The English had so well guarded the port of Gibraltar that it was all a tranquil lake dominated by the Allies.
Before going to bed, the captain entered a room on the upper deck where was installed the wireless telegraph outfit.

The hissing as of frying oil that the apparatus was sending out attracted him.

The operator, a young Englishman, took off his nickel band with two earphones.

Greatly bored by his isolation, he was trying to distract himself by conversing with the operators on the other vessels that came within the radius of his apparatus.

They kept in constant communication like a group of comrades making the same trip and conversing placidly together.
From time to time the operator, advised by the sparking of his induction coils, would put on the diadem with ear pieces in order to listen to his far-away comrades.
"It is the man on the _Californian_ bidding me goodnight," he said after one of these calls.