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.