d often talked with Arlington, both sending and
receiving messages from the great station. But though he recognized the
voice, he did not know the language he heard; for Arlington was flinging
abroad a message in the secret code of the navy. Press messages and
commercial communications were buzzing through the air like swarms of
bees. Orders to departing steamships came surging over his line.
Suddenly a strong whining note filled the air, drowning out all other
notes, and Henry knew the Brooklyn Navy Yard was talking. He caught
messages from the Waldorf, from the Wanamaker station, from the police
wireless. Never had he heard so many messages or imagined that the air
could be so filled with talk. And had he not been a very able operator,
he would have been so confused by the babel that he would have understood
none of it clearly. But he tuned sharply, shutting out interfering
vibrations, and caught clearly message after message. But every message
that he intercepted was sent by a regularly licensed station.

After he had sufficiently tested his instruments, and assured himself of
their ability to register even the faintest sounds sharply and
distinctly, Henry shifted his coils and condensers again and began to
listen in for messages of less than three hundred meters' wave length.
Instantly the room that had hummed with voices grew silent as a cave. No
message, no vibrations, no whisper of sound came to his waiting ears.
For three hours he sat, continually shifting his coils, but he heard
nothing. As well might he have sat three hours by a rock, waiting for it
to speak. And well he knew that this was only the first of many long
weary watches that would be kept ere the voice they looked for would come
out of the air.

Vividly Henry recalled the long vigils at Camp Brady, when he sat for
many hours at a time listening for the call of the dynamiters. He
remembered how irksome that had been. He remembered the chill of the
night and the silence of the great forest. Here the watchers would be
more comfortable, but the vigil was likely to be as tedious and trying as
their watch in the Pennsylvania mountains had proved. But that watch had
been rewarded. The dynamiters had been located and captured. And Henry
never doubted that this vigil, too, would meet with success. So he
schooled himself to patience and keyed his ear and his instrument to the
keenest pitch.

Meantime his companions had lost not a moment in