"While all were waiting with impatience for her explanation of how they 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; in fact, as well as can be judged, at the bottom of the ocean. That of all the many mishaps connected with the Atlantic Telegraph, this is the worst and most disheartening is certain, since it proves 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." But it was no time for useless regrets. Once more the cable was joined in mid-ocean, and dropped to its silent bed, and the Niagara and the Agamemnon began to steam away toward opposite shores of the Atlantic. This time the experiment succeeded better than before. The progress of the English ship is thus reported: "At first, the ship's speed was only two knots, the cable going three and three and a half, with a strain of fifteen hundred pounds. By and by, however, the speed was increased to four knots, the cable going five, at a strain of two thousand pounds. At this rate it was kept, with trifling variations, throughout almost the whole of Monday night, and neither Mr. Bright, Mr. Canning, nor Mr. Clifford ever quitted the machines for an instant. Toward the middle of the night, while the rate of the ship continued the same, the speed at which the cable paid out slackened nearly a knot an hour, while the dynamometer indicated as low as thirteen hundred pounds. This change could only be accounted for on the supposition that the water had shallowed to a considerable extent, and that the vessel was, in fact, passing over some submarine Ben Nevis or Skiddaw. After an interval of about an hour, the strain and rate of progress of the cable again increased, while the increase of the vertical angle seemed to indicate that the wire was sinking down the side of a declivity. Beyond this, there was no variation throughout Monday night, or, indeed, through Tuesday." On board the Niagara was the same scene of anxious watching every hour of the day and night. Engineers and electricians were constantly on duty: