Among the frowzy turnip tops two big dull gray automobiles were
stranded, like large hulks in a small green sea. Alongside them a
devil's darning-needle of a wireless mast stuck up, one hundred and odd
feet, toward the sky. It was stayed with many steel guy ropes, like the
center pole of a circus top. It was of the collapsible model and might
therefore be telescoped into itself and taken down in twenty minutes, so
we were informed pride-fully by the captain in charge; and from its
needle-pointed tip the messages caught out of the ether came down by
wire conductors to the interior of one of the stalled automobiles and
there were noted down and, whenever possible, translated by two soldier-
operators, who perched on wooden stools among batteries and things, for
which I know not the technical names. The spitty snarl of the apparatus
filled the air for rods roundabout. It made you think of a million
gritty slate pencils squeaking over a million slates all together. We
were permitted to take up the receivers and listen to a faint scratching
sound which must have come from a long way off.
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