“Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something,” I said. “We’ve made an accidental discovery—that spark shows that we can increase our power a thousandfold, when we like.”
“It has, no doubt, given the wireless operators at the Admiralty, at Marconi House, and elsewhere a very nasty jar,” laughed Teddy. “They’ll wonder what’s up, won’t they?”
“Well, we can’t help their troubles.” I laughed.
“I expect we’ve jammed them badly,” Teddy said. “Look the aerial is connected up!”
“By Jove! so it is?” I said.
I saw what I had not noticed before, that the network of phosphor-bronze aerial wires strung beneath the roof of the shed had remained connected up with the coils from an experiment we had conducted on the previous afternoon.
“I’ll pump Treeton about it to-morrow. He’ll be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House,” I said. “They’ll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!”
“No doubt. But we may thank our stars that we’re safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We’ll have to exercise far more caution in the future,” declared Teddy.
Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.
Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.