The terms being settled, it remained only to raise the capital. The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company led off with a subscription of £100,000. This was followed by the names of ten gentlemen, who put down £10,000 apiece. Of these Mr. Gooch declared his willingness to increase his subscription of £10,000 to £20,000, while Mr. Brassey would put down £60,000, if it were needed. Mr. Henry Bewley, of Dublin also, who was already a large owner of the Atlantic stock, declared his readiness to add £20,000 more. But this was not necessary: and so they all stood at £10,000. The names of these ten subscribers deserve to be given, as showing who stood forward to save the cause in this crisis of its fate. They were: Henry Ford Barclay, Henry Bewley, Thomas Brassey, A. H. Campbell, M.P., George Elliot, Cyrus W. Field, Richard Atwood Glass, Daniel Gooch, M.P., John Pender, M.P., and John Smith. There were four subscriptions of £5,000: by Thomas Bolton and Sons, James Horsfall, A Friend of Mr. Daniel Gooch, M.P., and John and Edwin Wright; one of £2,500 by John Wilkes and Sons; three of £2,000 by C. M. Lampson, J. Morison, and Ebenezer Pike; and two of £1,000 by Edward Cropper, and Joseph Robinson,—making in all £230,500.
These were all private subscriptions made before even the prospectus was issued, or the books opened to the public. After such a manifestation of confidence, the whole capital was secured within fourteen days. This was a great triumph, especially at a time of general depression in commercial affairs in England.
And now once more the work began. No time was to be lost. It was already the first of March, and but four months remained to manufacture sixteen hundred and sixty nautical miles of cable, and to prepare for sea. But the obstacles once cleared away, all sprang to their work with new hope and vigor.
In the cable to be made for the new line, there was but little change from that of the last year, which had proved nearly perfect. Experience, however, was constantly suggesting some improvement; and while the general form and size were retained, a slight change in the outer covering was found to make the cable both lighter and stronger. The iron wires were galvanized, which secured them perfectly from rust or corrosion by salt water. Thus protected, they could dispense with the preservative mixture of the former year. This left the cable much cleaner and whiter. Instead of its black coat, it had the fresh, bright appearance of new rope. It had another advantage. As the tarry coating was sticky, slight fragments of wire might adhere to it, and do injury, a danger to which the new cable was not exposed. At the same time, galvanizing the wires gave them greater ductility, so that in the case of a heavy strain the cable would stretch longer without breaking. By this alteration it was rendered more than four hundred-weight lighter per mile, and would bear a strain of nearly half a ton more than the one laid the year before.
The machinery also was perfected in every part, to withstand the great strain which might be brought upon it in grappling and lifting the cable from the great depths of the Atlantic. This necessitated almost a reconstruction of the machinery, together with engines of greater power, applied both to the gear for hauling in forward and that for paying out aft. Thus, in case of a fault, the motion of the ship could be easily reversed, and the cable hauled back by the paying-out machinery, without waiting for the long and tedious process of bringing the cable round from the stern to the bow of the ship.
But the most marvellous improvement had been in the method of testing the cable for the discovery of faults. In the last expedition, a grave omission had been in the long intervals during which the cable was left without a test of its insulation. Thus, from thirty to thirty-five minutes in each hour it was occupied with tests of minor importance, which would not indicate the existence of a fault, so that, if a fault occurred on ship-board, it might pass over the stern, and be miles away before it was discovered. But now a new and ingenious method was devised by Mr. Willoughby Smith, by which the cable will be tested every instant. The current will not cease to flow any more than the blood ceases to flow in human veins. The cord is vital in every part, and if touched at any point it reveals the wound as instinctively as the nerves of a living man flash to the brain a wound in any part of the human frame.
The process of detecting faults is too scientific to be detailed in these pages. We can only stand in silent wonder at the result, when we hear it stated by Mr. Varley, that the system of testing is brought to such a degree of perfection, that skilful electricians can point out minute faults with an unerring accuracy "even when they are so small that they would not weaken the signals through the Atlantic cable one millionth part!"
Another marvellous result of science was the exact report obtained of the state of that portion of the cable now lying in the sea. The electricians at Valentia were daily experimenting on the line which lay stretched twelve hundred and thirteen miles on the bottom of the deep, and pronounced it intact. Not a fault could be found from one end to the other. As when a master of the organ runs his hands over the keys, and tells in an instant if it be in perfect tune, so did these skilful manipulators, fingering at the end of this mightier instrument, declare it to be in perfect tone, ready to whisper its harmonies through the seas. At the same time, the ten hundred and seventy miles of cable left on board the Great Eastern were pronounced as faultless as the day they had been shipped on board.
With such conclusions of science to animate and inspire them, the great task of manufacturing nearly seventeen hundred miles of cable once more began. And while this work went on, the Great Eastern, that had done her part so well before, again opened her sides, and the mysterious cord was drawn into her vast, dark, silent womb, from which it was to issue only into the darker and more silent bosom of the deep.