it, and were as eager as himself to find out the Judas among them. But accident or villainy, it was defeated this time, and the Great Eastern proudly continued her voyage. Not the slightest check interrupted their progress for the next three days, during which they passed over five hundred miles of ocean. It was now they enjoyed their greatest triumph. They were in the middle of the Atlantic, and thus far the voyage had been a complete success. The ship seemed as if made by Heaven to accomplish this great work of civilization. The paying-out apparatus was a piece of mechanism to excite the enthusiasm of an engineer, so smoothly did its well-oiled wheels run. The strain never exceeded fourteen hundred-weight, even in the greatest depths of the Atlantic. And as for the cable itself, it seemed to come as near perfection as it was possible to attain. As before, the insulation was greatly improved by submergence in the ocean. With every lengthening league it grew better and better. It seems almost beyond belief, yet the fact is fully attested that, when in the middle of the ocean, the communication was so perfect that they could tell at Valentia every time the Great Eastern rolled.[C] With such omens of success, who could but feel confident? And when on Monday they passed over a deep valley, where lay "the bones of three Atlantic cables," it was with a proud assurance that they should not add another to the number. But Wednesday brought a sudden termination of their hopes. They had run out about twelve hundred miles of cable, and were now within six hundred miles of Newfoundland. Two days more would have made them safe, as it would have brought them into the shallow waters of the coast. Thus it was when least expected that disaster came. The record of that fatal day may be given in few words. In the morning, while Mr. Field was keeping watch in the tank, with the same gang of men who had been there when the trouble occurred before, a grating sound was heard, as if a piece of wire had caught in the machinery, and word was passed up to the deck to look out for it; but the caution seems not to have been heard, and it passed over the stern of the ship. Soon after a report came from the testing-room of "another fault." It was not a bad one, since it did not prevent communication with land; and much anxiety might have been saved had a message been sent to Ireland that they were about to cut the cable, in order to haul it on board. But small as the fault was, it could not be left behind. Down on the deep sea-floor was some minute defect, a pin's point in a length measured by thousands of miles. Yet that was enough. Of this marvellous product of human skill, it might in truth be said, that it was like the law of God in demanding absolute perfection. To offend in one point was to be guilty of all.