Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

Via Wireless By Edwin Balmer If thrills and Rvely action have any part in the making of a good story — and undoubtedly they have — then this story of adventure at sea in which the wireless telegraph is a great factor, should be, as it is, a most unusual story. The picture of the same name, from which this story is taken, is a production of the Pathe Company. (A Serial Story— Part One) CHAPTER I. A SUSPICION AND A WARNING. I— IS it? A— A! Now I see! That's *• the call in the navy code !" The an, alone in the wireless cabin of the p acht Irvessa, spoke to himself. He '-fanced quickly at his chart, and saw lat the ship must be well within a jndred miles of Samar Island at that foment. Samar is the first of the Phil•pines to be sighted by a ship from • merica making for the lower islands f our troublesome archipelago. i\i The man assured himself, therefore, lat he must be within wireless comlunication of any gunboat on patrol oout those restless southern lands ; then ■e adjusted his telephone receiving • irums, which brought him the signals pom the Marconi detectors. The inruments before him ticked on, and a j:rip of paper tape unrolled from the ;jtomatic recorder. The tiny needle as pricking its record in clearer dots nd dashes now, as the Irvessa pushed ipidly ahead and ran farther within .he signaling ship's zone at communiition. "A — A again !" The man ran the strip Trough his fingers. "Some gunboat or ruiser still sending out the general call -not the private signal, but the navy ,ode call for any ship in communicaon." He loosened the drums from his ears, rose, and stretched himself languidly, lut he made sure that his recorder was 7orking before he left the table, to :and beside the opened windows of the tireless cabin, which commanded a full iew of the smooth, shining sea, and f the yacht's white deck. "I wonder if he's suspecting us; or -just calling?" he said, half aloud, and drugged his shoulders. He was a full-blooded, fair-haired, traight-featured, decidedly tall and well-built young man of thirty-three or four; decidedly handsome, save when the self-consciousness in his smile marred his expression. Aside from the careful choice and cut of his linen clothes, his general bearing gave an impression of breeding and refinement. More conspicuously than this mere breeding, however, he showed a sense of power and progressiveness — qualities which already had brought this young Etherington Pinckney almost international reputation. Barely ten years before, George Durant— the great gunmaker and ordnance expert, popularly known as "the American Krupp" — had employed him as his private secretary. To-day Pinckney was being taken as a guest by Mr. Durant and his daughter upon their private yacht to the Philippines, to advise with his employer and with the board of officers, then in Manila, upon the proper armament and protection of those islands. For already he had won from Mr. Durant his position as trusted manager of the great Durant gun works in Pennsylvania, and had followed in the steps of his famous employer, so that he was recognized as the greatest unofficial expert and adviser in arms and military appliances. Though he was still but a salaried employee; the old man had shown in various ways that he considered him his business heir apparent; and, particularly since Mrs. Durant's death two years before, had encouraged Pinckney in his attentions to his only child, his daughter Frances. Such marked preference as this — to be in the company of Mr. Durant and his daughter for twenty-five days on the trip to the Philippines, not counting the stop at Guam — promised great things, of course ; but even to be the guest of a multimillionaire was hard indeed, and often embarrassing, to a young man still on salary. But even a young man on salary could not wait for his employer to take him into the firm, or to become his father-in-law in order to relieve his threatening embarrassment ! Pinckney was smiling confidently to himself over this, as he sho\ his glance quickly over the yacht's decks in both directions. On the bridge overhead he heard the steady and undisturbed tread of Adrian, the skipper. The sailors forward were busy scrubbing the deck and polishing the brasses ; and far astern Mr. Durant and Frances were still sitting, talking together, under the bright awning which protected them from the tropical sun. Etherington turned back to his wireless resonators. "Still sending the general call — in the navy code," he muttered, as he examined the tape. "And getting no answer ! So there's no one else in communication— or caring to answer ! It might almost seem he is expecting us ; and I might " He stopped, and glanced again in both directions down the deck before he took his seat. He knew that not even the sailors burnishing the brasswork just outside the cabin could hear the clicking of the calls in the receiver ; but Frances and her father, far down at the stern, might make out, in the silence of that smooth sea, the hissing of an answering spark. "I might send him chasing somewhere," he concluded. "There are plenty of places to send him." He smiled as he gazed out on the blue, sunlit, summer sea, stretching to the horizon all about; but just beyond that blue sky line over the bow, he knew, there lay the first of the fifteen hundred islands and islets of the Philippines.