“But what does he do for an aërial?” queried Henry.
“Doesn’t use one,” replied Tom. “Just has this sort of wire cage sticking from his helmet, like a loop, but made of two grids set at right angles to each other. But gosh! I never thought about there being interferences under water.”
“I suppose Henry understands all that,” interrupted Rawlins laughingly, “but it means about as much to me as that Dutch talk I heard. Somehow or other I can’t get on to this radio a little bit. When you get that sending outfit rigged you’ll have to go down and test it. I’d probably bungle something. I didn’t even dare meddle with this gadget for tuning. I tried it once and when your voice stopped I just shoved her back and let it go at that. That’s when I heard that Dutchman.”
“Then he’s on a different wave length and it proves we can tune out under water,” declared Tom gleefully. “That’s another feather in our caps.”
Henry quickly grasped the boys’ ideas and together
the three worked diligently until sundown while Rawlins busied himself devising the fittings for his suit to accommodate the sending apparatus and helped the boys tremendously with suggestions for rendering a set watertight and with advice as to mechanical and other details.
By the time they were obliged to stop their work the plans for the under-sea transmission set were well worked out and, with high hopes and flushed with the success of their achievements, they locked up the workshop and walked up town discussing plans for the morrow.
The following day they went to the dock right after breakfast, for school was over for the season and they had all their time to themselves. Rawlins was already there and before they left that night they had the set nearly completed and Tom declared they would be able to give it a test the next day.
Mr. Pauling was of course deeply interested and enthusiastic over the boys’ work and promised to go down himself as soon as the instruments were perfected. He listened to the boys’ glowing accounts of their work and their success and later,
when Mr. Henderson called, he too became most optimistic regarding their under-sea radio.