Chapter Eleven 
GRAPPLING FOR THE SEA-SERPENT 
‘THE NEW CABLE was only eighteen hundred fifty-two nautical 
miles in length—nearly two hundred miles shorter than the 
cable of 1858. This was due chiefly to the smaller proportion | 
of slack in the new cable—only about eleven percent of the 
whole. Such a reduction of waste had been attained by laying 
in a straighter line and by better technique and skill. The 
greatest satisfaction of the officials, however, was in the ease 
and reliability with which messages could be sent between 
Newfoundland and Ireland. There was none of the depress- 
ing uncertainty and irregularity of the cable of 1858. The 
technique of ‘Thomson, Varley, and others had solved these 
problems. 
Despite these pleasing evidences of success, Cyrus Field’s 
restless energy impelled him to proceed with the rest of the 
work as planned, even as congratulatory messages began to 
shower upon him in Newfoundland. Said Henry Field: 
“Though the Great Eastern was still lying in the little harbor 
of Heart’s Content, casting her mighty shadow on its tranquil 
waters, she was not ‘content’ with her amazing victory, but 
sighed for another greater still. “Though she had done enough 
to be laid up for a year, still she had one more test of her 
prowess—to recover the cable of 1865, which had been lost 
in the middle of the Atlantic.” 
The cable was landed on July 27. Five days later, on Aug- 
ust 1, two ships of the telegraph fleet, the Terrible and the 
Albany, sailed for the place, six hundred miles out, where the 
end of the cable of 1865 had slipped into the ocean. The 
Great Eastern was detained at shore until August 9 to replen- 
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