Attached to the end of the wire that is fixed to the baseboard is either a point, welded to the brass wire that leads to the cup holding the galena crystals, or else a point is carefully fashioned on the end of the wire to the same sharpness as a needle.
In the case of Garry’s detector, both the point and the entire wire were missing.
Somehow he must fix this, else his friends would immediately set out in search of him, and that perhaps at a time when they had important work to do at Hobart concerning the mission they had embarked on.
But how was he to repair a part of a radio telephone, that most delicate instrument, while he was out here in the wilds? It would be a hard enough task in the village, for there were no stores where radio equipment could be bought.
Garry, however, was not one to give up hopelessly on anything. He set his wits to work to think up some way in which the detector could be fixed. A search of his knapsack revealed nothing that could be substituted for the original whisker.
He knew enough about the apparatus to know what would be needed. First there was a piece of brass wire, and that must be sharpened to a needle point.
As he thought of the words “needle point,” he was struck by a brilliant idea, and gave a soft whoop at the thought that it might work.
In his knapsack was a small “housewife” that his mother had given him just before he set out for the big woods at the start of the summer. He resurrected this, and from it drew a large needle.
There was part of the battle won, but there were still two other necessary things to obtain. One was the brass wire, and the other was a method of welding or soldering it to the needle.
He rummaged through his belongings, in the vain hope of finding some bit of wire that would answer the purpose, but could find nothing. Desperately he glanced at his watch. It was already twenty minutes after eleven, and the boys were probably trying vainly to talk with him.