After supper on this eventful night, Walter went to the yacht and Tony went to the attic “den,” and, seated at their respective wireless tables, they practiced sending and receiving for two or three hours. Tony, of course, was still very slow, but he managed to spell out his words with reasonable accuracy, and as Walter sent his messages in a leisurely manner, they did very well. One of the observations sent by Walter across the spark gap in the course of their exchange of wireless witticisms was the following:
“Ben Franklin contradicted himself by discovering a spark-gap in the sky and giving that ‘early to bed, early to rise,’ advice.”
“Why?” Tony dot-and-dashed back.
“Because you have to stay up late to wireless well,” Walter replied.
Shortly after ten o’clock he sent the following message to Tony:
“Come here.”
“Repeat,” requested the boy at the shore station, who read the message but was in doubt as to whether he had read it correctly.
“Come here,” Walter flashed again.
“Why?”
“Some fun here.”