"The Z99 is moored just below us at my private dock," began the
captain. "I have a shed down there where we usually keep her, but
I expected you, and she is waiting, thoroughly overhauled. I have
signalled to my men--fellows I can trust, too, who used to be with
me in the navy--to cast her off. There--now we are ready."
The captain turned a switch. Instantly a couple of hundred feet
below us, on the dark and rippling water, a light broke forth.
Another signal, and the light changed.
It was moving.
"The principle of the thing," said Captain Shirley, talking to us
but watching the moving light intently, "briefly, is that I use
the Hertzian waves to actuate relays on the Z99. That is, I send a
child with a message, the grown man, through the relay, so to
speak, does the work. So, you see, I can sit up here and send my
little David out anywhere to strike down a huge Goliath.
"I won't bore you, yet, with explanations of my radio-combinator,
the telecommutator, the aerial coherer relay, and the rest of the
technicalities of wireless control of dirigible, self-propelled
vessels.
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