“It is against the rules to let you into this room, boy,” Sparks told him, smiling. “I can’t give up my bench to a ham.”
“I’m no ham, Mr. Sparks,” declared Belding. “I’ve shown you already that I can read and send Morse.”
“I don’t know,” the radio man murmured, shaking his head.
But he was really fond of George Belding, and the latter had to coax only a little more. This, as a rule, was not a busy hour.
He allowed the youth to slide in on the bench and handed him the head harness. George slipped the hard rubber discs over his ears and tapped the slide of the tuner with a professional finger.
“Plenty of static,” he observed, for it was trickling, exploding, and hissing in the receivers.
“No induction,” Sparks suggested.
Belding slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a train of brisk dots and dashes. Belding snapped up the aerial switch and listened. The message he was catching from the air was nothing to interest him or the Colodia.
He was sensitizing the detector and soon adjusted the tuning handle for high waves. The chief watched him with a growing appreciation of the boy’s knowledge of the instrument and its government.
On these high planes the ether was almost soundless. Only a little static, far-removed, trickled in. It was in the high waves that most of the naval work is done and the sending of orders to distant ships is keyed as fine as a violin string—and sounds as musical.