth of water was estimated at 2000 fathoms. As it went over and down in its fatal dive, one of the men said, “Away goes our talk with Valentia.” Mr. de Sauty did not inform the operator at Valentia of the nature of the abrupt stoppage. We had now become so hardened to the dangers of the slip overboard, and the sight of the Cable straining for its life in contest with the Big Ship, that the cutting and slipping excited no apprehension; but nothing could reconcile men to the picking-up machinery, and its monotonous retrogression. The wind was on our starboard beam, and the Cable was slipped over at the port quarter, and carried round on the port side towards the ship’s bows, in order that the vessel might go over it, and then come up more readily to the Cable, head to wind, when the picking-up began. The drift of the ship was considerable, and it was not easy--indeed, possible--to control her movements; but, notwithstanding all this, the wire buoy-rope was got up to the machinery in reasonable time. Still the ship’s head--do what Capt. Anderson would, and he did as much as any man could--did not come round easily. Even a punt will not turn if she has no way on her, and it takes a good deal of way--more than she could get with safety to the Cable--to give steerage to the Great Eastern. As she slowly drifted and came round by degrees quite imperceptible to those who did not keep a close watch on the compass, the wire rope was payed-out; and at last, as the ship’s bows turned, it was taken in over the machinery, and was passed aft through the drums, and the picking-up apparatus coiled it in very slowly away till the end of the Cable was hauled up out of the sea.