Those first listeners sat spellbound till others, eager for their turn, snatched away the ear phones.
Like one in a trance, Jimmy Bobb sat with the music still ringing in his soul.
“Gee,” he whispered, “those fiddles, high and sweet, like they was right in the next room!”
“And they were really in Gulf City, fifty miles from here!” laughed young Renaud. “Let’s make a try for Madsden. That will be a good bit farther—something like a hundred miles.”
Until far into the night the group stayed “tuned in,” excitedly swapping phones, eagerly listening to the first real music in their lives.
King’s Cove was in touch with the world! It had suddenly come out of the nowhere into the somewhere. A copper rivet slid along a coil of wire, and in a fraction of a second this bunch of boys in faded, ragged overalls was in contact with music in another county, music in another state even!
Then there came a swishing thud against the outside of the house as if made by the recoil of wire.
“S-s-sh!” hissingly whispered little Mackey, who had been peering out of the window. “Something out on the barn roof—like a man with hisself all humped up, creeping, creeping—”
“Somebody’s been at our aerial—cut it off!” agonized Lee, realizing to a certainty what that swish of wire against the house had meant.
Another had taken in the situation, too, it seemed. The shutters of the next room were flung open and Great-uncle Gem’s voice rang out angrily, “What you up to on that roof? Don’t be trespassing on my place, you Johnny Poolak!”