Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

448 ness. The rain had stopped entirely, giv- — ing place to a dense fog. They should be well through the Golden Gate by this time, he supposed, although in the numerous passages he had made in and out of that world-famous entrance, he had been too busily engaged inevitably to reckon the time. Astonishment slowly grew upon him until it exploded in a sharp gasp. He re- examined the deck to make certain. From fore to aft, not a single light was lit! He snapped off the wireless-room lamp hastily and walked forward. Here he was enfolded by the darkness of a tomb. Not even the green and red sidelights were burning! Nor was the usual spectral glow at the mastheads in evidence. The Barracouda, then, had reverted to her oldest and most successful trick— blockade running! It was dangerous busi- ness. These were war times. The en- trance to the Golden Gate was commanded. for miles by deep mines of the electric-re- lease type, and this area was checkerboard- ed into tiny squares for the. convenience of terribly accurate mortars hidden behind the bulwark of hills. Besides, there were destroyers! Where were the destroyers? A chance shot from that mist-filled void— the game would have been misplayed! Where were the destroyers? Donn Riley shivered unpleasurably as he ulated the flight into the rusty hips of the cargo tramp of an armor-piercing shell, of the type designed to explode upon entrance—the kind of shell which was so successfully being employed on the Atlan- tic to supplement the splendid work of depth bombs, in crumpling up the tin fish! What would such a shell exert its ex- plosion upon in the cankered heart of this hulk? It would twist rusted beams and stanchions into bow-knots; it would blast away garboard strakes like wet tissue-pa- per! And it would elevate the shells of boilers higher than a sea-gull ventured in its wildest flights! These pleasant suppositions were set aside by a gruff salutation from the flying- bridge. Slightly accustomed to the black- ness, his eyes discerned very indistinctly a muffled figure overhead. ARGOSY AND RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE. “You down there, Sparks?’ “Aye, sir!” He had recognized the strained voice of Captain Murdock. ‘What have you picked up?” | ‘Nothing of consequence.” ‘“ Nobody’s called us yet?” “Not yet, sir.” ‘‘Haven’t heard any destroyers asking mysterious messages, or coding?” ‘“Not a pipe out of a gumboat, except a position report from some large war-ship. Pretty far away. Oahu, I should say. Couldn’t make her very plain.” “Good! Stand by your instruments. Yl station a deck-hand outside your door. If any one calls, tell me at once. They’re bound to call us, Riley,” he added irri- tably. ‘‘ You sit tight and say nothing to them till I come.” ‘Dim light on starboard beam, sir,” in- terrupted the lookout in singing voice. “Hush! You’d wake the dead, you idiot!” growled the captain. “ Well, that’s Point Bonita light, Riley. When—#/— they call, let me know at once. Look out for fresh paint. We’re working now.” Donn Riley hastened back to his appa- tatus with a guilty heart. For the past twenty minutes he had not been listening in. A thousand stations might have been calling XYL in that interval without his being the wiser. ' He adjusted the head band, pressed down on the receivers until they created partial vacuums inside his ears, and sen- sitized the detector. Luckily, he had found . a wonderfully delicate fragment of silicon. Static—heat lightning and invisible elec- tric discharges in the upper atmospheric Stratas—hissed and spattered and clicked in the cold receivers, giving sounds not un- like those caused by drawing diamonds sharply across panes of glass. Through this interference he could hear the faint, slow voice of KHK—the station at Honolulu—his old station. It-was like the whisper of memory, rising, falling, now silent, again loud and urgent. times he had caused the piercing voice of KHK to go trumpeting forth into the ut- termost corners of the Pacific! | As chief operator of that splendid instal- dation, he had permitted himself, in one of How many ELOOO (C(O) S (C(O) mM