Had George Belding not been such a stubborn fellow he never would have
stuck to his opinion about the strange call received by the _Colodia’s_
radio men, by wireless telegraph. For neither the chief, called Sparks,
nor his assistants or students (the latter scornfully entitled “hams”)
had spelled anything like “help” out of the strange sounds to which
Belding’s attention had been called.
“Don’t tell me such stuff,” insisted the chief. “That’s as old as the
hills, George. When I first went into wireless, it used to be the
standing joke to feed the student a ‘Help! We are lost’ call to steady
his nerves. It was called C D Q in those old times.”
“I am not kidding,” said George Belding rather sullenly, for he did not
like to be laughed at.
“No. And don’t try to make me believe that anybody is trying to kid you
with a ‘help’ call,” Sparks said, shaking his head.
But as we have said, George was stubborn. Sparks thought he had spelled
out the name of the destroyer in those grating sounds. If so, why
shouldn’t it be just as reasonable that Belding had heard the dots and
dashes spelling ‘h-e-l-p’?
Belding put this up to Whistler and Al when he had a chance to tell them
about it in the first dog watch. He was not excited at all. He simply
did not like to have his word doubted or be laughed at by Sparks.
“As for being laughed at,” the very sensible Philip Morgan said, “it
strikes me that I wouldn’t be worried by that. Your opinion is just as
good as old Sparks’ or anybody else’s, for that matter. Eh, Al?”
“Why not?” returned the other Seacove boy. “It was George heard the
sounds, not Sparks. Get a chance to listen in again, George.”
“Can it be possible that there is somebody trying to send a message for
help to the _Colodia_?” Whistler went on slowly.
“Cracky!” ejaculated Al, “I didn’t think of that.”
“Sparks says that he thought he spelled out the destroyer’s name. George
has heard the word ‘help.’ Get after it, George!” he added, earnestly.
“Don’t let ’em put you down.”
“But who under the sun would be doing such a thing?” demanded Al. “Is it
a joke, after all?”
“It will be a sorry joke if our Government gets after the sender. The
law is mighty strict about private wireless plants, you know,” said Phil
Morgan.
“There is one sure thing,” declared Belding. “If anybody is trying to
call this ship, they don’t know much about the regulation codes and
sendings. They don’t know the destroyer’s number, and the way they
handle Morse is a caution to cats!”
“Stick to it,” advised Whistler.
But George did not really need to be urged in this direction. The next
afternoon watch he was back at the radio room begging to “listen in”
again. Because of the interest the radio men had begun to feel in the
“ghost talk” in the air at this time of day, both Sparks and one of his
assistants were on hand.
The regular radio men were listening for the peculiar voice in the
wireless, at all hours; but it seemed to be confined now to an hour or
two in mid-afternoon. One after the other the _Colodia’s_ radio force
slipped on the receiving harness and listened to the mystery. Belding
got his chance, in spite of the fact that Sparks laughed at him.
This time Belding kept the instrument tuned down to the commercial waves
on which it seemed the “ghost talk” was the more easily transmitted. Now
and then he got the spelling of a letter clearly. But not a word in its
entirety did he hear on this day--not even “help.”
“I get ‘r’, ‘d’, and ‘b’ a lot,” he signed, turning the receiver over to
Sparks again. “They are in rotation--‘r’, ‘d’, ‘b’--and sometimes there
follows another ‘d’. There are letters missing between them, excepting
between the ‘b’ and the first ‘d’.”
“No ‘help’ stuff, eh?” queried Sparks.
“Nor any ‘_Colodia_’,” snorted Belding.
But he sat and watched the radio chief give his full attention to the
mystery, and after a minute or two saw that the man was spelling
something out carefully on the pad of scratch-paper under his hand.
Belding peered over his shoulder and saw Sparks set down these letters
as he heard them in the sound waves:
R DB
R DB R
R DB D
RE B D
R D RD
R DB
RE I
Sparks pulled off the harness and swung about to look at George Belding.
“Is that about what you heard?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir. At least, in part.”
“Well, hang it all!” cried Sparks. “That’s a still newer combination.
It’s neither ‘_Colodia_’ nor ‘help.’ I tell you it beats me, George.”
When Belding left the wireless room he took with him the piece of paper
on which Sparks had written. The letters in combination seemed to mean
nothing; but he showed them to Whistler and Al Torrance when he found
those two chums together.
“Looks like one of those puzzles they have on the back page of the
papers at home,” said Al. “You know: The ones you are supposed to fill
in with other letters to make ’em read the same up and down and across.”
“This is no acrostic,” said Belding firmly.
But Whistler stared steadily at the paper for some minutes without
saying a word. Only his lips slowly puckered, and Al nudged him to break
off the thoughtful whistle which he knew his chum was about to vent.
“Huh? Oh! All right,” murmured Morgan, accepting Al’s admonition.
“What do you see?” asked Belding.
“I see that it is the same word each time, of course,” replied Whistler.
“But I don’t believe my eyes.”
“What’s that?” demanded the other two boys.
“If the ghost of the air,” said Whistler gravely, “did not spell out the
name of this destroyer this afternoon, it certainly did try to put over
the name of another ship.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Al. “Tell us.”
“What ship do you mean?” asked Belding, scowling thoughtfully at the
paper.
Quickly Whistler covered the letters on the sheet as, with his own
pencil, he filled in the gaps between them. When he flashed the sheet
before the eyes of his two friends each of the lines of letters made the
same word. And that word was:
REDBIRD
“My goodness! You have gone crazy, Phil Morgan!” almost shouted Belding.
“Cracky! that’s the ship your sisters and Belding’s folks are aboard,
you know,” gasped Torry. “Why, Whistler, I believe with George that you
_are_ crazy!”
“All I see,” said Morgan, quite unruffled, “is that George brought us
some letters that, very easily and sensibly, make the name of his
father’s ship now bound for Bahia.”
“Cracky!” exclaimed Al again.
“But--but do you suppose anything has happened to father, mother and the
girls? Do you really, Morgan?”
“Who said anything about ‘something happening’ to them?” demanded his
friend with some heat. “I am merely pointing out the possibility that
the name of that ship is in a wireless message that somebody seems
anxious to put over.”
“But who--what----”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Whistler, stopping Belding at that point. “We don’t
know. We have merely learned that the radio men first spelled out the
name of this destroyer. Now you and the chief have caught the name of
the _Redbird_. The two names seem to be in the combination. Therefore,
is it ‘crazy’, as you fellows say, for me to suggest that perhaps the
mysterious message deals with both of the vessels named?”
“I begin to see your idea, Phil,” admitted Belding. “But it did shake
me. You know, I spelled out ‘help’ first of all.”
“But you did not get that to-day,” said Whistler quickly. Then he added:
“We know the _Redbird_ is fitted with wireless.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps somebody aboard is trying to send a message to us just for
fun.”
“For fun, indeed!” exclaimed Al Torrance. “People aren’t fooling with
the radio ‘for fun’ in these times.”
“I don’t know. You know how girls are,” drawled Whistler. “George, does
your sister Lilian know anything about Morse and the radio?”
“Oh, my prophetic soul!” gasped Belding, suddenly arousing to the point
Whistler made. “I should say she did! Lil got to be fairly good at both
sending and receiving when we had the plant on the roof of our house.”
“Could this be Lilian trying to get a message over to us--just for fun?”
“Cut out the ‘fun’ business,” implored Al. “That doesn’t sound
reasonable.” But that was the very idea that caught George Belding.
“She’s that kind of girl,” he declared. “Tell her she must not do a
thing, and she’s sure to try it. But I don’t understand----”
“Of course, it’s only a guess on my part,” Whistler said quickly. “But
can’t you think of some way to try her out--identify her, you know? Tell
Sparks what you think and get him to let you try to send her a message.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Al. “So there’s nothing more than _that_ in it?
Shucks! Another mystery gone fooey.”
“Phil’s idea does sound awfully reasonable,” added Belding, evidently
much relieved in his mind.
Phil Morgan’s countenance did not reveal his secret gravity. He still
remembered that the word “help” had been connected with the names of the
two craft--the destroyer and the merchant vessel--which seemed to be a
part of the strange message out of the air.