“About three o’clock, however, the ’phone rang; and, just as I had got connection, and began talking with the man down at the Point, I saw the little hammer of the seismaphone vibrating, and, putting the instrument to my ear, heard Martin Bradley say distinctly: ‘Have just sighted the lighthouse, so get down to the telephone for a message.’
“I turned to the telephone, and, sure enough, the man at the other end of the wire was telling me that the Petrel was in sight. As the boat neared the shore, Bradley kept up a running comment on events that took place.
“‘We’re just pulling up the flag and firing a salute,’ he called; and scarcely did I catch his words when from the telephone at my ear, as if in echo, came the message, ‘They have just run up a flag and are firing a salute.’
“During the next week we tried every kind of test imaginable with the seismaphone, and there was not a flaw in its workings.
“I was perfectly satisfied, and had started proceedings to secure a patent, when the first news of the recent trouble in China came; and then, for two weeks, as you know, the various legations were regularly slaughtered one day and reported safe on the following.
“Martin Bradley was so excited that he nearly forgot his seismaphone. In the course of his wanderings he had lived for two years in Northern China, and could talk the lingo like a native, and was wild to go out there as a newspaper correspondent.
“One day he came rushing to my room with a copy of a morning paper in his hand.
“‘See that,’ he cried excitedly, ‘this paper says that Minister Conger was butchered in cold blood June 24, and all the others of the legation tortured to death by those yellow devils. To-morrow if you buy a paper you will read that they are safe and well. I tell you, I am going to China to find out for myself the truth of this matter, and when I do the world shall know what is true and what is false. They can put restrictions on the press, the telegraph, and the cables, but they can’t restrict Martin Bradley’s seismaphone.
“‘Just think of the advertisement for the invention, too,’ he continued, getting more and more excited. ‘Every reading person in the world will know that the truth was finally obtained through Martin Bradley, by means of his greatest of all inventions, the seismaphone.’
“I tried to dissuade him, telling him of the terrible risk he would run, but he would not listen. He had lived in Peking for two years, he said, and knew the city perfectly and the customs and language of the people.