PERSEVERANCE, PERSEVERANCE 129 
blood from a pierced artery, went streaming into the sea. 
. . . This insignificant and contemptible source of trouble 
was snatched from its place, the wounded piece of cable was 
cut off, anda splice made. . . . A full day and a half had been 
lost by this miserable piece of wire.” 
The electrical continuity was now restored, and messages 
were again flashed clearly between Ireland and the ship. The 
transmission was so perfect that the electricians at Valentia 
could distinguish the rolling of the Great Eastern, as the 
waves tossed the ship sufficiently to induce a faint current of 
electricity from the shifting relations with the magnetic me- 
ridian. Much progress was being made in knowledge of the 
electrical phenomena in long cables. 
All went well again for several days. The “drop-off”, 
where the coast shelf changed rapidly to the deep bed of the 
ocean, was passed safely. Then, when five days out and seven 
hundred miles had been laid, a worse interruption of current 
occurred. Apparently a piece of the insulation had been de- 
stroyed and the current was escaping into the sea. Once again 
the ship was reversed and picking-up was begun to find the 
defect. 
The water was two miles deep, and the hauling-in was 
difficult. But in a few hours the fault was found; it was 
another piece of wire inserted in the cable. Once again a 
section was cut out and a splice made. Suspicions now arose 
over these “accidents’’. 
The pile of cable on deck was examined. Another needle 
of wire was discovered piercing the cable! Apparently a 
traitor among the workmen had been paid to wreck the ex- 
pedition’s effort. It was recalled that a similar incident had 
happened previously on an expedition in the North Sea, 
when a workman had confessed that he had been hired by a 
rival company to drive a nail into the cable. Probably the 
object of such a plot was to depress the stock quotations of 
the telegraph company on the London Exchange. The failure 
