Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/84

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Jack Heaton

flowing through a wire, and the diamonds are made in an electric furnace.

Now catching seals by wireless was to my mind quite a vague, mysterious and altogether a difficult proposition to see into—even as running a car by electricity was when I was a little shaver. Seals are wonderful creatures, as you will admit if you ever saw them do a balancing act in a show, and I have heard that they have a great liking for music. A seal hunter can take a phonograph, put a band record on it, set it up where there is a patch of seals and start it going. The seals will come out of the water to listen to the sweet strains and every time one puts its nose above the surface the hunter, who is lying a little way off, will shoot it with his rifle. This then is what you might call hunting seals with music.

It looked to me as if we might be told to send out a line of wireless waves to a patch of seals, bend up the ends of a few dashes and when the seals had swallowed them the sailors would heave ho and pull them aboard. But no, catching seals by wireless was not done in quite so direct a fashion, as you will presently see.