"I know. But it is really for you."
In wonderment Alec opened and read the letter. Moisture came in his eyes. "Oh, sir, how can I ever thank you?" he cried.
The letter was from the Central City monument dealer in reply to a sharp note from the shipper. It said the stone had been set up and that the dealer would be glad to have the remainder due as soon as Alec could forward it. Alec did not know it, but the captain had practically guaranteed the payment of that money. It was his method of making amends.
When Alec grew a little stronger and could get about a little, but was still far from able to go aboard ship, he began to grow very restless. Finally he asked if he might have his wireless outfit. The shipper got it for him. The outfit interested everybody in the household, especially the shipper's daughter Elsa, who was one year younger than Alec. Following his instructions, she made a single-wire aerial between a near-by tree and the window, brought the lead-in wire into the room through an insulating tube, and ran the wire round the edge of the room to a table beside Alec's bed. Then she ran a ground-wire to a water pipe and helped Alec wire up his outfit.
Necessarily this was of the simplest possible sort. There was an old Ford spark-coil, half a dozen dry cells, a spark-gap, a transmitting condenser, a helix, a transformer, a crystal detector, headpiece, and key. All these were of the simplest and cheapest sort. Most of them Alec had made himself; and though they did not look so nice as the bright, shiny instruments to be bought of manufacturers, they answered the purpose quite as well. As Alec and Elsa wired the spark-gap to the transformer, the transformer to the condenser, the condenser to the spark-coil, and added the key and the cells, Alec explained how messages were sent in varying wave-lengths, and how it was possible to listen to one message and tune out other messages of different wave-lengths.
"If only I had a little more powerful battery," said Alec, "I could talk to my old chums at home. I believe I can easily talk to the big steamers out on the Atlantic, and I'm going to try it. You know one of my chums is Roy Mercer, wireless man of the steamer Lycoming. His boat will be coming up the coast from Galveston in a few days and I'm going to try to get into communication with him. Won't he be surprised to find that I am down in New Jersey and in a fair way to be a sailor myself."
Elsa was fascinated by the wireless. When Alec picked up some of the messages that were flying through the air in the evenings, and copied them down for her, she was so excited she could hardly keep her mind on her lessons.
"If only I could understand what it means," she said, as she sat listening from time to time with the receivers strapped to her ears.
"That's easy," smiled Alec. "I can teach you and you'll be able to learn in a few weeks."