“Pah! It means electricity in the air that we can’t wholly account for,” said Sparks. “But this----” “What?” “Why, I tell you, George; twice to-night I have almost caught something that seemed to be a message in one of our codes and tuned to this length of spark. But I can’t really make head nor tail of it.” “That wasn’t what you just sent aft to the Old Man?” “Shucks! No! I’ll give you a tip on that, young fellow,” and the radio man smiled. “We’ve been zigzagging across the steamship routes, but now you will notice that we have an objective. That message was from Teneriffe in the Canaries. That big sub has been seen down that way.” “Bully!” exclaimed Whistler, who had come to look into the room over his friend’s shoulder. “Oh, that you, Whistler? Well, there is nothing secret about it. But this confounded ‘ghost talk’----” “Sounds interesting,” Whistler said. “I’m puzzled. I hope I’ll catch it again. It is just as though somebody--a slow operator, regular ham--was trying to put something over and couldn’t quite do it. Funny things we hear in the air, anyway, at times.” He went back to his machine, grumbling, and the boys came away after a bit. The news that the super-submersible had been heard of again was something to talk about, at least, and served to keep them awake through the rest of the watch. In the morning the news that the German submarine was again active in a certain part of the ocean to the southward became generally known. It was likely that the strange and threatening craft, which plainly could make longer cruises than most submarines, had been sent forth to prey upon food ships from South America. She expected to lurk along steamship lanes, like a wolf crouched in the underbrush beside a forest path; and like that wolf, too, she was relentless. Yet, her treatment of captured ships thus far had been more humane than most, as shown by her use of the _Que Vida’s_ crew and passengers. “Still, she’s a regular pirate,” Whistler Morgan said in speaking of this. “See how her men robbed those poor sailors, and even the women.” “Ah, you said something then, boy!” Al Torrance agreed. “I wonder,” George Belding said reflectively, “if the war should end suddenly, and some of these U-boats are out in the various seas, if their commanders won’t become veritable pirates?” “How’s that?” cried Frenchy Donahue. “It’s pirates they are already!” “But to go it on their own hook,” put in Ikey. “I see what Belding means. Just think of a new race of buccaneers! Wow!” “Begorra!” murmured the Irish lad, his eyes shining, “they might infest certain seas like the old pirates of the Spanish Main.” “I hope you see what you’ve started, George,” growled Whistler with mock anger. “Those kids are off again.”