For there are other senses besides that of sight which now pierce the darkness and span the waste distances of the ocean. It is no voiceless solitude through which the _Titanic_ goes on her way. It is full of whispers, summonses, questions, narratives; full of information to the listening ear. High up on the boat deck the little white house to which the wires straggle down from the looped threads between the mastheads is full of the voices of invisible ships that are coming and going beyond the horizon. The wireless impulse is too delicate to be used to actuate a needle like that of the ordinary telegraph; a little voice is given to it, and with this it speaks to the operator who sits with the telephone cap strapped over his ears; a whining, buzzing voice, speaking not in words but in rhythms, corresponding to the dots and dashes made on paper, out of which a whole alphabet has been evolved. And the wireless is the greatest gossip in the world. It repeats everything it hears; it tells the listener everyone else’s business; it speaks to him of the affairs of other people as well as his own. It is an ever-present eavesdropper, and tells you what other people are saying to one another in exactly the same voice in which they speak to you. When it is sending your messages it shouts, splitting the air with crackling flashes of forked blue fire; but when it has anything to say to you it whispers in your ear in whining, insinuating confidence. And you must listen attentively and with a mind concentrated on your own business if you are to receive from it what concerns you, and reject what does not; for it is not always the loudest whisper that is the most important. The messages come from near and far, now like the rasp of a file in your ear, and now in a thread of sound as fine as the whine of a mosquito; and if the mosquito voice is the one that is speaking to you from far away, you may often be interrupted by the loud and empty buzzing of one nearer neighbour speaking to another and loudly interrupting the message which concerns you.