The ship was now a dozen miles or so from the place of accident. The cable had broken a little after noon, when the sun was shining clear, so that Captains Anderson and Moriarty had just obtained a perfect observation, from which they could tell, within half a mile, the very spot where it had gone down. To reach it now, with any chance of bringing it up, it would be necessary to hook it a few miles from the end. It had been paid out in a line from east to west. To strike it broadside, the ship stood off in the afternoon a few miles to the south. Here the grapnel was thrown over about three o'clock, and struck bottom about five, when the ship began slowly drifting back on her course. All night long those iron fingers were raking the bottom of the deep but grasping nothing, till toward morning the long rope quivered like a fisherman's line when something has seized the end, and the head of the Great Eastern began to sway from her course, as if it felt some unseen attraction. As they began to haul in, the rapidly increasing strain soon rendered it certain that they had got hold of _something_. But what could it be? How did they know it was their lost cable? This question has often been asked. They did not see it. How did they know that it was not the skeleton of a whale, or a mast or spar, the fragment of a wrecked ship? The question is easily answered. If it had been any loose object which was being drawn up from the sea, its weight would have diminished as it came nearer the surface. But on the contrary, the strain, as shown by the dynamometer, steadily _increased_. This could only be from some object lying prone on the bottom. To an engineer the proof was like a mathematical demonstration. Another fact observed by Captain Anderson was equally decisive: "The grapnel had caught something at the exact hour when by calculation the ship was known to be crossing the line of the cable; nor had the grapnel upon this or any other occasion even for an instant caught any impediment from the time of its being lowered to the bottom, until the hour indicated by calculation, when the cable ought to be hooked." Having thus caught the cable, they had good hopes of getting it again, their confidence increasing with every hundred fathoms brought on board. For hours the work went on. They had raised it seven hundred fathoms--or three quarters of a mile--from the bottom, when an iron swivel gave way, and the cable once more fell back into the sea, carrying with it nearly two miles of rope.