128 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
supplied the official atmosphere and approval of the nation 
that “ruled the waves.” The beginning of this expedition 
was favorable. The machinery worked so smoothly that “the 
cable glided into the water with such ease that it seemed but a 
holiday affair to carry it across to yonder continent,” as Henry 
Field phrased it. But at daybreak next morning the booming 
of a gun announced trouble as the great ship came to a stop. 
Said Henry Field: “The electricians, with troubled counte- 
nances, were passing in and out of the testing-room, which, 
as it was always kept darkened, looked like a sick-chamber 
where some royal patient lay trembling between life and 
death.” 
The dreaded disturbance of “electrical continuity” had 
come to bother them. Professor Thomson’s sensitive galva- 
nometer, which utilized a ray of light from a tiny mirror to 
magnify any disturbance to the passage of the current, had 
indicated that something was wrong. Messages could still 
be sent to shore through the eighty-four miles of cable, but 
apparently there was a leak about ten miles from the ship. 
The best plan was to turn the ship around, pick up the cable, 
and cut out the defective section. 
Slowly the ponderous ship was reversed and picking-up 
operations commenced. As Russell described it, “‘So delicately 
did she answer her helm, and coil in the film of thread-like 
cable over her bows, that she put one in mind of an ele- 
phant taking up straw in its proboscis.” Only about a mile 
could be raised in an hour. When about ten miles of cable 
had been examined, the trouble was found. A small needle 
of wire had been driven into the cable, apparently by acci- 
dent, and had made an electrical contact between the sea 
water and the copper wires. The faulty portion was cut out 
and a splice made. 
As Henry Field described this exasperating incident: “It 
was this pin’s point which pricked the vital cord, opening a 
minute passage through which the electricity, like a jet of 
