CHAPTER V

The _Vandalia_ was wallowing majestically through long, dead black

swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the

peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly

with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes

darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten

out this latest kink.

What facts of significance he might have discovered from Blanchard were

overshadowed by the purser's suspicious attitude. Blanchard knew, and

Blanchard, for some reason, did not choose to divulge. This made

matters more interesting, if slightly more complicated.

He was now reasonably sure of several things, without really having

definite grounds for being sure. The malignant-eyed Chinese woman and

whoever she had successfully concealed behind her in the loft above Ah

Sih King's were now aboard the _Vandalia_. He was quite positive that

he had recognized her in the woman who had come aboard in company with

the gray-cloaked figure at the last minute before sailing-time.

He recalled the scene on the pierhead, and it occurred to him that the

eyes behind the gray veil, before their owner was whisked up to the

deck and from his sight, had fastened upon him for a long breath.

"Four bells, all well!" bawled the lookout as four clanging strokes

rang out from abaft the wheel-house.

And Blanchard had proved that stateroom forty-four was unoccupied.

Peter decided to borrow a master key in the morning, from the chief

engineer, perhaps, and investigate stateroom forty-four. And with the

feeling that he was on the verge of discovering something which did not

exist, he prepared to turn in.

He was not undressed when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and

the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at

grinning ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame

flung itself in the bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring

face was buried in palsied hands.

"Feel the motion?" Peter pulled down one of the hands, gently

uncovering the expressionless eye.

"I wish I was dead!"

"Want me to finish your trick?"

Dale's face disappeared in the pillow. A moment he was stark. His

head partly revolved, profiling a yellow, pointed nose against the

white of the linen.

"Static's much worse, Mr. Moore. Frisco's sent me the same message

three times now. It's for Honolulu. He says he won't repeat it

again." The pale lips trembled in misery. "And there seems to be a

funny sort of static in the receivers. The dynamos in the engine-room

may cause it."

"That's strange," Peter reflected as he slipped on his blue coat.

"There's never been any induction on board as far back as I can

remember. Does it hum--or what?"

"No, it grates, like static. Sounds like static, and yet it doesn't.

Kind of a hoarse rumble, like a broken-down spark-coil."

Two even rows of white teeth drew in the trembling lip and clung to it.

"That awful staticky sound---- And the _Rover's_ been calling us." He

groaned miserably. "I couldn't answer either of them. I was lying on

the carpet!"

"Get some sleep," advised Peter. "When you feel better come up and

relieve me. If I were you I wouldn't smoke cigarettes when you think

it's rough."

"I won't smoke another cigarette as long as I live!"

Peter slipped into his uniform, draped an oil-skin coat about his

slender shoulders, and made his way up to the wireless house. The

receivers were lying on the floor.

The _Vandalia_ was entering a zone of pale, thin mist, which created

circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined

donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the _Vandalia's_

stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and

deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and

vanished astern.

The wireless-house seemed warm and cozy in the glare of its green and

white lights. An odor of cheap cigarette-smoke puffed out as he opened

the door.

Peter slipped the hard-rubber disks over his ears and tapped the slider

of the tuner. Static was bad to-night, trickling, exploding and

hissing in the receivers.

The electric lights became dim under the strain of the heavy motor, as

he slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a

train of brisk dots and dashes. He snapped up the aerial switch and

listened.

KPH--the San Francisco station--rang clear and loud through the spatter

of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the

Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and retransmitted the message.

Sensitizing the detector, he slid up the tuning handle for high waves.

Static, far removed, trickled in. Then a faint, musical wailing like a

violin's E-string pierced this. The violin was the government station

at Arlington, Virginia, transmitting a storm warning to ships in the

South Atlantic. For five minutes the wailing persisted. Sliding the

tuning handle downward, Peter listened for commercial wave-lengths.

A harsh grinding, unmusical as emery upon hollow bronze, rasped

stutteringly in the head phones. Laboriously, falteringly, the grating

was cleaved into clumsy dots and dashes of the Continental Code, under

the quaking fingers of some obviously frightened and inexperienced

operator. Were these the sounds which had unnerved Dale? For a time

the raspings spelled nothing intelligible. The unknown sender

evidently was repeating the same word again and again. It held four

letters. Once they formed, H-I-J-X. Another time, S-E-L-J. And

another, L-P-H-E.

The painstaking intent, as the operator's acute ears recognized, was

identical in each instance. Frequently the word was incoherent

altogether, the signals meaning nothing.

Suddenly Peter jerked up his head. Out of the jumble stood the word,

as an unseen ship will often stand out nakedly in a fog rift. Over and

over, badly spaced, the infernal rasp was spelling, _H-E-L-P_.

He waited for the signature of this frantic operator. But none

occurred. Following a final letter "p" the signals ceased.

For a minute or two, while Peter nervously pondered, the air was

silent. Then another station called him. A loud droning purr filled

the receivers. Peter gave the "k" signal. The brisk voice of the

transport _Rover_ droned:

"I can't raise KPH. Will you handle an M-S-G for me?"

"Sure!" roared the _Vandalia's_ spark. "But wait a minute. Have you

heard a broken down auxiliary asking for help? He's been jamming me

for fifteen minutes. Seems to be very close, K."

"Nix," replied the _Rover_ breezily. "Can't be at all close or I would

hear him, too. I can see your lights from my window. You're off our

port quarter. Here's the M-S-G."

Peter accepted the message, retransmitting it to the KPH operator, then

called the wheelhouse on the telephone. Quine, first officer, answered

sleepily.

"Has the lookout reported any ship in the past hour excepting the

_Rover_?"

"Is that the _Rover_ on our port quarter?" Quine's voice was gruffly

amazed. Like most mariners of the old school, he considered the

wireless machine a nuisance. Yet its intelligence occasionally caught

him off guard.

"Only thing in sight, Sparks."

Peter made an entry in the log-book, folded his hands and shut his

eyes. The Leyden jars rattled in their mahogany sockets as the

_Vandalia_ climbed a wave, faltered, and sped into the hollow. Far

removed from her pivot of gravity, the wireless house behaved after the

manner of an express elevator. But the wireless house chair was bolted

to the floor.

Wrinkles of perplexity creased his forehead. Had this stuttering

static anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what

terrified creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion?

A simple test would prove if the signals were of local origin--from a

miniature apparatus aboard the ship. He hoped anxiously for the

opportunity. And in less than a half hour the opportunity was given

him.

A tarred line scraped the white belly of the life-boat which swelled up

from the deck outside the door, giving forth a dull, crunching sound

with each convulsion of the engines. The square area above it danced

with reeling stars, moiled by a purple-black heaven.

Peter, who had been studying the tarred rope, swung about in the chair

and dropped an agitated finger to the silvered wire which rested

against the glittering detector crystal. A tiny, blue-red flame

snapped from his finger to the crystal chip! The frantic operator was

aboard the _Vandalia_!

The broken stridulations took on the coherence of intelligible dots and

dashes. The former blundering was absent, as if the tremulous hand of

the sender was steadied by the grip of a dominant necessity; the

signals clarified by the pressure of terror.

"_Do not try to find me_," it stammered and halted.

Some maddened pulse seemed to leap to life in Peter's throat. His

fingers, working at the base of the tiny instrument, were cold and damp.

"_You must wait_," rasped the unknown sender, faltering. "_You must

help me_! _You are watched._"

For a breath there was no sound in the receivers other than the beating

of his heart.

_Click_! _Snap_! _Sputter_! Then: "_Wait for the lights of China_!"

The receivers rattled to the red blotter, and Peter rushed out on deck.

Slamming the door, he stared at the spurting streams of white in the

racing water. Indescribably feminine was the fumbling touch of that

unknown sender!

A grating--hollow, metallic--occurred in the lee of the wireless cabin.

A footfall sounded, coincident with the heavy collision into his side

of an unwieldy figure whose hands, greasy and hot, groped over his.

Both grunted.

"'Sthat you, Sparks?" They were the German gutturals of Luffberg, one

of the oilers on the twelve-to-six watch. "Been fixin' the ventilator.

Chief wondered if you were up. Wants to know why you ain't been down

to say hello."

Peter decided to lay a portion of his difficulties before Minion.