"Could a
current from one of the batteries have influenced the receiving
apparatus?"
"No," replied the captain mechanically. "I have a secret method of
protecting my receiving instruments from such impulses within the
hull."
Kennedy was sitting silently in the corner, oblivious to us up to
this point.
"But not to impulses from outside the hull," he broke in.
Unobserved, he had been bending over one of the little instruments
which had kept us up all night and bad cost a tedious trip to New
York and back.
"What's that?" I asked.
"This? This is a little instrument known as the audion, a wireless
electric-wave detector."
"Outside the hull?" repeated Shirley, still dazed.
"Yes," cried Kennedy excitedly. "I got my first clue from that
flickering Welsbach mantle last night. Of course it flickered from
the wireless we were using, but it kept on. You know in the gas-
mantle there is matter in a most mobile and tenuous state, very
sensitive to heat and sound vibrations.
"Now, the audion, as you see, consists of two platinum wings,
parallel to the plane of a bowed filament of an incandescent light
in a vacuum.
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