fair."

"How are they going to get hold of it?" asked Bud.

"There's where you're short of imagination, my boy. How many amateurs do
you suppose were listening in and got the messages between you and those
two radio contestants?"

"I bet there were a hundred if there was one," declared Hal.

"And were they interested?"

"Were they?" exclaimed Cub. "Every last one of 'em was wild with
curiosity."

"And did they talk about it to anybody?"

"They didn't talk about anything else," Bud opined.

"And didn't you suppose some of those amateurs know some newspaper
reporters?"

"We fellows all know several reporters," said Cub, with an
appreciative grin.

"All right," said Mr. Perry, significantly. "Now, all I have to say to
you boys is, watch the headlines whenever you get near a news stand."

The three radio boys now repaired to the cabin, while the owner of the
yacht busied himself about matters of nautical interest to him on deck.

"You've got to hand it to my father for one thing," Cub declared as he
seated himself near the radio table and hoisted his feet thereupon. "He
sure has some imagination."

"And some mathematics, too, the way he subtracts mist from mystery every
time our brains get lost in a fog," Hal added, with a self-appreciative
"tee-hee."

Cub and Bud also laughed in spite of Hal's excusable self-appreciation.

"Do you know, I don't feel nearly so mystified as I did before that talk
with your father began," Bud announced.

"It's the mathematics and imagination getting their work in," Cub
explained with a wink.

"It sounds funny, and yet, I can't help feeling there's something to it,"
Hal remarked.

"Well," said Cub, bringing his feet down from the table with enough noise
to rivet a conclusion; "you may call it addition, or subtraction, or
multiplication, or division, or algebra, or geometry, or trigonometry, or
calculus--does that complete the list?--I'm going to make my imagination
leap across the spark gap; so here goes."

He snapped the aerial switch into sending, began to "jiggle" the
key alphabetically, and the spark leaped with successive spits
across the gap.

"Cub's got his goat back," Hal remarked with a knowing look at Bud.

The latter grinned and nodded his concurrence.

CHAPTER VIII

Mathematics or Geography?

But the morning proved to be a poor time for communication by radio for
two reasons. First, the atmosphere was warm, a poor condition for the
transmiss