But their anxiety was not over. Now that they had regained the lost cable of 1865, was it good for any thing? It had been lying more than a year at the bottom of the deep. What if it should prove to have been broken somewhere in the eleven hundred miles between the ship and Ireland? What if some sharp rock had worn it away, or some marine insect had eaten into its heart? If there were but a pin's point, anywhere in its covering of flesh, the vital current might escape through it into the sea. Fears like these restrained their exultation. It was yet too soon to proclaim their victory. So, as the cable was passed along the deck to the testing room, where the chief electrician was to operate upon it, to see whether it was alive or dead, it was followed by an anxious group, who stood around him as he sat down at the instrument, watching his countenance as friends watch the face of a physician, when he feels the pulse of a patient to see if the heart is still beating. The scene is thus described by Mr. Robert Dudley, the artist of the expedition, whose spirited sketches in the London Illustrated News have made known to the world many incidents of this memorable voyage: "I made my way with others, in accordance with an invitation from Willoughby Smith, to the electricians' room. Here, after another hour's preparation, during which time the cable had been carefully passed round the drums of the picking-up machinery, and a sufficient length drawn in on board, the severed end was received. And now, in their mysterious, darkened haunt, the wizards are ready to work their spells upon the tamed lightning. Not 'unholy spells' are these, or secret; for, though the wizards' den is but of limited dimensions, they have not been averse to the presence of a few visitors. Mr. Gooch is looking on; Professor Thomson, be sure, is here, a worthy 'Wizard of the North;' Cyrus Field could no more be absent than the cable itself; I think, too, Canning, hard at work as he is forward in the ship, _must_ have dropped in just for a moment; Clifford, Laws, Captain Hamilton, Deane, Dudley--all have, in their several ways, a great interest in every movement of Willoughby Smith and his brother (and able assistant) Oliver; and, when the core of the cable is stripped and the heart itself--the conducting wire--fixed in the instrument, and these two electricians bend over the galvanometer in patient watching for some message from that far-off land of home to which the great news has just been signalled, then the accustomed stillness of the test-room is deepened; the ticking of the chronometer becomes monotonous. Nearly a quarter of an hour has passed, and still no sign! Suddenly Willoughby Smith's hat is off, and the British hurrah bursts from his lips, echoed by all on board with a volley of