He turned around to his instrument right then and began to rap out the call for the yacht. He kept it up, off and on, between his other work, all the evening. But no answer was returned.
The operator began to be somewhat puzzled by this fact. Knowing how much interested in radio the girls were who had visited him, he could not understand why they would not be listening in at some time or other on the yacht.
He kept throwing into the ether the signal meant for the Marigold's call until almost midnight, when he expected to be relieved by his partner. Towards ten o'clock there was some bothersome signals in the ether that annoyed him whenever he took a message or relayed one in the course of the evening's business.
"Some amateur op. is interfering," was his expression. "But, I declare! it does sound something like this station call. Can it be——?"
He lengthened his spark and sent thundering out on the air-waves his usual reply:
"I, I, O K W. I, I, O K W."
Then he held his hand and waited for any return. The same mysterious, scraping sounds continued. A slow hand, he believed, was trying to spell out some message in Morse. But it was being done in a very fumbling manner.
Of course, half a dozen shore stations and perhaps half a hundred vessels might have caught the clumsy message, as well. But the operator at Station Island, interested by little Henrietta in the Marigold and her company, felt more than puzzlement over this strange communication out of the air.
"Listen in here, Sammy," he said to his mate, when the latter came in. "Is it just somebody's squeak-box making trouble to-night or am I hearing a sure-enough S O S? I wonder if there is a storm at sea?"
"There is," said his mate, sitting down on the bench and taking up the secondary head harness. "The evening papers are full of it. Northeast gale, and blowing like kildee right now."