zone of pale, thin mist, which created
circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined
donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the _Vandalia's_
stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and
deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and
vanished astern.

The wireless-house seemed warm and cozy in the glare of its green and
white lights. An odor of cheap cigarette-smoke puffed out as he opened
the door.

Peter slipped the hard-rubber disks over his ears and tapped the slider
of the tuner. Static was bad to-night, trickling, exploding and
hissing in the receivers.

The electric lights became dim under the strain of the heavy motor, as
he slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a
train of brisk dots and dashes. He snapped up the aerial switch and
listened.

KPH--the San Francisco station--rang clear and loud through the spatter
of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the
Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and retransmitted the message.

Sensitizing the detector, he slid up the tuning handle for high waves.
Static, far removed, trickled in. Then a faint, musical wailing like a
violin's E-string pierced this. The violin was the government station
at Arlington, Virginia, transmitting a storm warning to ships in the
South Atlantic. For five minutes the wailing persisted. Sliding the
tuning handle downward, Peter listened for commercial wave-lengths.

A harsh grinding, unmusical as emery upon hollow bronze, rasped
stutteringly in the head phones. Laboriously, falteringly, the grating
was cleaved into clumsy dots and dashes of the Continental Code, under
the quaking fingers of some obviously frightened and inexperienced
operator. Were these the sounds which had unnerved Dale? For a time
the raspings spelled nothing intelligible. The unknown sender
evidently was repeating the same word again and again. It held four
letters. Once they formed, H-I-J-X. Another time, S-E-L-J. And
another, L-P-H-E.

The painstaking intent, as the operator's acute ears recognized, was
identical in each instance. Frequently the word was incoherent
altogether, the signals meaning nothing.

Suddenly Peter jerked up his head. Out of the jumble stood the word,
as an unseen ship will often stand out nakedly in a fog rift. Over and
over, badly spaced, the infernal rasp was spelling, _H-E-L-P_.

He waited for the sign