One thing George Belding did learn from his friend, Sparks: The “ghost talk” was rife in the static once more. This wireless spectre had all the operators in a disturbed state of mind, to say the least. “Sparks seems to have lost his common sense for fair, over it,” Al Torrance observed. “You know more about this aero stuff than any of us, George. What do you really think it is? Somebody trying to call the _Colodia_?” “That is exactly what Sparks doesn’t know. He admitted to me that he caught the destroyer’s name, but not her number. It’s got so now this ‘ghost’ breaks in at a certain time in the afternoon watch--just about the same time each day. One of his assistants says he has spelled out ‘_Colodia_,’ too. But it may be nothing but a game.” “How ‘game’?” asked Ikey eagerly. “Somebody fooling with a machine. Sparks says the sounds grate just like ‘static!’” “And that is as clear as mud,” complained Frenchy Donahue. “Could this unexplained talk be some new German code?” Whistler Morgan asked. “All Sparks got is in English; but it doesn’t amount to any sense, he says. If it is a code, he never heard the like before.” “It might be a German code with English words,” put in Al. “One word in code means a whole sentence.” “I believe you! Wish Sparks would let me put on the harness and listen in on it,” grumbled Belding. “I haven’t forgotten the wireless Morse I learned back there before the war.” “Go to it, George,” urged Al. “I wish I knew Morse,” added Whistler. “Get into it, George. Get Sparks to let you try a round with the ‘ghost talk.’ He is friendly to you.” Thus encouraged, Belding took a chance with the chief of the radio during that very afternoon watch. It was during these hours, it was reported, that the strange and mysterious sounds broke in upon the receiving and sending of the operators aboard the _Colodia_. “It is against the rules to let you into this room, boy,” Sparks told him, smiling. “I can’t give up my bench to a ham.” “I’m no ham, Mr. Sparks,” declared Belding. “I’ve shown you already that I can read and send Morse.” “I don’t know,” the radio man murmured, shaking his head. But he was really fond of George Belding, and the latter had to coax only a little more. This, as a rule, was not a busy hour. He allowed the youth to slide in on the bench and handed him the head harness. George slipped the hard rubber discs over his ears and tapped the slide of the tuner with a professional finger. “Plenty of static,” he observed, for it was trickling, exploding, and hissing in the receivers. “No induction,” Sparks suggested. Belding slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a train of brisk dots and dashes. Belding snapped up the aerial switch and listened. The message he was catching from the air was nothing to interest him or the _Colodia_.