It was hard work beating up against the wind; so hard, indeed, that it was not till the noon of Monday, the 28th, that we again met the Niagara; and while all were waiting with impatience for her explanation of how she broke the cable, she electrified every one by running up the interrogatory, "How did the cable part?" This _was_ astounding. As soon as the boats could be lowered, Mr. Cyrus Field, with the electricians from the Niagara, came on board, and a comparison of logs showed the painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel discovered that a total fracture had taken place at a distance of certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, as well as could be judged, at the bottom of the ocean. The logs on both sides were so clear as to the minute of time, and as to the electrical tests showing not merely leakage or defective insulations of the wire, but a total fracture, that there was no room left on which to rest a moment's doubt of the certainty of this most disheartening fact. That of all the many mishaps connected with the Atlantic telegraph, this was the worst and most disheartening, since it proved that after all that human skill and science can effect to lay the wire down with safety has been accomplished, there may be some fatal obstacles to success at the bottom of the ocean which can never be guarded against, for even the nature of the peril must always remain as secret and unknown as the depths in which it is to be encountered. Was the bottom covered with a soft coating of ooze, in which it had been said the cable might rest undisturbed for years as on a bed of down? or were there, after all, sharp-pointed rocks lying on that supposed plateau of Maury, Berryman, and Dayman? These were the questions that some of those on board were asking.