All of that afternoon I read the outgoing messages, but I felt I was losing something by not getting what was coming in. Then a brilliant idea struck me and I immediately proceeded to put it into execution with the result that it almost electrocuted me. I took out my little portable receiving set, hooked a wire to the detector and the other end to the electric light fixture for a _ground_ which, from what I had read about ship stations, I had reason to believe made a connection with the steel hull of the ship. Being so close to the 2 kilowatt (about 2½ horsepower) transmitter, one side of the spark-gap of which also made connection with the hull, I hadn’t the slightest doubt but that I could receive without an aerial and I certainly did, but the kind wasn’t right. No sooner had I put on my head-phones and my fingers on the adjusting screw of the detector than zip, zum, bang, boom, and I received a terrific shock that lifted me clear off the edge of my bunk; I hung suspended in mid-air ’tween decks (or so it seemed) and to give verisimilitude to the _levitation_ act, I recoiled like a 12-inch gun and hit the floor with a dull thud. I was glad the man I laughed at because he forgot, was not there to laugh at the fellow who didn’t know. When I had fully come to and was able to use my thinker again I knocked the wire off of the electric light fixture and then proceeded to examine my receiver to see if anything had been damaged. Beyond burning off the point of my detector there was no scathe done, and I overhauled it and put the instrument back in its box. My next move was to see the operator and hold some small wireless talk with him. It was now late in the afternoon and when I got back it overjoyed me to find that the crowd who hungered to penetrate the mystery of sending messages without wires had fathomed its very depths and departed, that is, all except one young couple who were from Missouri, according to the passenger list, and of course they must needs be shown. The moment I saw the operator’s face I set him down for one of those fresh young fellows you meet everywhere and I did not miss my guess. Now you would hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true, that there are a few operators who think it smart and a great joke to tell land-lubbers anything but the truth whenever they are questioned about wireless. “What I can’t understand,” said the young woman, “is how you can send out a wireless message when the wind is blowing so hard.”