For three consecutive days the weather remained bright and with very little wind. It was ideal conditions for almost every event except sailing. The Sea Scouts held greasy pole competitions, swimming races, diving contests, and a great water tournament. The latter event was great fun and turned out to be a huge success. There were forty competitors a side, most of them in fancy dress. Each member of the opposing teams was “mounted” on a barrel to which was affixed a rough representation of a horse’s head, the cask being ballasted sufficiently to enable the rider to keep his balance if he used the utmost caution. The offensive weapons consisted of poles ten feet in length terminating in a well-padded ball of rags or oakum, and also of short sticks to which were attached blown-up bladders. Every evening almost every member of the numerous crews went ashore for a camp-fire sing-song, while at various times there were competitions in making bends and splices and other nautical accomplishments. At the close of the fourth day’s sing-song and after most of the audience had dispersed, Mr. Grant sent Craddock to the wireless tent with a message for the Scoutmaster in charge. Arriving at the tent, which was merely for the purpose of keeping the four-valve receiving set in the dry—for when a broadcast concert was on, the sides of the tent were rolled up and the loud speaker brought into the open—Peter found that the Scoutmaster he sought had gone across to the electrician’s quarter in order to arrange about recharging some batteries. “He won’t be long,” added his informant, a King’s Scout belonging to a Berwick Troop. “Try one of these phones while you’re waiting and see what you can pick up. It will only be Morse on the lower wave-lengths, I fancy. Can you read Morse?” “Rather,” replied Peter. “Guess you won’t make head or tail of this lot unless you’ve been trained to it,” continued the Berwick lad. “We had a skilled postal telegraphist in last night, and he was whacked. But you can try.” Craddock put on the head-phones, listened for about twenty seconds, and then turned to his companion. “There’s an S.O.S.,” he declared. “Nonsense!” retorted the other incredulously. “It will be Niton calling CQ. You’re not the first to imagine an S.O.S.” Nevertheless the Berwick Sea Scout took up another pair of phones. He listened and his smile of incredulity vanished. Snatching up a pencil, he wrote rapidly. Peter, too, tried to follow the bewildering succession of perplexing sounds and could not make head or tail of it. He had to wait until his companion had taken down the message and a reply to it. The S.O.S. was to the effect that the S.S. _Lumberjack_ was badly grounded in a thick fog, position approximately six miles north-west of Selsea Bill, and that she was rapidly breaking up in the heavy ground swell.