Looking out across the waters of the bay, he soon saw the cause of the interruption.

Six or seven vessels were anchored along the line of his cable, and one of them, in raising her anchor, had fouled the cable and pulled it up.

Not knowing what it was, the sailors hauled in about two hundred feet of it; then, finding no end, they cut the cable and sailed away, ignorant of the blow they had inflicted on the mortified inventor.

The crowd, thinking they had been hoaxed, turned away with jeers, and Morse was left alone to bear his disappointment as philosophically as he could.
Later, in December, the experiment was repeated across the canal at Washington, and this time with perfect success.
Still cramped for means, chafing under the delay which this necessitated, he turned to his good friends the Vails, hoping that they might be able to help him.

While he shrank from borrowing money he considered that, as they were financially interested in the success of the invention, he could with propriety ask for an advance to enable him to go to Washington.
To his request he received the following answer from the Honorable George Vail:-- SPEEDWELL IRON WORKS, December 31, 1842.
S.F.B.MORSE, Esq., DEAR SIR,--Your favor is at hand.