“Did I!” exclaimed the diver. “Did I! Let me tell you I wished I had cotton stuffed in my ears. You must think I’m deaf,—yelling like that. Did you think you had to shout loud enough to have your voice go through the water? And I’ll tell you I thought a tornado’d struck the place when your friend here arrived. I even heard the telephone bell.”
Tom and Frank fairly danced with delight. “Hurrah! It works! It’s a success! We’ve solved it! It’s under-sea radio!” shouted the excited boys.
“I’ll say it works!” declared Rawlins. “But what the deuce were you trying to talk Dutch for?”
“Talk Dutch?” cried Tom in a puzzled tone.
“We weren’t talking Dutch or anything but United States.”
It was Rawlins’ turn to be amazed. “Well, who in thunder was then?” he asked. “I heard some one jabbering Dutch or some other foreign language—don’t know what ’twas except it wasn’t French or Spanish.”
Henry gave a whoop. “It was that other fellow!” he cried excitedly. “I’ll bet ’twas. He was talking just before I rang up as I told you. Jehoshaphat! Mr. Rawlins must have heard him under water.”
“I guess that’s it,” agreed Tom. “Funny it didn’t occur to me. Of course there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been heard under water. We’re using a tiny little wave length and so’s he, and he’s close to here, you know. Did you hear him loudly, Mr. Rawlins?”
“Well, not so as to deafen me the way you did,” replied the diver with a grin, “but if I’d understood his lingo I could have told what he was talking about. The only word that sounded like sense to me was something like Oleander.”
“Then ’twas him!” fairly yelled Henry ungrammatically.