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 striking out titanic chords; it was like some ghostly fingers playing on a harp of haste. McKinnon sat between his four flashing white walls and sent his Hertzian waves arrowing out over the lonely acres of the Caribbean, hurling his coil's mysterious and imponderable force against the engulfing isolation of the sea. Then came a space of silence and again the blue-coloured sprite danced and jigged at the mast head.

As McKinnon had secretly hoped, that sustained rattle and roar of his "spark" brought to his open door the huge and white-clad figure that had been meditatively pacing the bridge-deck.

"Could you take a message for me, if you're in touch with anything?" asked Ganley from the doorway.

The operator put down his earphones and motioned for the other man to enter.

"I thought I had something then," he explained, "but it's only static breaking through!"

"What's static?"

"Lightning-flashes, somewhere beyond the skyline. I can hear 'em go like a roll of drums that bend up to what we call a cough or sneeze."

"Perhaps you're not in good running order," ventured Ganley, eying the apparatus as a