ey don't teach those languages where you go to school, Mun
Bun?" suggested Laddie gravely. "I guess they don't in all schools. They
don't in the Pineville school, do they, Russ?"

"I'll ask Mother to send me to a school where they do," declared Mun Bun
before Russ could reply. "I don't need to learn to talk our kind of
talk. I know that already. But birds and dogs and cats are different."

"You talk pretty good, I guess, Mun Bun," said Russ. Mun Bun was quite
proud of this. He did not know that he often said "t" for "c" and "w"
for "r." "But you will be a long time learning to speak so that this
bird could understand."

"Well, I shall try," the littlest Bunker declared confidently.

Anyhow, it was decided that the sea-eagle would have to be released
before Mun Bun learned to talk the eagle language. The quartermaster who
was Russ and Rose's particular friend, came along with some raw meat
scraps for the big bird; but the children had to go to breakfast before
the bird gobbled these up. He was very shy.

Later in the forenoon Russ and Rose were walking along the deck near a
little house amidships and they heard a funny crackling sound--a
crackling and snapping like a fresh wood fire. They stopped and looked
all around.

"I don't see any smoke," said Russ. "But there's a fire somewhere."

"What is that mast with the wires up there for, Russ?" asked his sister,
looking upward.

"Oh! Daddy told me that was the wireless mast," Russ exclaimed.

"But that can't be," said Rose warmly. "It has wires hitched to it; so
it can't be wire_less_."

"You know, Rose, they talk from ship to ship, and to the shore, by
wireless."

"What does that mean?" returned the girl. "A telegraph?"

"That's it!" cried Russ. "And I guess that is what the crackling is.
Listen!"

"Isn't it a fire, then, that we hear?" for the crackling sound
continued.

"That's the electric spark," said her brother eagerly. "That is what it
must be. Let's peep into this room, Rose. It is where the telegraph
machine is."

There was a window near by, but as they approached it the two children
found a door in the wireless house, too, and that door was open. A man
in his shirt-sleeves and with a green shade over his eyes and something
that looked like a rubber cap strapped to his head was sitting on a
bench in front of some strange looking machinery.

He was writing on a pad and the crackling sound came from an electric
spark that flickered back and fort