So deafening were the heavy discharges that the girl was glad to get outside.
“Fancy!” she said. “Every ship at sea is listening to the storm warning!”
“Yes,” he replied. “Let us go and see it being sent by the key.”
They crossed to a small building which was divided into two rooms. In one were the operators on the land telegraph line to Marconi House, and in the other sat the wireless operator, a smart-looking, dark-eyed man with the telephones over his ears, tapping out the message in silence, his chin resting upon his hand. There only a slight clicking could be heard, the actual discharge being effected by a relay.
He was repeating the message he had at first sent, making, by dots and dashes, signals as set out by the message written down upon a form before him which had come over the land-wire from the Admiralty ten minutes previously.
When he had finished, he rose and wished Sylvia good-morning, for they had met on the previous day.
“I’m just off to bed, Miss Beverley,” he laughed. “I’ve been on duty all night, and we’ve had unusual traffic with Madrid. First a lot of press, and then a host of commercial messages. There’s some financial trouble in Spain, I think.”
And as the young man said this, Leonard Hamilton, the engineer-in-charge, entered the room on his morning inspection.
“Well, Cator,” he asked, addressing the operator after he had shaken hands with Sylvia, “has the forecast gone out?”
The young man replied in the affirmative, and then handed the telephone to another man, rather slimmer and fair-haired, who had just come on duty; at the same time he signed the log-book, pointing to an entry recording the fact that at seven forty-seven he had called up Madrid on the continuous-wave set, and they had not yet replied.