CHAPTER XIX—A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
Had George Belding not been such a stubborn fellow he never would have stuck to his opinion about the strange call received by the Colodia’s radio men, by wireless telegraph. For neither the chief, called Sparks, nor his assistants or students (the latter scornfully entitled “hams”) had spelled anything like “help” out of the strange sounds to which Belding’s attention had been called.
“Don’t tell me such stuff,” insisted the chief. “That’s as old as the hills, George. When I first went into wireless, it used to be the standing joke to feed the student a ‘Help! We are lost’ call to steady his nerves. It was called C D Q in those old times.”
“I am not kidding,” said George Belding rather sullenly, for he did not like to be laughed at.
“No. And don’t try to make me believe that anybody is trying to kid you with a ‘help’ call,” Sparks said, shaking his head.
But as we have said, George was stubborn. Sparks thought he had spelled out the name of the destroyer in those grating sounds. If so, why shouldn’t it be just as reasonable that Belding had heard the dots and dashes spelling ‘h-e-l-p’?
Belding put this up to Whistler and Al when he had a chance to tell them about it in the first dog watch. He was not excited at all. He simply did not like to have his word doubted or be laughed at by Sparks.
“As for being laughed at,” the very sensible Philip Morgan said, “it strikes me that I wouldn’t be worried by that. Your opinion is just as good as old Sparks’ or anybody else’s, for that matter. Eh, Al?”
“Why not?” returned the other Seacove boy. “It was George heard the sounds, not Sparks. Get a chance to listen in again, George.”
“Can it be possible that there is somebody trying to send a message for help to the Colodia?” Whistler went on slowly.
“Cracky!” ejaculated Al, “I didn’t think of that.”
“Sparks says that he thought he spelled out the destroyer’s name. George has heard the word ‘help.’ Get after it, George!” he added, earnestly. “Don’t let ’em put you down.”
“But who under the sun would be doing such a thing?” demanded Al. “Is it a joke, after all?”
“It will be a sorry joke if our Government gets after the sender. The law is mighty strict about private wireless plants, you know,” said Phil Morgan.
“There is one sure thing,” declared Belding. “If anybody is trying to call this ship, they don’t know much about the regulation codes and sendings. They don’t know the destroyer’s number, and the way they handle Morse is a caution to cats!”
“Stick to it,” advised Whistler.
But George did not really need to be urged in this direction. The next afternoon watch he was back at the radio room begging to “listen in” again. Because of the interest the radio men had begun to feel in the “ghost talk” in the air at this time of day, both Sparks and one of his assistants were on hand.
The regular radio men were listening for the peculiar voice in the wireless, at all hours; but it seemed to be confined now to an hour or two in mid-afternoon. One after the other the Colodia’s radio force slipped on the receiving harness and listened to the mystery. Belding got his chance, in spite of the fact that Sparks laughed at him.
This time Belding kept the instrument tuned down to the commercial waves on which it seemed the “ghost talk” was the more easily transmitted. Now and then he got the spelling of a letter clearly. But not a word in its entirety did he hear on this day—not even “help.”
“I get ‘r’, ‘d’, and ‘b’ a lot,” he signed, turning the receiver over to Sparks again. “They are in rotation—‘r’, ‘d’, ‘b’—and sometimes there follows another ‘d’. There are letters missing between them, excepting between the ‘b’ and the first ‘d’.”
“No ‘help’ stuff, eh?” queried Sparks.
“Nor any ‘Colodia’,” snorted Belding.
But he sat and watched the radio chief give his full attention to the mystery, and after a minute or two saw that the man was spelling something out carefully on the pad of scratch-paper under his hand. Belding peered over his shoulder and saw Sparks set down these letters as he heard them in the sound waves:
R DB
R DB R
R DB D
RE B D
R D RD
R DB
RE I
Sparks pulled off the harness and swung about to look at George Belding.
“Is that about what you heard?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir. At least, in part.”
“Well, hang it all!” cried Sparks. “That’s a still newer combination. It’s neither ‘Colodia’ nor ‘help.’ I tell you it beats me, George.”
When Belding left the wireless room he took with him the piece of paper on which Sparks had written. The letters in combination seemed to mean nothing; but he showed them to Whistler and Al Torrance when he found those two chums together.
“Looks like one of those puzzles they have on the back page of the papers at home,” said Al. “You know: The ones you are supposed to fill in with other letters to make ’em read the same up and down and across.”
“This is no acrostic,” said Belding firmly.
But Whistler stared steadily at the paper for some minutes without saying a word. Only his lips slowly puckered, and Al nudged him to break off the thoughtful whistle which he knew his chum was about to vent.
“Huh? Oh! All right,” murmured Morgan, accepting Al’s admonition.
“What do you see?” asked Belding.
“I see that it is the same word each time, of course,” replied Whistler. “But I don’t believe my eyes.”
“What’s that?” demanded the other two boys.
“If the ghost of the air,” said Whistler gravely, “did not spell out the name of this destroyer this afternoon, it certainly did try to put over the name of another ship.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Al. “Tell us.”
“What ship do you mean?” asked Belding, scowling thoughtfully at the paper.
Quickly Whistler covered the letters on the sheet as, with his own pencil, he filled in the gaps between them. When he flashed the sheet before the eyes of his two friends each of the lines of letters made the same word. And that word was:
“REDBIRD”
“My goodness! You have gone crazy, Phil Morgan!” almost shouted Belding.
“Cracky! that’s the ship your sisters and Belding’s folks are aboard, you know,” gasped Torry. “Why, Whistler, I believe with George that you are crazy!”
“All I see,” said Morgan, quite unruffled, “is that George brought us some letters that, very easily and sensibly, make the name of his father’s ship now bound for Bahia.”
“Cracky!” exclaimed Al again.
“But—but do you suppose anything has happened to father, mother and the girls? Do you really, Morgan?”
“Who said anything about ‘something happening’ to them?” demanded his friend with some heat. “I am merely pointing out the possibility that the name of that ship is in a wireless message that somebody seems anxious to put over.”
“But who—what——”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Whistler, stopping Belding at that point. “We don’t know. We have merely learned that the radio men first spelled out the name of this destroyer. Now you and the chief have caught the name of the Redbird. The two names seem to be in the combination. Therefore, is it ‘crazy’, as you fellows say, for me to suggest that perhaps the mysterious message deals with both of the vessels named?”
“I begin to see your idea, Phil,” admitted Belding. “But it did shake me. You know, I spelled out ‘help’ first of all.”
“But you did not get that to-day,” said Whistler quickly. Then he added: “We know the Redbird is fitted with wireless.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps somebody aboard is trying to send a message to us just for fun.”
“For fun, indeed!” exclaimed Al Torrance. “People aren’t fooling with the radio ‘for fun’ in these times.”
“I don’t know. You know how girls are,” drawled Whistler. “George, does your sister Lilian know anything about Morse and the radio?”
“Oh, my prophetic soul!” gasped Belding, suddenly arousing to the point Whistler made. “I should say she did! Lil got to be fairly good at both sending and receiving when we had the plant on the roof of our house.”
“Could this be Lilian trying to get a message over to us—just for fun?”
“Cut out the ‘fun’ business,” implored Al. “That doesn’t sound reasonable.” But that was the very idea that caught George Belding.
“She’s that kind of girl,” he declared. “Tell her she must not do a thing, and she’s sure to try it. But I don’t understand——”
“Of course, it’s only a guess on my part,” Whistler said quickly. “But can’t you think of some way to try her out—identify her, you know? Tell Sparks what you think and get him to let you try to send her a message.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Al. “So there’s nothing more than that in it? Shucks! Another mystery gone fooey.”
“Phil’s idea does sound awfully reasonable,” added Belding, evidently much relieved in his mind.
Phil Morgan’s countenance did not reveal his secret gravity. He still remembered that the word “help” had been connected with the names of the two craft—the destroyer and the merchant vessel—which seemed to be a part of the strange message out of the air.