Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/130

 At first all seemed about to go well. A gale was indeed blowing at the time, but that did not much affect the colossal ship. The cable was cut, fastened to its iron rope, passed to the bow, and got in over the pulleys. Then, and very slowly, it was drawn on board. When a mile or so had been recovered, the gearing of one of the engines got a little out of order, and the process had to be temporarily stopped; then something went wrong with the boilers, but soon these difficulties were removed. Immediately after, the Great Eastern drifted so that it was impossible to prevent the cable from chafing against her bows. Equally impossible was it to go astern, lest the strain should be too great. Then the wind suddenly shifted, making matters worse. Suddenly the chain shackle and wire-rope attached to the cable came in over the wheel at the bows with considerable violence. Another moment and the cable parted, flew through the stoppers, and, with one bound, flashed into the sea and disappeared!

Now, at last, the fatal climax so much dreaded had arrived. The days and nights of anxious labour had been spent in vain. The cable was lost, and with it went not only hundreds of thousands of pounds, but the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people, whose sanguine expectations of success were thus rudely dispelled.