He was sensitizing the detector and soon adjusted the tuning handle for high waves. The chief watched him with a growing appreciation of the boy’s knowledge of the instrument and its government. On these high planes the ether was almost soundless. Only a little static, far-removed, trickled in. It was in the high waves that most of the naval work is done and the sending of orders to distant ships is keyed as fine as a violin string--and sounds as musical. Sliding the tuning handle downward, Belding listened for commercial wave-lengths. Something--something new and unutterably harsh--stuttered in his ear. He jerked back from the instrument and glanced suspiciously at Sparks. “Do you hear it?” the latter demanded. “I hear something,” said the young fellow grimly. “It--beats--me----” Were these the sounds that had been disturbing the radio men, off and on, for a week or more? Laboriously, falteringly, the rasping sounds grated against Belding’s eardrums. It was actually torturing! The atrocious sending began, in Belding’s ear, to be broken into clumsy dots and dashes. The wave-lengths were not exactly commercial; nor did the sending seem to be in the Continental code. He listened and listened; he turned the tuner handle up and down. He got the soundwaves short and got them long; high and low as well. But one fact he was sure of: they were the same sounds--the same series of clumsy dots and dashes--repeated over and over again! George Belding swung at last from the instrument and tore off the receiving harness. Sparks was grinning broadly upon him. “Ugh!” ejaculated the youth. “Is it a joke? I am almost deafened by the old thing.” “What do you make out the ghost talk to be, George?” “Are you sure it isn’t a joke?” “Not on my part, I do assure you,” declared the radio man. “Then,” said Belding slowly, “I believe somebody is trying to communicate a message and for some reason can’t quite put it through.” “Did you get the word ‘_Colodia_’?” Sparks asked quickly. “No, sir. But one word I believe I did get,” said the young fellow gravely. “What’s that?” “‘Help,’” Belding repeated. “‘H-e-l-p, Help.’ That’s what I got and all I got. I do not think I am mistaken in that!” CHAPTER XIX--A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION Had George Belding not been such a stubborn fellow he never would have stuck to his opinion about the strange call received by the _Colodia’s_ radio men, by wireless telegraph. For neither the chief, called Sparks, nor his assistants or students (the latter scornfully entitled “hams”) had spelled anything like “help” out of the strange sounds to which Belding’s attention had been called. “Don’t tell me such stuff,” insisted the chief. “That’s as old as the hills, George. When I first went into wireless, it used to be the standing joke to feed the student a ‘Help! We are lost’ call to steady his nerves. It was called C D Q in those old times.”