Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/203

Rh aerials of the "wireless" apparatus, was fastened firm into the bed rock of a steep white cliff, cutting a little cape out from the rugged Cornish coast; and the little stone station, which housed the batteries and coils of the sending and receiving apparatus, stood even closer to the edge of the cliff at whose base the white breakers from the end of the English Channel were beating against the boulders.

A cool, fresh breeze was blowing in from the Atlantic, and before it a fleet of Brixham trawlers, all speckled and splashed with the flying spray, coasted cautiously toward Plymouth, while two eight-knot tramps, outward bound, beat out into the channel on a long slant. A three-funnelled cruiser, far from shore, was blowing great puffs of steam up under its smoke to assure a double-reefed schooner that it intended to pass to starboard. But neither Preston nor the girl could see, from that high little point piercing the sea, any sign of another ship, or even a shred of smoke which might be from the Bahia.

179