138 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
hauled up the end from water six hundred feet deep. ‘‘Quick, 
nimble hands,” wrote Henry Field, “tore off the covering 
from some yards of the shore end of the main cable, till they 
came to the core; then, swiftly unwinding the copper wires, 
they laid them together, twining them as closely and carefully 
as a silken braid. Thus stripped and bare this new-born child 
of the sea was wrapped in swaddling-clothes, covered up with 
many coatings of gutta percha, and hempen rope, and strong 
iron wires, the whole bound round and round with heavy 
bands, and the splicing was complete.” This was done in the 
rain—another bad omen. 
As soon as possible, messages were flashed to the telegraph- 
house on the cliffs of Valentia. The electrical tests showed 
that the entire two-thousand-mile length was in good condi- 
tion. The Terrible steamed ahead to warn other vessels away; 
the other two consorts were assigned one to each side. The 
course chosen was thirty miles south of the cable of the year 
before, to avoid any conflicts, especially when grappling later. 
Cyrus Field felt confident of the new equipment and the 
increased skill of the technicians. The speed and energy with 
which the expedition had been organized had cheered him 
ereatly, after all the delays and discouragements of the long 
years before. As he afterward wrote: “It was only the first day 
of March that the new company was formed . . . yet such 
was the vigor and despatch that in five months from that day 
the cable had been manufactured, shipped on the Great East- 
ern, stretched across the Atlantic, and was sending messages, 
literally swift as lightning, from continent to continent.” 
So optimistic had Field felt in the spring of 1866, that he 
gave a dinner at the Buckingham Palace Hotel on April 5. 
At this Anglo-American rapprochement, he sat between the 
American minister, Charles F. Adams, and the Ear] of Caith- 
ness. The British newspapers, in reporting the dinner, re- 
ferred to Field’s “inspired fervor’ and “certainty of success.” 
His friend, John Bright, wrote him two cheering letters at 
