The feat of seamanship which was accomplished, and the work so nearly consummated, was so marvellous as to render its abrupt and profitless termination all the more bitter. The remarkable difficulty of such a task as Staff-Commander Moriarty and Captain Anderson executed cannot be understood without some sort of appreciation of the obstacles before them. The Atlantic Cable, as we sadly remember, dropped into the unknown abyss on Aug. 2. We had no soundings. In the night the Great Eastern drifted and steamed 25 miles from the end of the Cable--then bore away with a grapnel overboard, and 2,500 fathoms of wire rope attached, and steered so as to come across the course of the Cable at the bottom. On the morning of Aug. 3rd, the increasing strain on the line which towed the grapnel gave rise to hope at first, and finally to the certainty, that the ship had caught the Cable. At 3·20 o’clock, p.m., Greenwich time, when about 900 fathoms of grapnel line had been hauled in, the head of a swivel pin broke, and 1,400 fathoms of line, with grapnels and Atlantic Cable, went down to the bottom. Then the Great Eastern drifted again in a fog whilst preparing for another trial to drag the Cable up from the sea, and on 4th August, with an apparatus devised on board, got doubtful soundings, from which it was estimated that the water was about 2½ miles deep. A buoy placed on a raft, which sunk so deep that only a small flagstaff and black bulb were visible, was let go, with a mushroom anchor and 2½ miles of Cable attached to it, into this profound; but as it was not ready when the Cable broke, the buoy was slipped over at the distance of some miles from the place where the fatal fracture took place, in the hope and belief that the anchor would come up somewhere near the slack caused by the picking-up operations. Still in fog, which shut the Terrible out of sight, the Great Eastern prepared for another attempt. Next day (August 5), with the assistance of the Terrible, she came upon the buoy, and having steamed away to a favourable position, so as to come down on the course of the Cable again, remained drifting and steaming gently, on the look-out for the buoy, which it was very difficult to discover owing to the fog and to the current and winds acting on the ship. The weather did not permit any observations for longitude to be made during the whole of this period. On Aug. 7th we passed the buoy and steered N.W., and at 11·10 a.m., ship’s time, 1·47 p.m., Greenwich time, another grapnel, with 2,500 fathoms of wire rope, was thrown over, and the Great Eastern, with a favourable wind, was let drift down on the course of the Cable, about half way between the buoy and the broken end. At 12·5 ship’s time, the grapnel touched the bottom in 2,500 fathoms water, having sunk, owing to improved apparatus, in half the time consumed in the first operation. In six hours afterwards, the eyes which were watching every motion of the