Having delivered the survivors of the _Susanne_ to the greater comforts
of an Italian liner bound eastward, the _Colodia’s_ own course was set
for the south and west. Her commander and crew hoped to pick up news of
the _Sea Pigeon_ once again. At any rate, the German raider had been
last seen making off toward the West Indies and the Caribbean.
The destroyer was below the Tropic of Cancer now, and the weather was
exceedingly hot. A dress of dungaree trousers and sleeveless undershirt
was the most popular uniform forward of the bridge, decided Donahue.
“The brass hats who have to fairly live in their uniforms are greatly to
be pitied.”
Drills were not pushed, and many duties became merely a matter of form.
Yet there was a very serious train of thought in the minds of the
Seacove boys and George Belding, as has been shown. There had been
uncertainty enough regarding the voyage of the _Redbird_ to Bahia; but
since the beginning of what the radio men called the “ghost talk” out of
the air, the five friends had all felt a greater measure of anxiety.
Of course, it was by no means certain that these letters in Morse that
suggested the name _Redbird_ had anything to do with Mr. Belding’s ship
and her company. Yet, not having heard in any form from the party bound
for Bahia since the ship left New York, it was not strange that George
Belding and Phil Morgan, at least, should be especially troubled in
their minds.
During the afternoon watch on this day in which George had gone to Mr.
Sparks again, the young fellow got relief and approached the radio room.
The chief was off duty and one of his assistants was at the instrument.
But the older man was lolling in the doorway and welcomed Belding with a
smile.
“Jim, here,” said Sparks, nodding to the student at the instrument, “was
just telling me ‘ghost talk’ is coming over again. He says he gets
‘Colodia’ as clear as can be.”
“My goodness! Then somebody is trying to call us, Mr. Sparks!” murmured
Belding.
“I don’t know. I’ve been keeping track, busy as we have been for a
couple of days. I really think there is some attempt to put a message
over; but whether it is for fun or serious, I would not dare state. Or
whether it is meant for us or not. It isn’t the same message each time.”
“But you do believe that somebody is trying--or something?”
“‘Something’ is good,” growled Sparks. “I’ve made out ‘Colodia’ more
than a few times myself. And I agree that the letters you caught the
last time you were listening in, and which I heard myself, may spell
‘Redbird’. Then, you know, you said you heard ‘help.’”
“Well, I did!” snorted Belding.
The radio chief pushed a square bit of paper into his hand. On it were
set down without spacing of any kind the following line of letters:
“c,o,l,o,d,i,a,h,e,l,p,r,e,d,b,i,r,d,l,b.”
“I will be honest with you, George,” he said, watching closely the
flushing face of the youth. “I really got those letters not half an hour
ago. They were repeated in just that order several times. What do you
make out of them?”
Belding’s excitement was growing momentarily. He seized Sparks’ pencil
and wrote under the row of letters swiftly and surely:
“Colodia--Help--Redbird--L.B.”
The chief nodded. “‘L. B.’ being your sister’s initials, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” cried George breathlessly. “Lilian Belding.”
“Get over there on the bench. Jim will give you the harness. Listen in
and see what you can make of it now,” said Sparks, himself excited.
George slid on to the bench and Jim handed him the receivers and strap.
The youth fitted the discs to his ears, settled himself on the seat, and
opened the key. As usual the static sputtered in the receivers for a
little. He tuned down to the short waves and the strange, grating sounds
began.
It was very bad Morse--clumsy and irregular; but that it was Morse,
Belding was confident. There was something wrong either with the sender
or with the instrument sending.
Belding seized the pad of scratch paper and poised his pencil. For a few
moments the “ghost talk” ceased. Was it all over for the time? He waited
impatiently, growing hot and cold with nervousness.
There were plenty of other wave-sounds in the air, had he cared to
listen to them. But he knew the monotonous and rasping letters--on a
lower plane, even, than the commercial waves--were carried only at the
level to which he had tuned the instrument.
Suddenly: “_Colodia! Colodia! Colodia!_”
The words were rapped out harshly but briskly--each letter plainly to be
read. Then Belding began to set down the unevenly sent letters as he
could make them out, with a dash where he failed to catch the letter
intended:
“c,o,l,o,d,i,a,h,e,l,p,g,e,t,--,a,n,--,s,--,i,z,--,d,r,e,d,b,i,r,d,
--,o,r,b,--,--,i,a,h,e,l,p,l,b,e,l,d,i,--,--.”
George could not stop then to see whether these letters made any sense
or not. He believed the main trouble with the message was that the
sender used no punctuation.
For a brief time the mystery ceased. Then again the sounds broke
out--the same clumsy, uncertain Morse; so bad, indeed, that at first the
listener could make out a letter only now and then:
“l,--,--,--,--,l,--,n,g,--,--,--,a,--,e,r,e,--,b,i,r,--,--,a,i,n,--,e,d,
--,--,t,m,--,--,t,i,n,--,g,e,r,--,--,n,s,s,e,i,z,e,d,s,--,i,--h,e,l,p.”
There was silence again as far as the “ghost talk” was concerned.
Belding waited with his pencil poised over the paper.
His eyes meanwhile scanned the first list of letters he had set down. At
first glance he believed he made out the first three words in the
message. They were, “Colodia,help,get.” After the break and several
disconnected letters the word “redbird” fairly leaped at him from the
page. Then, after a few misses and letters that made no sense, he got
“help” again. Then he saw as clear as day: “L.Belding”--his sister’s
signature!
“Colodia--help--get--Redbird--help--L.Belding.”
The young fellow shook all over as he sat there before the radio
instrument. This was a message from his sister, Lilian. Nothing could
thereafter shake his belief in this statement. And that she and the
_Redbird_ were in peril Belding was positive.
The second combination of letters offered fewer understandable words
than the first, or so it seemed to Belding at that moment. The beginning
of this second message was entirely indistinguishable, but toward the
end he got two words complete--“seized” and “help.”
Altogether he was assured that he had guessed the main trouble with the
sender of these strange messages. The words were all run together and
the awkward and uneven sending made the unpunctuated words very hard to
understand.
Sparks touched him on the shoulder. He had a paper in his hand that a
messenger had just brought. It was a radio that must be sent at once.
“Let me at it for a minute, son,” the radio chief said. “Here’s a report
for headquarters’ base. Did you get anything?”
“I--I don’t know,” murmured George, giving place to the man. He left the
room, taking with him the paper on which he had penciled the broken
messages.
Secretly he was confident that he had heard a call over the radio for
help and that his sister Lilian, on the _Redbird_, was sending it.
He wanted to see Philip Morgan about it--to show the leader of the
Seacove Navy Boys this paper with the two cryptograms he had picked out
of the air. Like Al Torrance, Ikey Rosenmeyer, and Frenchy Donahue,
George had come by this time to look upon Phil Morgan as a fellow of
parts. Phil would be able to help him make these messages out, if
anybody could!
But he could have no time with Whistler until second dog watch that
evening. Then he got the Seacove youth aside and showed him what he had
managed to set down in letters from the “ghost talk” he had listened in
on that afternoon.
Whistler did not know a thing about Morse, or much about radio, but he
had a sharp eye and a clear head. Belding had translated enough words of
both messages to suggest the general trend of them.
“How do you know where the letters ‘break’ if you can’t hear all the
dots and dashes?” Whistler first asked, scanning the paper seriously.
“That appears curious to me.”
“Not in this case. If it is Lil sending--or whoever it is--the sender is
so unfamiliar with the Morse American code that there is a hesitation
between the letters. Why, I thought at first the message was in
Continental code, which is, you know, entirely different from American.”
“It’s all news to me, old boy. Go on.”
“Why, there’s nothing more. If I could hear those words repeated several
times I reckon I’d get most of the letters--and get them straight.”
“I see,” murmured his friend. “And as it is, you have got a good many of
the words, only you haven’t noticed it.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, it is plain,” said Whistler, “that several of the same words are
used in both messages.”
“Yes. ‘Help’, ‘_Colodia_’, ‘_Redbird_’.”
“More than those,” said Whistler. “See! You have ‘seized’ plain as the
nose on your face in the second set of letters.”
“I see that.”
“And there it is in the first list,” and Whistler pointed as he spoke to
a combination of letters and blanks almost immediately following
“Colodia--Help--Get.” “There is ‘s-e-i-z-ed’, plain enough. And, yes, by
Jove! There is ‘redbird’ in the second message. Look here, old man! Let
me go through this.”
“That is what I want you to do,” responded Belding excitedly.
“In the beginning the message surely says: ‘Colodia! Help! Get!----No!
That should not be ‘getmans’ that ‘seized Redbird’. No, no! There is the
same combination in the lower message. It is ‘ger’ down there, not
‘get’,” muttered Whistler, vastly interested now.
With pencil and paper he set to work. In five minutes he offered Belding
the following paragraph as a translation in full of the first message:
“Colodia! Help! Germans seized Redbird for Bahia. Help!--L. Belding.”
“Oh, Whistler, you’ve got it! And it is as we have feared. Those papers
that Emil Eberhardt stole from me back in England have played the
dickens with the _Redbird_ and the folks. I am sure it is Lil trying to
call me--the splendid kid that she is!”
“Hold on! Hold on!” Whistler said, but encouragingly. “Let’s get the
other message, too.”
He set to work on that; but the first of it baffled him. He could only
begin to make it out where the word “Redbird” occurred. From that place
on, it was not so difficult: “Redbird painted out--mutiny--Germans
seized ship--Help.” This second message was not signed with Lilian
Belding’s name or her initials, but George knew the sending to have been
the same as that of the first call for help.
“But, Phil!” gasped the New York youth, “we don’t know a living thing
about where the _Redbird_ is, or what is happening to our folks.”
“You’d think she would have tried to tell their situation in the
message,” rejoined Whistler slowly.
“If she knew. She’s a girl, and wouldn’t be likely to interest herself
much in navigation.”
“Tut, tut, my boy! Everybody at sea takes an interest in the course of
the ship and her speed. Of course they do. Wait! Here is the
abbreviation for longitude right here--‘long.’ Two blanks for the
figures you did not catch, George, my boy!”
“Do you think so?” murmured his friend.
Whistler wrote it “Lat.--,--, long.--,--.” Then he had an inspiration
and put in “name” before “Redbird.”
“There we have it in full--except for the figures of the _Redbird’s_
position. Look out for them next time, George. They are important.”
“Next time, Morgan?” gasped George Belding, excitedly.
“Certainly. It stands to reason your sister is sending out messages for
help whenever she gets a chance at the radio instrument on the
_Redbird_. And take it from me, the most important thing she is trying
to put over is the position of the ship from day to day. They take the
sun at noon, and as soon afterward as she can, Lilian gets to the radio
and sends that information into the air.
“Believe me, George, you have some smart sister, and no mistake!” said
Whistler Morgan in much admiration.