Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/44

 mastheads; he followed the course of those united wires as they led down into the square little station.

Next to this station, on the right, was the ship's lamp-room. In front of it stood the flag-locker. Farther along the deck, he noted, came the chart-room, and then the captain's cabin. In front of that again was the wheel-house and the canvas-strapped bridge.

On this bridge an officer, unsheathing a glass, was peering out to sea. The stranger followed the direction of the pointed glass and made out the ponderously rocking mass of a battleship as she crept up on them through the mist. There was something ominous and authoritative about her, with her sullen turrets and her monotone of colour, as she belched out her black smoke-plumes that hung low on the sky-line.

Then the stranger in the dripping raincoat swung sharply about and looked up at the mast head. As he did so he saw a nervous blue spark appear and disappear at the ends of the taut-strung aerials that cradled back and forth with every dip and plunge of the ship. A muffled crash and clatter of sound echoed out of the closed station; a simultaneous kisshiss [sic] and crackle of broken noise came from the masthead. It was the wireless operator at last working his key. It was the Hertzian waves, erupting