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Title: The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic
Author: Goldfrap, John Henry
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic" ***
[Illustration: Then, shoving the men aside, he dived from the edge of
the dock.—_Page 8._]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
OCEAN WIRELESS BOYS
ON THE ATLANTIC
BY
CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON
AUTHOR OF “THE BOY AVIATORS’ SERIES,” “THE
DREADNOUGHT BOYS’ SERIES,” ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES L. WRENN_
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1914,
BY
HURST & COMPANY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LOOKING FOR A JOB 5
II. JACK’S HOME 13
III. CAPTAIN TOBY READY—DOCTOR-AT-LARGE 19
IV. THE REJECTED REWARD 27
V. THE WIRELESS BOY’S FIRST POSITION 38
VI. LEARNING THE ROPES 47
VII. IN THE TEETH OF THE STORM 55
VIII. SIGHTING THE WRECK 62
IX. A TALK ON WIRELESS 70
X. OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS 77
XI. TO THE RESCUE 87
XII. JACK DISOBEYS ORDERS 95
XIII. OLD ANTWERP 106
XIV. SIGHT-SEEING 115
XV. AN ADVENTURE— 123
XVI. AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 130
XVII. RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET 137
XVIII. IN DURANCE VILE 143
XIX. THE FIELD OF WATERLOO 155
XX. HOMEWARD BOUND 164
XXI. SURGERY BY WIRELESS 172
XXII. “YOU SAVED MY ARM” 178
XXIII. A RIOT ON THE DOCKS 184
XXIV. A CALL FOR THE POLICE 192
XXV. IN THE NICK OF TIME 198
XXVI. A FRIENDLY WARNING 204
XXVII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING 210
XXVIII. IN THE HOSPITAL 216
XXIX. JACK HAS VISITORS 224
XXX. THE REJECTED OFFER 230
XXXI. A WHISPER OF DANGER 237
XXXII. ICEBERGS! 244
XXXIII. THE COLLISION 250
XXXIV. QUELLING THE MUTINY 258
XXXV. A CALL FOR HELP 266
XXXVI. LOOKING FOR THE BURNING YACHT 272
XXXVII. THE MATE’S YARN 278
XXXVIII. IN SIGHT OF SMOKE 285
XXXIX. ADRIFT ON A LIFE RAFT 291
XL. THE RESCUE OF MR. JUKES 297
XLI. A JOYOUS REUNION 303
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ocean Wireless Boys
on the Atlantic
CHAPTER I.
LOOKING FOR A JOB.
Jack Ready was making his way home. He was a tall, well-set-up lad of
sixteen, and when in a good mood was a wholesome, cheerful-looking
youngster.
But now, as he trudged along the rough, deeply rutted road that skirted
the crowded wharves and slips of the Erie Basin, his attitude toward
life was anything but amiable.
“It just seems as if I get turned down everywhere,” he muttered to
himself as he turned aside to avoid a big automobile truck that was
rumbling away from a squat, ugly-looking tank steamer lying at a dock
not far off. “Too young, they all say. If only I could get a chance at a
wireless key, I’d show them, but—Oh! what’s the use! It’s me for a shore
berth till I’m old enough to try again, I guess. Hullo, what’s the
matter over there?”
His attention had been caught by a sudden stir on the dock alongside the
home-looking “tank.” She was a type of oil carrier familiar to the boy,
as many vessels of a similar sort docked in the Erie Basin, New York’s
biggest laying-up place for freight ships. This particular craft was
black and powerful looking, with two pole masts bristling with derricks,
and a tall funnel right astern painted black, with a red top.
But it was not the appearance of the steamer that interested the boy. It
was a sudden rush and stir on the wharf alongside that had arrested his
steps.
He could see the men, who had been engaged in various tasks about the
vessel, running about and shouting and pointing down at the water
between the ship’s side and the pier.
Evidently something very out of the ordinary was occurring. Glad of any
opportunity to divert his thoughts from his fruitless search for
employment as a wireless operator, Jack ran toward the scene of the
excitement.
As he came closer he could distinguish some of the shouts.
“Throw her a rope, somebody!”
“She’s still down there!”
“No, she isn’t!”
These and a dozen other agitated cries and contradictions were flying
about from mouth to mouth, and on the faces of the speakers there were
looks of the greatest agitation.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” demanded Jack, running to the edge of
the dock where the crowd of ’longshoremen and deck hands and sailors
were clustered.
“It’s Mrs. Jukes’ little girl. She—she’s fallen overboard!” cried a man.
“She’s down there in the water,” explained another one. “She was
clinging to a pile a minute ago. We’re trying to get a rope to her.”
“What! There’s a child down there and nobody’s gone after her?” cried
Jack indignantly.
As he spoke he stripped off his coat and removed his boots almost with
one operation. Then, shoving the men aside, he dived from the edge of
the dock into the strip of dark, dirty water that lay between the ship
and the wharf.
Clinging frantically to one of the piles supporting the dock was a
little girl with a wealth of fair hair and a pretty, flower-like face.
Too terrified even to scream, she was holding to the rough woodwork with
all her little strength, but the expression of her face showed plainly
that the struggle could not last much longer. In fact, as Jack, with a
few strong, swift strokes, reached her side her grip relaxed altogether,
and she slipped back into the oil-streaked water just in time for his
strong arms to seize and hold her.
It was all over so quickly that hardly a moment seemed to have elapsed
from the instant that the lad sprang from the stringpiece of the dock to
the time when the cheering crowd above beheld him clinging to the rough
surface of the pile with one hand, while with the other he supported the
child, who had fainted and lay white-faced and weak in his grasp.
“Throw me a rope, some of you,” cried the boy, and in a jiffy a stout
rope, with a loop in it, came shaking down to him.
He gently placed the loop under the child’s arm-pits, and when this was
done, and it was not accomplished without difficulty, he signaled to the
onlookers above to hoist up the unconscious little form. They hauled
with a will, and in almost as brief a time as it takes to tell it
Marjorie Jukes, daughter of the owner of the Titan Line of tank
steamers, was on the dock once more with a doctor, hastily summoned from
another vessel, attending to her.
Jack’s turn at the rope came then, and by dint of scrambling on his part
and stout pulling from a dozen brawny arms above he, too, was presently
once more in safety. Just as he reached the dock, dripping wet from his
immersion, he heard the doctor asking how the child had come to go
overboard.
“Her dad, he’s Jacob Jukes, the big ship-owner, was ashore there in the
warehouses with the captain, fixing up an invoice,” Jack heard one of
the sailors explaining. “Little Miss here was playing on the dock,
waiting till her dad came back.
“All at once, afore any of us knowed a thing, there she was overboard.
We all lost our heads, I guess. Anyhow, if it hadn’t been for a lad that
suddenly bobbed up from no place in particular she might have
drown-ded.”
“Here’s her dad coming now!” cried another.
Someone had found the ship-owner, and, hatless and white-faced, he was
racing down to the dock from the gloomy red brick pile of warehouses
ashore.
“She’s all right, sir!” shouted one of the sailors. “See, she’s openin’
her eyes, sir!”
“Thank God!” breathed her father reverently. “I should never have left
her. Get my automobile, somebody. I must rush her home at once.”
In a few minutes a big limousine came purring down the dock from the
rear yard of the storehouses. In the meantime Mr. Jukes, a handsome,
florid-faced man of about fifty years of age, with a somewhat
overbearing manner, as perhaps became his importance and wealth, had
been informed of Jack’s brave rescue while he stood with his little
daughter bundled up tenderly in his arms, the water from her wet
clothing streaming, unregarded by him, down his broadcloth coat.
“Where is he? Where is that boy?” he demanded. “I want to see him. I
must reward him handsomely.”
But Jack had vanished.
“He must be found. Does nobody know his name?” asked Mr. Jukes as if he
were issuing an order. “I want to see him at once. Who is he? Does he
live hereabouts?”
But nobody appeared to know. As for Jack, being satisfied that the child
was out of all danger, and having no desire to pose as a hero, he had
slipped off home at the earliest opportunity, shivering slightly in his
wet clothing, for it was late fall and a chilly wind swept about the
crowded docks and ship-filled slips.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II.
JACK’S HOME.
It was an odd home for which Jack was bound. Tucked away in a quiet
corner of the bustling Basin was a sort of ocean graveyard. Here old
ships that had outlived their usefulness lay in peace until they were
sold to be broken up or to be converted into barges or to meet some such
end. Tall-sparred clippers that had once proudly swept the seven seas,
rusty old tramp steamers, looking like the wrecks of marine hoboes that
they were, and venerable ferryboats, all rubbed sides in this salt water
cemetery.
In the farthest part of this quiet corner of the Basin lay a derelict
two-masted schooner of an entirely different type from the other craft.
To begin with, she was much smaller, and then again, instead of
displaying rusty iron sides, or gaping, bleached wooden ones, she was
gayly painted, with red and green hull and bulwarks. Her deck-house
astern was a veritable marine garden, and bright-colored blossoms of all
kinds, even though the season was late, bloomed from numerous boxes
placed on the roof and about the taffrail.
A plank connected this queer-looking craft with the shore, and a column
of smoke ascending from a pipe stuck through the cabin roof, as well as
the curtained windows and general look of neatness, showed that someone
made a home on this retired wanderer of the seas. It bore the name
“Venus” on either side of a dilapidated figurehead, doubtless intended
to represent the goddess of love. The effigy’s one remaining eye sadly
surveyed the deep-sea vagabonds about her.
If the above evidences that the old schooner was used as a habitation
had been lacking, there still would have remained proof that Captain
Toby Ready made his home there, for, nailed to one side of the flowering
cabin-house, was a large sign. On it in sprawling characters of white on
a black background was the following inscription:
CAPTAIN TOBY READY
HERB DOCTOR AND COMMON-SENSE MEDICO-AT-LARGE
TO THE SEA-GOING PROFESSION
All sailors who want to be strong and be steady,
Call ’round to see Capt’n Toby Ready.
Although the Captain is no M.D.,
He’ll fit you out quite _Ready_ for sea.
Here it was that Jack had made his home since the death of his father,
Captain Amos Ready, at sea some years before. His Uncle Toby was thus
left his sole surviving relative, for his mother had died soon after
Jack’s birth. So Jack had lived with his eccentric relative on the old
schooner, bought by Captain Toby many years before as a Snug Harbor.
The boy had helped his uncle compound his liniments and medicines, which
had a ready sale among the old-time ship captains. They had more faith
in Uncle Toby’s remedies than in a whole shipload of doctors. Captain
Toby had, in his day, commanded fast clippers and other sailing vessels.
On long voyages he had amused himself by studying pharmacy till he
believed himself the equal of the entire college of surgeons. At any
rate, if his medicines did no good, at least they never did any harm,
and Jack was kept busy delivering orders for Captain Toby’s compounds to
various vessels.
With such a line of sea-going ancestry, it was natural that the boy
should have a hankering for the sea. But, together with his love of a
seafaring life, Jack had developed another passion, and this was for
wireless telegraphy.
Slung between the two bare masts of the old schooner was the antennæ of
a wireless apparatus, and down below, in his own sanctum in the
schooner’s cabin, Jack had a set of instruments. It was a crude enough
station, which is hardly to be wondered at, considering that the boy had
constructed most of the apparatus himself.
But Jack had a natural leaning for this sort of work, and his home-made
station gave satisfactory results, although he could not catch messages
for more than fifty miles or so. This, however, had not prevented him
from becoming an adept at the key, and his one great ambition was to get
a berth on one of the liners as a wireless operator.
So far, however, he had met with nothing but rebuffs. Wireless men
appeared to be as common as blackberries.
“Come back when you’re older. We can’t use kids,” the head of a big
wireless concern had told him. And that was the substance of most of the
replies to his applications for a job at the work he loved.
That day he had tramped on foot to Manhattan and made his weary round
once more, with the same result. Footsore and thoroughly discouraged, he
had trudged back over Brooklyn Bridge and across town to the region of
the Basin, where the air bristled with masts and derricks, and queer,
foreign, spicy smells issued from the doors of warehouses. He walked,
for the excellent reason that he was young and strong, and every nickel
saved meant a better chance to improve the equipment of his station on
the old _Venus_.
He cheered up a bit as he came in sight of his floating home. He had
grown to like his odd way of life, and he had a sincere affection for
his eccentric old uncle. Determined not to let the old man see his
disappointment, he struck up “Nancy Lee,” whistling it bravely as he
crossed the rickety gangplank, walked over the scrupulously scrubbed
deck and dived down the companionway into one of the strangest homes
that any boy in all New York ever inhabited.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
CAPTAIN TOBY READY—DOCTOR-AT-LARGE.
As Jack entered the cabin he was greeted by a succession of shrill
shrieks and whoops.
“Ahoy, my hearty! Never say die! Don’t give up the ship! Kra-a-a-a!”
“That is good advice, Methusaleh,” laughed the boy, addressing himself
to a disreputable-looking parrot that stood balancing itself on a perch
in a cage that hung in one corner of this queer abode.
The ports which the cabin had originally boasted had been enlarged and
formed into windows, through which the light streamed cheerfully. Red
cotton curtains hung at these casements and gave a dash of color to the
dark wooden walls of the place. In the center was a swinging table and
some rickety chairs; at one end was a sea-stove, a relic of the
schooner’s sea-going days, and at the opposite end of the cabin, at the
stern portion of it, was a bulkhead and a door.
From beyond this door came the clinking of glasses and the sound of
pounding. It was Captain Toby hard at work in his sanctum compounding
his medicines. Jack turned into another door alongside the stove, on the
other side of which there was a similar portal.
These doors led into the cabins respectively of Jack and his uncle.
Jack’s cabin was a neat little combination workshop and sleeping place.
On a shelf opposite his bunk was his wireless set, with the wires
leading down to it from the aerials above. Another shelf held his stock
of books, mostly of a scientific character, dealing with his favorite
pursuit. The rest of the space in the not very large cabin was occupied
by a work bench, cluttered with tools and stray bits of apparatus.
Jack had no wish to worry his uncle with an account of the happenings of
the afternoon, so, before seeking him, he slipped out of his wet clothes
and donned the overalls in which he usually worked. There was another
reason for this, too, for the suit in which he had dived to the rescue
of little Marjorie Jukes was the only one he boasted.
Having hung up his garments carefully, so that they would dry as free
from wrinkles as possible, Jack left the cabin and made for his uncle’s
sanctum in the stern.
“Well, Jack, my hearty, what luck?” inquired the old man as the boy
entered.
Jack shook his head.
“The same old story, Uncle Toby. What are you busy at?”
“An order for the ‘Golden Embrocation and Universal Remedy for Man and
Beast’ for Cap’n Styles of the _Sea Witch_,” rejoined his uncle in his
deep voice, hoarse from many years of shouting orders above gales and
storms. “If you really want to go to sea, Jack, I’ll get you a berth
with Cap’n Styles. The _Sea Witch_ is a fine old Yankee ship; not one of
your smoke-eating tea-kettles.”
“But she has no wireless?” questioned Jack, gazing about him at the
compartment, which was stocked with the tools of the captain’s trade:
herbs in bundles, bottles, pestles and mortars and so forth. A strong
aromatic odor filled the air, and the captain hummed cheerily as he
poured a yellow, evil-smelling liquid from a big retort into half a
dozen bottles, destined to cure the ills of Captain Styles.
“Wireless! Of course not, my hearty. What does a fine sailing ship want
with a wireless? Take my word for it, Jack, wireless is only a
newfangled idee, and it won’t last. Give a sailor sea-room and a good
ship and all that fol-de-rol is only in his way.”
“And yet I saw the news of another rescue at sea by means of the
wireless when I was looking at a newspaper bulletin-board to-day,”
rejoined the lad. “The crew of a burning tramp steamer was rescued by a
liner that had been summoned to their aid by the apparatus. If it hadn’t
been for wireless, that ship might have burned up with all hands, and no
one ever have known her fate.”
His uncle grunted in the manner of one unconvinced.
“Well, I ain’t saying that wireless mayn’t be all right for one of them
floating wash-boilers, but for Yankee sailors, good rigging and canvas
and a stout, sweet hull is good enough to go to sea with.”
As he went on with his work, he began rumbling in a gruff, throaty bass:
“Come, all you young fellers what foller the sea!
Yo ho, blow the man down;
And pay good attention and listen to me,
Oh, give me some time to blow the man down.”
“That’s the music, Jack,” said he. “I wish you’d go inter sails instead
of steam, and follow the examples of your dad and your uncle, yes, and
of your granddaddy, Noah Ready, afore ’em.”
Jack made no rejoinder, but set about straightening up the litter in the
place. The contention between them was an old one, and always ended in
the same way. His uncle knew many seafaring men of the old school who
would gladly have given Jack a berth on their craft. But they were all
in command of “wind-jammers,” and the boy’s heart was set on the
wireless room of a liner, or at any rate a job on some wireless-equipped
vessel.
Meantime the captain went on compounding and mixing and pouring,
rumbling away at his old sea songs. He was an odd-looking character, as
odd in his way as his chosen place of residence.
Years of service on the salt-water had tanned his wrinkled skin almost
to a mahogany color. Under his chin was a fringe of white whiskers, and
his round head—covered with a bristly white thatch—was set low between a
pair of gigantic shoulders. He was dressed in a fantastic miscellany of
water-side slops which flapped where they should have been tight, and
wrinkled where they should have been loose. Add to this an expression of
whimsical kindness, a wooden leg and a wide, rough scar,—the memento of
a battle with savages in the South Seas,—and you have a portrait of
Captain Toby Ready.
Presently the captain drew out a huge silver watch.
“Two bells. Time to stand by for supper, lad,” he said. “That stuff’ll
have to go to Cap’n Styles to-morrow. There’s plenty of time; he don’t
sail for goin’ on a week yet. Slip your cable, like a good lad, and set
a course for the bakery. We’re short of bread.”
“And I’m short of the money to get it,” said Jack.
The captain thrust a hairy paw into his pocket and drew out an immense
purse. He extracted a coin from it and handed it to the boy.
“An’ how much, lad, is a penny saved?” he inquired, peering at Jack from
under his bushy white brows.
“A penny earned,” laughed Jack.
“Co’-rect,” chuckled the captain, grinning at Jack’s quick reply to the
almost invariable formula, “an’ if Captain Toby Ready had thought o’
that when he was young, he wouldn’t be here on the craft _Wenus_ making
medicines fer sea-cap’ns with a tummy ache.
“I’ve got an apple pie in the oven, Jack,” said he, as the boy left the
“drug-store,” as he and his uncle called it, “so cut along and hurry
back.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” cried the boy, bounding up the cabin stairs with
alacrity.
Apple pies were not common on board the _Venus_, nor was Jack too old to
appreciate his uncle’s announcement.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV.
THE REJECTED REWARD.
When Jack returned, he was surprised to hear voices in the cabin. His
uncle had a habit of talking to himself, but there was another voice
mingling with the old sailor’s deep, rumbling tones.
Wondering greatly who the visitor could be, for somehow the voice
sounded different from the bellowings of the old sea cronies who visited
the _Venus_ either on business or socially, Jack descended the cabin
stairs.
The swinging lamp was lighted and shone down on his uncle and another
man, seated on opposite sides of the table.
“By the great main boom, the lad never told me a word of it!” his uncle
was saying. “Dived overboard an’ saved your little gal, eh? Well, sir,
Jack’s a chip of the old block!”
The man who sat opposite the captain was a portly gentleman with a bald
brow, gold-rimmed glasses and close-cropped gray mustache. He spoke with
curt, sharp emphasis, as if his minutes were dollars.
“Lucky that a watchman saw and recognized the boy as he sneaked away,”
this individual replied. “If it had not been for that, I might never
have found him. But I must see him. Where is he?”
“Here he is, sir, to answer for himself,” said the captain, as he heard
Jack’s step on the stair.
As the boy entered the cabin the ship-owner jumped to his feet. He
crossed the place with a quick, rapid stride and grasped Jack’s free
hand.
“I’m proud to shake hands with a youngster like you,” he said in his
swift, incisive way, “yes, sir, proud. If it had not been for you, my
daughter might have drowned with those dolts all standing round doing
nothing. Jove——”
He mopped his forehead in an agitated way at the very thought of what
might have happened.
“That’s all right, sir,” said Jack, “I’m glad I was there when I
happened to be. When I knew the little girl was all right, I came away.”
The boy had recognized the shipping magnate from pictures of him that he
had seen in the papers. Had he not come around another way from the
bakery, he would have been prepared for this august visitor by the sight
of his limousine, lying at the head of the dock.
“’Sarn it all, why didn’t you spin me the yarn?” sputtered the captain
in an aggrieved tone.
“Oh! there really wasn’t much to tell,” said Jack. “The little girl was
clinging to a pile and I went down and got her up. That’s all there was
to it. If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would.”
“That is just the point,” roared Mr. Jukes, “somebody else wouldn’t.”
He drew out a check-book and signed his name to a check. He shoved this
across the table to Jack, who was standing by his uncle.
“Fill that in for any amount you like, lad,” he said in his dictatorial
way. “Make it a good, round sum. Jacob Jukes’ account can stand it.”
Jack colored and hesitated.
“Well, what’s the matter, boy?” sputtered the ship-owner, noting the
boy’s hesitation. “That check won’t bite you. I know a whole lot of lads
who’d have grabbed at it before it was out of my hand.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” rejoined Jack, “you’re very generous and—and
all that. Maybe you’ll think me ungrateful, but I can’t take that
check.”
“Wha—what! Can’t take my check! What’s the matter with the boy?”
“Hev you slipped the cable of your senses, Jack?” hoarsely exclaimed his
uncle, in what was meant to be a whisper.
“I don’t want money for just doing a little thing like that,” said the
boy stubbornly.
“You don’t mean it. Come, take that check at once. Don’t be a fool!”
urged Mr. Jukes with a very red face. “Why can’t you do as I tell you!”
The magnate’s tone was almost angry. He was not used to having his
commands disobeyed, and he was commanding Jack to take the check. But
the boy resolutely shook his head.
“Why, confound it all, I can’t understand it. Make him take the check at
once, captain.”
“Don’t see how I can, if he’s so sot and stubborn about it,” rejoined
the captain. Then, turning to Jack, he made another appeal. “Why won’t
you take it, Jack?” he growled. “Shiver my timbers, what ails you?”
“Nothing; but I can’t accept money from Mr. Jukes or anybody else, for
doing what I did,” said the boy quietly.
Mr. Jukes, with a crimson face, gave up the battle. He reached across
the table, took the check and slowly tore it into fragments.
“It is the first time in my experience that I ever encountered such a
singular lad as this. Hang me if I don’t think there’s a screw loose
somewhere. But after what you did for me this afternoon, never hesitate
to call on me if you need anything at any time. Here’s my card.”
He rose, and with a comical mixture of astonishment and indignation on
his face, regarded Jack somewhat as he might have looked at some strange
freak in nature.
“Thank you, sir,” said the boy, taking the bit of pasteboard, “I didn’t
mean to offend you; but—but, well, I couldn’t take that check, that’s
all.”
“Well, well, we’ll say no more about it,” said the great man testily.
“But remember, I’ll always stand your friend if I can.”
He started to leave the cabin, when he suddenly brought up “all
standing,” as the captain would have said, with a sharp exclamation of
pain.
“What is it, sir?” demanded that veteran with some concern. “Your
figurehead looks like you had some sort of a pain.”
“It is nothing. Just a sharp twinge of my old trouble, rheumatism,”
explained the great man. “The damp air of the Basin may have brought it
on.”
“Anchor right where you are!” exclaimed the captain, and before Mr.
Jukes could say another word, he had darted into the “drug-store” and
was back with a bottle full of a villainous-looking black liquid.
“My rheumatiz’ and gout remedy,” he explained.
“Yes, but I am under medical treatment. I——”
“Keel-haul all your doctors. Throw their medicine overboard,” burst out
the captain. “Try a few applications of Cap’n Ready’s Rheumatiz and Gout
Specific. Cap’n Joe Trotter of the _Flying Scud_ cured himself with two
bottles. Take it! Try it! Rub it in twice a day, night and morning, and
in a week you’ll be as spry as a boy, as taut and sound as a cable.”
“Well, well, I’ll try it,” said the magnate good-naturedly in reply to
Captain Toby’s outburst of eloquence; “how much is it?”
“One dollar, guaranteed to work if used as directed, or your money
back,” rattled on the captain, pocketing a bill which Mr. Jukes peeled
off a roll that made Captain Toby open his eyes.
And so, burdened with a bottle of the “Rheumatiz and Gout Specific,” and
with the memory of the first person he had ever met who was not willing
to accept his bounty, the shipping magnate stepped ashore from the
_Venus_.
“He’ll be dancing a hornpipe in a week,” prophesied Captain Toby; “the
Specific has never failed.”
But if he could have seen Mr. Jukes carefully drop the bottle overboard
as soon as he reached the shore end of the dock, his opinion of him
would have fallen considerably. As it was, the old seaman was loud in
his praise.
“Think of him, the skipper of a big corporation and all that, wisiting
us on the _Wenus_!” he exclaimed. “Why, Jack, that’ll be something to
tell about. The great Mr. Jukes! Maybe this’ll all lead to something! If
the Specific works like it did on Cap’n Joe Trotter, he may make me his
physician in ordinary.”
“Let’s hope it won’t work the same way on him that it did on Captain Zeb
Holliday,” said Jack with a smile.
“Huh! That deck-swabbing lubber!” cried the captain, with intense scorn.
“He drank it instead of rubbing it in, although the directions was wrote
on the bottle plain as print. But, Jack, lad, why didn’t you take that
check? Consarn it all——”
“It’s no good talking about it, uncle,” said the boy, cutting him short;
“I couldn’t take it; that’s all there is to that.”
“Confound you for a young jackass! Douse my topsails, but I’m proud of
you, lad!” roared the captain, bringing down a mighty hand on Jack’s
shoulders. “And now let’s pipe all hands to supper.”
Two days later, Jack happened to pass the dock where the Titan liner
lay. She was taking aboard her cargo from a pipe-line—crude, black oil
destined for Antwerp. Because of the adventure in which he had
participated alongside her, Jack felt an interest in the ugly, powerful
tanker. As he was looking at her, he noticed some men busy at the tops
of her squat steel masts.
All at once they began to haul something aloft. What it was, Jack
recognized the next moment. It was the antennæ of a wireless plant. They
were installing a station on the ship, which bore the name “_Ajax_” on
her round, whaleback stern.
Jack’s heart gave a sudden leap. A great idea had come to him. Mr. Jukes
owned the Titan Line. The ship-owner had said to him only two nights
before: “Remember, I’ll always stand your friend if I can. Never
hesitate to call on me if you need anything at any time.”
And right then Jack needed something mighty badly. He needed the job of
wireless operator on board the _Ajax_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V.
THE WIRELESS BOY’S FIRST POSITION.
The power of eight thousand horses was driving the big tanker _Ajax_
through the Lower Bay, out past Sandy Hook, and on to the North
Atlantic.
As the big black steel craft felt the lift and heave of the ocean
swells, she wallowed clumsily and threw the spray high above her blunt
bow. Very different looked this “workman” of the seas from the spick and
span liner they passed, just after they had dropped the pilot.
Grim, business-like, and built for “the job,” the _Ajax_ looked like a
square-jawed bulldog beside the yacht-like grayhound of the ocean, whose
whistled salute she returned with a toot of her own siren.
Like all craft of her type, the _Ajax_ had hardly any freeboard. In the
bow was a tall superstructure where the crew and the minor officers
lived. Here, too, was the wheel-house and the navigating bridge. In the
extreme stern was another superstructure, square in shape, whereas the
bow-house was like a big cylinder pierced with port-holes.
From the stern upper-works projected the big black funnel with the red
top, distinctive of the Titan liners, and in this stern structure, too,
dwelt the captain, the superior officers and the first and second
engineers.
From the stern superstructure and the chart-house to the crew’s quarters
in the bow, there stretched a narrow bridge running the entire length of
the craft. This was to enable the crews of the great floating tank to
move about on her, for on board a tank steamship there are no decks when
there is any kind of a sea running. The steel plates that form the top
of the tank are submerged, and nothing of the hull is visible but the
two towering structures at the bow and stern, the bridge connecting
them, and the funnel and masts.
But for all her homely outlines the _Ajax_ was a workman-like craft and
fast for her build. In favorable weather she could make twelve knots and
better, and her skipper, Captain Braceworth, and his crew were proud of
the ship.
On the day of which we are speaking, however, there was one member of
the ship’s company to whom the big tanker was as fine a craft as sailed
the Seven Seas. This was a young lad dressed in a neat uniform of blue
serge, who sat in a small, steel-walled cabin in the after
superstructure. The lad was Jack Ready, sailing his first trip as an
ocean wireless boy. As he listened to and caught signals out of the maze
of messages with which the air was filled, his cheeks glowed and his
eyes shone. He had attained the first step of his ambition. Some day,
perhaps, he would be an operator on such a fine craft as the liner they
had just passed and with which he had exchanged wireless greetings.
Jack had secured the berth of wireless man on the _Ajax_ with even less
difficulty than he had thought he would encounter. Mr. Jukes, although a
busy, brusque man, was really glad to be able to do something for the
lad who had done so much for him, and as soon as Jack had proved his
ability to handle a key he got the job.
It had come about so quickly, that as he sat there before the newly
installed instruments,—it will be recalled that the _Ajax_ was making
her first trip as a wireless ship,—the boy had to kick himself slyly
under the operating table to make sure he was awake!
“I’m the luckiest boy in the world,” said the young operator to himself,
as gazing from the open door of the cabin, he watched the coast slip by
and the rollers begin to take on the true Atlantic swell.
His reverie was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Harvey, the first
officer.
“Message from the captain to the owners,” he said briefly; “hustle it
along.”
It was only a routine message, but Jack thrilled to the finger tips as
he sent out the call for the station at Sea Gate, from whence the
message would be transmitted to New York. It was the first bit of
regular business he had handled in his chosen calling.
The air appeared to be filled with a perfect storm of messages coming
and going. Newspapers were sending despatches of world-wide importance.
Ships were reporting. Here and there an amateur,—Jack was out of this
class now, and held them in proper contempt,—was “butting in” with some
inquiry or message. And friends and relatives of persons outward or
homeward bound across the ocean track added their burden to the mighty
symphony of “wireless” that filled the ether.
But at last Jack raised the Sea Gate station, and in a second his first
message from shipboard was crackling and spitting from the aerial. He
sent crisply, and in a business-like way. The operator at Sea Gate could
hardly have guessed that the message was coming from a lad who had but
that day taken his place at an ocean wireless station.
When this message had been sent, Jack sat in for an answer. Before long,
out of the maze of other calls, he picked his summons and crackled out
his reply, adding O.K. G.—“Go ahead.” When he had finished taking the
message, merely a formal acknowledgment of the captain’s farewell
despatch, Jack grounded his instruments and went forward with the reply
in search of the skipper.
He found the _Ajax_ wallowing through a somewhat heavy sea. Looking down
from the narrow bridge, he could see the decks with their covered
winches, steam-pipes and man-holes only at times through a smother of
green water and white foam that swept over them.
Jack clawed his way forward and found the captain with his first officer
on the bridge. The wheel was in the hands of a rugged, grizzled
quartermaster, who stood like a figure of stone, his eyes glued to the
swinging compass card. Occasionally, however, he gave an almost
imperceptible move to the spokes of the brass-inlaid wheel he grasped,
and a mighty rumbling of machinery followed. For the _Ajax_, like
practically every vessel of to-day, steered by steam-power, and a twist
of the wrist was sufficient to move the mighty rudder that was distant
almost a tenth of a mile from the wheel-house.
But the boy did not give much observation to all this. He was intent on
his duty. Touching his cap, he held out the neatly written message,—of
which he had kept a carbon copy on his file.
“Despatch, sir!” he said respectfully.
The captain took the message and read it, and then eyed the boy
attentively.
Captain Braceworth was a big figure of a man, bronzed, bearded and
Viking-like. He was also known as a strict disciplinarian. Jack had not
spoken to him till that moment. He decided that he liked the skipper’s
looks, in spite of an air of cold authority that dwelt in his steady
eyes.
“So you’re our wireless man, eh?” asked the skipper.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Jukes——”
“Humph! I know all about that. I understand this is your first voyage.
Well, you have lots to learn. Do your duty and you’ll have no trouble
with me. If not, you will find it very uncomfortable.”
He turned away and began talking to his first officer. Jack made his way
back to his cabin with mingled feelings. The captain had spoken to him
sharply, almost gruffly. He began to revise his opinion of the man.
“He is a martinet and no mistake,” thought the boy; “a bully too, I’ll
bet. But pshaw, Jack Ready, what’s the use of kicking? You’ve got what
you wanted; now go through with it. After all, if I do my duty, he can’t
hurt me.”
But as he took his seat at his instruments again, Jack, somehow, didn’t
feel quite so chipper as he had half an hour before. In his own
estimation he had rated himself pretty highly as the wireless man of the
_Ajax_.
“But I reckon I don’t count much more than one of the crew,” he muttered
to himself as the memory of the captain’s brusque, authoritative manner
rankled in his mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI.
LEARNING THE ROPES.
Having sent his “T.R.”—as the first message from an outward bound ship
is, for some mysterious reason known,—Jack occupied himself by
occasionally chatting with some other operator and exchanging positions.
As the _Ajax_ forged on, the boy began feeling ahead with his key for
the wireless stations at Sagaponack or Siasconset. Messages to and from
Nantucket he had already caught, and had sent in a report of the _Ajax_
and her position.
Supper time came and Jack ate his meal in company with the second and
third engineers. The captain and the other officers were far too
important to sit down with a wireless man on his first voyage. The
second engineer was a lively youth with a crop of hair as red as the
open door of one of his own furnaces. His junior was not more than two
years older than Jack, a stalwart lad, with a bright, intelligent face,
named Billy Raynor.
Young Raynor and Jack struck up quite a friendship at supper, and after
the red-headed second, whose name was Bicket, had left the table, they
fell to discussing the ship and its officers.
“I happened to be on the bridge,—message from the chief,—this afternoon
when you were talking to the old man,” said Raynor. “From the look on
your face, I fancy you thought him a bit overbearing.”
Jack flushed. He did not know that he had let his mortification be
visible.
“Well, I had expected rather a different reception, I must say; but I’m
not such a baby as to kick about anything like that, or even a good deal
worse.”
“That’s the way to talk,” approved Raynor. “The old man’s bark is worse
than his bite, although I don’t come much in contact with him. Mr.
Herrick, the chief, is my boss.”
He rose to go below to his duties.
“Some time when I’m off watch, I’d like to come up to your coop and have
a chat with you about wireless,” he said.
“I wish you would,” said Jack, heartily glad to find,—for he was
beginning to feel lonely,—that there was at least one congenial soul on
the big steel monster, of which he formed a part of the crew.
Jack’s day ended at eight o’clock, but before his time to go off duty,
there came a peremptory message from the captain. The weather had been
steadily growing worse, the sea was mounting and the wind increasing.
Jack was to stay at his post and try to catch messages from vessels
farther out at sea, concerning conditions on the course.
As the night wore on, the gale increased in violence. The tanker
wallowed through giant seas, the spray sweeping over even the elevated
bridge linking her bow and stern. Her hull, with its cargo of oil and
coal and the mighty boilers and engines that drove her forward, was as
submerged as a submarine.
The young wireless operator sat vigilantly at his key. The night was a
bad one for wireless communication, although a storm does not, of
necessity, interfere with the “waves.”
At last, about ten o’clock, he succeeded in obtaining communication with
the _Kaiser_, one of the big German liners, some one thousand miles to
the eastward.
Back and forth through the storm the two operators talked. The
_Kaiser’s_ man reported heavy weather, rain-squalls and big seas.
“But it is not bothering us,” he added; “we’re hitting up an eighteen
knot clip.”
“Can’t say the same here,” flashed back Jack; “we have been slowed down
for an hour or more. This is a bad storm, all right.”
“You must be a ‘greeny’; this is nothing,” came back the answer from the
_Kaiser_ man.
“It is my first voyage as a wireless man,” crackled out Jack’s key.
“Bully for you! You send like a veteran,” came back the rejoinder; and
then, before Jack could send his appreciation of the compliment,
something happened to the communication and the conversation was cut
off.
When he opened the door to go forward with his message for the skipper,
the puff of wind that met the boy almost threw him from his feet. But he
braced himself against the screaming gale and worked his way along the
bridge. He wished he had put on oil-skins before he started, for the
spray was breaking in cataracts over the narrow bridge along which he
had to claw his way like a cat.
“Well, whatever else a ‘Tanker’ may be, she is surely not a dry ship in
a gale of wind,” muttered the boy to himself, as he reached the end of
his journey.
On the bridge, weather-cloths were up, and the second officer was
crouched at the starboard end of the narrow, swaying pathway. But pretty
soon Jack made out the captain’s stalwart figure. The skipper elected to
read the message in the chart-house. He made no comment, but informed
Jack that in an hour’s time he might turn in.
Nothing more of importance came that night, and at the hour the captain
had named, the young wireless boy, thoroughly tired after his first day
at the key of an ocean wireless, sought his bunk. This was in the same
room as the apparatus, and as he undressed, Jack figured on installing,
at the first opportunity, a bell connecting with the apparatus by means
of which he might be summoned from sleep if a message came during the
night. He had made several experiments along these lines at his station
on the old _Venus_, which now seemed so far away, and had met with fair
success. He believed that with the improved conditions he was dealing
with on the _Ajax_, he could make such a device practicable.
When he went on deck at daylight, he found that the storm, far from
abating, had increased in violence. The speed of the _Ajax_ had been cut
down till she could not have been making more than eight knots against
the teeth of the wind.
The white-crested combers towered like mountains all about her. Nothing
of the hull but the superstructures were visible, and the latter looked
as if they had gone adrift,—with no hull under them,—in a smother of
spume and green water. It was almost startling to look down from the
rail outside his cabin and see nothing but water all about, as if the
superstructure had been an island.
He went back to his instruments and picked up a few messages concerning
the weather. Two were from liners, and one from a small cargo steamer.
All reported heavy weather with mountainous seas.
“Not much news in that,” thought the boy, as he filed the messages and
prepared to go forward with his copies.
As he opened the cabin door, the man at the wheel must have let the ship
fall off her course. A mighty wave came rushing up astern and broke in a
torrent of green water over the gallery on which Jack stood. He was
picked up like a straw and thrown against a stanchion, with all the
breath knocked out of him.
Here he clung, bruised and strangling, till the wave passed.
“Seems to me that the life of an ocean wireless man is a good bit more
strenuous than I thought,” muttered the boy, picking himself up and
discovering that he must make fresh copies of the messages he had been
taking forward.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE TEETH OF THE STORM.
An old German bos’un came by as Jack was picking himself up.
“Hullo! Almost man overboard,—vat?” he chuckled. “Don’d go overboard in
dis vedder, Mister Vireless, aber vee nefer see you no more.”
“Did you ever see a storm as bad as this?” sputtered the dripping Jack.
“Dis not amount to much,” was the reply. “Vait till you cross in
midt-vinter, den you see storms vos is storms.”
He hurried off on his work, while Jack, having recopied his messages,
started forward again. This time he met with no mishaps.
On the reeling bridge he found Captain Braceworth. The captain was
clinging to the railing, a shining, uncouth figure in dripping
oil-skins. The clamor of wind and sea made speech almost impossible, but
Jack touched the captain on the elbow to attract his attention.
In spite of his feeling, almost of aversion to the grim, strict captain,
Jack felt a sensation of admiration for this stalwart, silent figure,
guiding his wallowing ship through the storm as calmly as if he had been
seated at a dinner table. One thing was certain, Captain Braceworth was
no fair-weather sailor. Martinet though he might be, he was a man to
meet a crisis calmly and with cool determination.
The captain took the messages silently and once more retired to the
wheel-house to scan them. At the other end of the bridge the chief
officer stood, an equally silent figure, looking out over the
tempest-torn ocean. The captain was soon back on the bridge. He went
over to the chief officer and Jack could see the two talking, or rather
shouting.
He stood waiting respectfully for orders, crouching in the lee of the
weather-cloth for protection against the screaming gale.
As soon as he saw that the captain had finished his conference with the
officer, Jack came from the shelter and clawed his way to the skipper’s
side.
Captain Braceworth placed his hands funnel-wise to his mouth and shouted
into Jack’s ear:
“Try to get Cape Race or Siasconset, and tell the office in New York
that we are in a bad gale and running under reduced speed. From the look
of the glass it may last two days and delay our arrival at Antwerp.”
Jack saluted and was off like a flash, while the captain resumed his
silent scrutiny of the racing billows. Five minutes later, the young
wireless boy sat at his post, sending his message through the shouting,
howling turmoil of wind and wave.
Experienced as he was at the key, it was, nevertheless, a novel
sensation to be sitting, snug and warm in his cabin, flashing into
storm-racked space, the calls for Siasconset or “the Cape.” Occasionally
he groped with his key for another vessel, through which his message to
the New York office might be “relayed.”
He knew that some of the big liners had a more powerful apparatus than
he possessed, and if he did not succeed in raising a shore station, his
message could be transmitted to one of the steamers and thence to the
land.
The spark whined and crackled and flashed for fifteen minutes or more
before there came, pattering on his ears through the “watch-case”
receivers, a welcome reply.
It was from Cape Race. Jack delivered his message and had a short
conversation with the operator. He had hardly finished, before, into his
wireless sphere, other voices came calling through the storm. Back and
forth through the witches’ dance of the winds, the questions, answers
and bits of stray chat and deep sea gossip came flitting and crackling.
But Jack had scant time to listen to the voice-filled air. He soon shut
off his key and prepared to go forward again, with the news that the
message had been sent. In less than an hour some official at the office
of the line in New York would be reading it, seated at his desk, while
miles out on the Atlantic the ship that had sent it was tossing in the
grip of the storm.
Jack thought of these things as he buttoned himself into his oil-skins,
secured the flaps of his sou’wester under his chin and once more fought
his way forward along that dancing, swaying bridge, below which the
water swirled and swayed like myriads of storm-racked rapids.
The captain, grim as ever, was still on the bridge, but now Jack saw
that both he and the officer who shared his vigil were eying the seas
through the glasses. They appeared to be scanning the tumbling ranges of
water-mountains in search of some object. What, Jack did not know. But
their attention appeared to be fully engrossed as they handed the
glasses from one to another, holding on to the rail with their free
hands to keep their balance.
Presently the chief officer shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as
if he had negatived some proposition of the captain’s.
The latter replaced the glasses in their box by the engine room
telegraph, and Jack, deeming this a favorable opportunity, came forward
with his report.
He had almost to scream it into the captain’s ear. But the great man
heard and nodded gravely. Then he turned away and drew out the glasses
once more and went back to scanning the heaving seas.
Jack, from the shelter of the wheel-house, within which an imperturbable
quartermaster gripped the spokes of the wheel, followed the direction of
the skipper’s gaze.
All at once, as the _Ajax_ rose on the summit of a huge comber, he made
out something that made his heart give a big jump.
It was a black patch that suddenly projected itself into view for an
instant, and then rushed from sight as if it would never come up again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII.
SIGHTING THE WRECK.
The captain wheeled suddenly. His eyes focused on Jack.
“Operator!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Have you had any calls from a ship in distress?”
“No, sir. I should have reported any message to you at once.”
“Of course. I’m not used to this wireless business, although it seems to
be useful.”
“There—there’s a ship in distress yonder, sir?” Jack ventured to ask.
“Yes, they’re badly off.”
The captain tugged at his brown beard which glistened with spray.
“Call the third officer. He is in his cabin.”
Jack hastened aft and soon returned with Mr. Brown, the third officer of
the _Ajax_, an alert, active little man. Jack ventured to linger on the
bridge while they talked. His heart was filled with pity for whoever
might be on board the storm-tossed derelict. He wanted to know what the
captain proposed to do.
Fragments of speech were blown to the young operator’s ears as the three
officers talked.
“Hopeless—Boat wouldn’t live a minute in this sea—she’ll go before eight
bells—Yes, bound for Davy Jones’ locker, poor devils.”
Jack’s pulses beat fast as he heard. Could it be that the _Ajax_ was to
make no effort to rescue the crew of the wreck? His heart throbbed as if
it would choke him. He felt suddenly angry, furiously angry with the
three men on the bridge, who stood so calmly talking over the situation
while, less than a mile away, there was a wrecked ship wallowing in the
mighty seas without a chance for her life.
Had he dared, he would have stepped forward and volunteered to form part
of a boat’s crew, no matter what the risk. His father’s seafaring blood
ran in his veins, and he could recall hearing both Captain Amos Ready
and his Uncle Toby recounting to each other, over their pipes, tales of
sea-rescues.
“Uncle Toby is right,” thought the boy, with a white-hot flush of
indignation; “seamanship is dead nowadays. The men who go to sea in
these steel tanks are without hearts.”
They rose on the top of another mountainous wave and Jack had his first
good view of the forlorn wreck. She was evidently a sailing vessel,
although of what rig could not be made out, for her masts were gone. A
more hopeless, melancholy sight than this storm-riven, sea-racked
derelict could not be imagined. Her bowsprit still remained, and as she
rose upward on a wave with the star pointed to the scurrying gray
clouds, Jack’s excited fancy saw in it a mute appeal for aid.
And still the three officers stood talking, as the _Ajax_ ploughed on.
No attempt had been made to veer from her course.
“They’re going to leave her without trying to help her,” choked Jack,
clenching his hands. “Oh! the cowards! the cowards!”
The boy made an impulsive step forward. In his excitement he was
reckless of what he did. But, luckily, he came to his senses in time.
Checking himself, he gloweringly watched the captain step to the
wheel-house. As he did so, the commanding officer beckoned to Jack.
“I suppose he’s going to haul me over the coals for standing about
here,” muttered the boy to himself; and then, impulsively, “but I don’t
care. I’ll tell him what I think of him if he does!”
With defiance in his heart, Jack, nevertheless, hastened forward to obey
Captain Braceworth’s motioned order.
Within the wheel-house the hub-bub of the storm was shut out. It was
possible to speak without shouting. The captain’s face bore a puzzled
frown as if he were thinking over some difficult problem. As Jack
entered the wheel-house, he swung round on the boy:
“Oh, Ready! Stand by there a moment. I may have an order to give you.”
He stepped over to the speaking tube and hailed the engine-room.
“He’s going to give some order about saving that ship,” said the boy to
himself.
But no. Captain Braceworth’s orders appeared to have nothing to do with
any such plan. Jack felt his indignation surging up again as the
commander, in a steady, measured voice, gave a lot of orders which, so
far as Jack could hear, had to deal with pipes, pumps and something
about the cargo. At all events, the boy caught the word “oil.”
“Well, if that isn’t the limit for hard-heartedness!” thought the lad to
himself as he heard the calm, even tones. “What have a lot of
monkey-wrench sailors like those fellows in the engineers’ department to
do with saving lives, I’d like to know! If this was my dad’s ship, I’ll
bet that he’d have a boat on the way to that wreck now.”
He gazed out of a port-hole. The wreck was still visible as the _Ajax_
rode the high seas. From one of the stumps of the broken masts fluttered
some sort of a signal. Jack fancied it might be the ensign reversed, a
universal sign of distress on the high seas. But what ensign it was, he
could not, of course, make out.
It seemed to him, too, that he could distinguish some figures on the
decks, but of this he could not be certain.
“They may all be dead while this cowardly skipper is chatting with the
engine-room,” he thought angrily.
“Ready!”
“Yes, sir.” It was with difficulty that Jack spoke even respectfully. He
felt desperate, disgusted with all on board the “tanker.”
“I want you to stand by your wireless. Try to pick up some other
steamer. Tell them there is a ship in distress out there. Wait a
minute,—here’s the latitude and longitude. Send that, if you chance to
pick anybody up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fairly bursting with anger, Jack hurried off. He did not dare to let the
captain see his face. He was naturally a frank, honest youth and his
emotions showed plainly on his countenance when his feelings were
strong.
So, after all, this miserable skipper was going to run off and desert
that poor battered wreck! He was going to leave the work for somebody
else, for some other ship, for some captain braver than himself to
undertake.
As he was entering his wireless room, he encountered Raynor.
“What’s up? You look as black as a thunderstorm,” said the young
engineer.
“No wonder,” burst out Jack, his indignation overflowing; “we’re
deserting a wreck off yonder. The old man’s lost his nerve, that’s what.
I’d volunteer in a moment. He ought to have launched a boat an hour
ago.”
“Hold on, hold on,” said Raynor, laying a hand on the excited lad’s
shoulder; “we couldn’t do anything in this sea, anyhow. The old man’s
all right.—Ah! Look! What did I tell you!”
From the signal halliards above the bridge deck, a signal had just been
broken out. The bits of bunting flared out brightly against the leaden
sky.
“We will stand by you,” was the message young Raynor, who knew something
of the International Code, spelled out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX.
A TALK ON WIRELESS.
“Good for him!” cried Jack, surprised into what was almost a cheer.
“But,” he added grudgingly, “he took long enough about it.”
“Suppose you go ahead and attend to your end of the job and let the
skipper manage his,” rejoined Raynor, in a quiet voice; and Jack, with a
very red pair of ears, set himself down to the key.
The young third engineer was off watch, so he took a seat on the edge of
Jack’s bunk and watched the lad manipulating the key with deft, certain
fingers.
Crack-ger-ack-ack-ack! Crack-ger-ack-ack-ack! whined the spark as the
boy alternately depressed and released the sending key. Then he switched
over to “listen in.”
But no answering sounds beat against his ears. The signal had,
apparently, fallen still-born on the wings of the storm. This went on
for some fifteen minutes and then Jack gave up for a time.
“Nothing in our field or else my waves are too weak,” he explained to
young Raynor, who listened with interest.
“I don’t understand what your wireless gibberish means,” he laughed,
“but if you’ll teach me, I’ll learn some day.”
“Sure you will,” said Jack cheerfully; “it’s as easy as rolling off a
log.”
“Yes, when you know how,” rejoined Raynor.
They sat silently for a time, while Jack again tried to raise some other
ship, but without success.
“Looks as if the ocean must be empty just about here,” he commented.
“Would you be bound to get in touch with another ship if there was one
within range of your instrument?” asked young Raynor presently.
“Not necessarily. There might be a dozen things that would interfere.”
“The storm, for instance?”
“Not that cause any more than another. There’s a lot that is mysterious
about the wireless waves. Even to-day, nobody knows all about them.
Sometimes, for no apparent cause, they will work better than at other
times.”
“On a fine day I suppose they work best.”
Jack shook his head.
“On the contrary, at night and on foggy days, the Hertzian waves are
sometimes most powerful. All things being equal, though, they work
better over the sea than the land.”
“What is the longest distance a message has ever been sent by wireless?”
was young Raynor’s next question.
“The last one I heard of was seven thousand miles. At that distance a
ship off the coast of Brazil heard a call from Caltano, Italy. Think of
that! That message had traveled across Italy, over the Mediterranean,
slap across the northwestern part of Africa, and then went whanging
across the Atlantic to a spot south of the Equator!”
“Going some,” was young Raynor’s comment.
“But that isn’t the most wonderful part of it. If that message went
seven thousand miles in one direction, it must have gone an equal
distance in an opposite one. That would make it encircle almost half the
world.”
“Curves and all?” asked Raynor.
“Curves and all,” smiled Jack.
“And how fast does this stuff—the electric waves, I mean—travel?” asked
the young engineer.
“Well,” said Jack, “it is estimated that a message from this side of the
Atlantic would reach the Irish coast in about one-nineteenth of a
second.”
“Oh, get out! I’m not going to swallow that.”
“It is true, just the same,” said Jack. “I know it is hard to believe;
lots of things about wireless are.”
“Well, I mean to learn all about it I can.”
“You’ll find it well worth your while.”
“I believe that it is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever tackled.”
“In the meantime, I wish I could raise a ship,” grumbled Jack, again
sending out his call.
“If we were sinking or in urgent difficulties right now, would you stick
on the job till we raised some rescue ship?”
“I hope so. I’d try to,” said Jack modestly. “The history of wireless
shows that every operator who has been called upon to face the music has
done so without a whimper.”
While he worked at the key and the spark sent out its crepitant bark,
young Raynor peered out at the tumbling sea through the port of the
wireless cabin.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed presently, “we’re swinging round.”
“I can feel it,” said Jack, as the _Ajax_, instead of breasting the
seas, began to roll about in the trough of them.
The heavy steel hull rolled until it seemed that the funnel and the
masts must be torn out by the roots. Both boys hung on for dear life.
After a while the motion became easier.
“Good thing I’m not inclined to be sea-sick,” said Jack, “or this would
finish me.”
He gave up his key for a while and groped his way to Raynor’s side. The
_Ajax_ was creeping along and was now not more than half a mile from the
wreck. But the meaning of her maneuvers was not very apparent. Jack
could not understand what Captain Braceworth meant to do. Even the
inexperienced eye of the young operator told him that it would be
suicide to launch a boat in those mountainous seas.
The two boys opened the door and went to the rail. The _Ajax_ had beaten
her way up to windward of the doomed wreck. Suddenly Jack gave a shout.
“Hurray! Bully for Captain Braceworth! I see his plan now!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X.
OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS.
At intervals along the bridge we have mentioned as running between bow
and stern superstructures, were tall standpipes connected with pumps in
the engine-room. These were used in discharging the cargo at Antwerp.
The valves of these pipes had been opened while the boys were in the
wireless room, and now, as the pumps were started, jets of thick,
dark-colored oil spouted from them.
As the oil spread on the sea, the wind drove it down in a great band of
filmy smoothness toward the tossing wreck. As the oil spread, the big
combers ceased to break dangerously, and a shimmering, smooth skin of
oil spread over them till they merely rolled beneath it.
It was like magic to see the way in which the oil calmed the troubled
sea.
“Well, I’ve heard my father tell of skinning a sea with oil-bags,” said
Jack, “but I never expected to see it done.”
“You’ll see stranger things than that if you stay long enough in this
business,” said Raynor sententiously.
The _Ajax_ slowly cruised around the floundering wreck under reduced
speed, with oil spouting constantly from the standpipes. At last all
about the hulk there was spread a sort of magic circle of smooth, oily
water.
Jack looked on in an agony of impatience.
“Surely he’ll send a boat now,” he said to Raynor.
But the young engineer shook his head.
“Braceworth isn’t a skipper who holds with doing things in a hurry,” he
said; “wait a while.”
“Surely it is smooth enough to launch a boat now,” pursued Jack.
“If the skipper thought so, he’d do it,” rejoined Raynor.
The call to dinner came without Jack having secured communication with
any other ship. He could only account for this by the supposition that
the atmospheric conditions were bad. The wireless was evidently
suffering from an attack of “atmospherics,” as the professional
operators call it.
Before going down to his meal, Jack went forward to report to the
captain. He found the burly commander with a sandwich in one hand and a
cup of coffee in the other. He was having a snack on the bridge in the
shelter of the weather-cloth.
Jack, despite himself, felt a quick flash of admiration for a man who
could face such discomforts so dauntlessly for the sake of his duty.
The boy would have liked to ask some questions, but he did not have the
courage. So he stood in silence while the skipper pondered a full
minute.
“Don’t bother about it any more,” he said at length. “I think we will be
able to do without help.”
Jack could contain himself no longer.
“Oh, sir, do you think we’ll be able to get those poor fellows off?”
The captain looked at him sharply.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Don’t pester me with foolish
questions. It is eight bells. Be off to your dinner.”
Jack, abashed, red-faced and angry at what he felt was an undeserved
snub, obeyed. At dinner he told Raynor all about it.
“Well, if you had been on the bridge all night, maybe you would feel
none too amiable, either,” said his companion.
“On the bridge all night!” exclaimed Jack, who had no idea that while he
was snug in his bunk the captain had been facing the storm.
“Of course. Captain Braceworth never leaves the bridge in bad weather,
even if this is only a freighter and not a dandy passenger boat with
pretty ladies and big swells on board,” retorted Raynor.
“I—I didn’t know that,” said Jack, rather shamefacedly. “If I had, I
wouldn’t have spoken as I did.”
“I know that, youngster,” said Raynor. “And now let’s hurry through grub
and get up on deck again and see what’s doing. I’ve a notion we’ll see
something interesting before very long.”
When the lads returned on deck, they found that the _Ajax_ had made
another complete circle of the wreck, this time covering the first film
of oil with a thicker one. They were much closer to the wreck now. Jack
could count two figures in the bow and three astern.
But even as they looked, both boys gave a cry of horror. A huge wave had
swept clear over the floundering hulk, and when it vanished one of the
men in the stern had vanished, too.
“Oh! That’s terrible!” exclaimed Jack. “Why don’t we launch a boat?”
“No use sacrificing more lives,” said Raynor, with forced calmness,
although he was white about the lips. “Braceworth knows what he’s doing,
I reckon.”
“Yes, but to watch those poor fellows—it’s—it’s awful!”
Jack put his hands over his eyes to shut out, for an instant, the
frantically waving arms of the men on the wreck. They were making
desperate appeals. Plainly they could not understand why the liner kept
circling them.
“Brace up, youngster,” said Raynor kindly. “I guess the skipper feels as
bad about it as you do, but he won’t act till he can do so safely.”
The afternoon began to close in. The stormy twilight deepened into dusk
and found the nerve-wracking waiting still going on. On the great gray
seas the black steamer, with a wind-blown plume of smoke pouring from
her salt-encrusted funnel, still solemnly circled the foundering hulk,
while the storm clouds raced past overheard.
But the wind had dropped slightly and the coat of oil that now covered
the waves prevented their breaking. The _Ajax_, already crawling up on
the weather side of the wreck, appeared to reduce speed.
“There’s going to be something doing now,” prophesied Raynor.
On the bridge the captain had summoned Mr. Brown, the third officer.
“Brown,” he said, “I’m going to make a try to get those fellows off.
That craft won’t last till daylight and we could never tackle the job in
the dark.”
“Just what I think, sir,” rejoined the third mate.
“Very well; take one of the stern boats. Be very careful. If you hit the
side, she’ll smash like an egg-shell and we could never pick you up in
this. I’ll come in as close as I dare, to give you the lee water. Now be
off with you and—good-luck.”
Mr. Brown hurried aft. He collected his boat crew as he went. The boat
he selected was the one hung on patent davits above the wireless room.
Young Raynor had been summoned to the engine-room and Jack stood there
alone watching the preparations. The blood of his seafaring ancestors
stirred in his veins. Mustering his courage he stepped forward.
“Mr. Brown, can I go, sir? I can row. Let me go, won’t you?”
The mate, angry at being disturbed, spun on his heel and glowered at the
young wireless boy.
“What do you know about a boat?” he demanded. “You’re only a sea-going
telegraph operator——”
At that instant the doughty little mate’s eye fell on a hulking big
seaman who was hanging back. Plainly enough the man was afraid. He was
muttering to himself as if he did not like the prospect of breasting
those giant seas in the small boat.
The man was a Norwegian seaman, and Mr. Brown, who was an American, made
a quick, angry spring for him as if to grip him bodily and compel him to
go. Then he suddenly recollected Jack.
“Well, lad, since that hulking coward is afraid, I’ll give you a chance.
Get in and look slippy. We’ve no time to lose.”
Jack shoved the big sailor aside while the fellow scowled and swore.
“Get forward, you!” roared little Mr. Brown. “I’ll attend to you when we
get back. Now, youngster.”
But Jack was already in the boat. There was a shouted order and the
falls began to creak in the quadrant davits. For an instant they hung
between wind and water. Mr. Brown watched with the eye of a cat the
proper moment to let go.
Suddenly the _Ajax_ gave a roll far out to leeward. The boat dropped
like a stone. The patent tackle set her free.
“Give way, men!” shouted the officer; and in the nick of time to avoid
being shattered against the steel side of the tank by a big sea, the
boat put forth on its errand of mercy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI.
TO THE RESCUE.
Had the seas been breaking, the boat could not have lived a minute. The
moment that she struck the water would have been her last.
But, thanks to Captain Braceworth’s up-to-date seamanship, the
oil-skimmed swells, although high, were smooth, without dangerous spray
and breakers.
The five seamen and the young wireless man who had volunteered at the
last instant, tugged frantically at the big sweeps. Jack had been guilty
of no exaggeration when he had said he could row. It had been his
favorite amusement about the bay, and he was as strong as a young colt,
anyhow.
In the stern at the steering oar stood Mr. Brown. His eyes were riveted
on the wreck ahead.
As a monstrous green swell rushed under the boat he gave a shout:
“Lay into it, bullies! Pull for the girls, boys! That’s the stuff! Break
your backs! All together now! We’ll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!”
Mr. Brown, in his youth, had been before the mast on a whaler, and in
moments of excitement he went back to the language of whalemen when out
in the boats.
“H-e-a-v-e a-l-l!” he bellowed, with a strength of lung that appeared
wonderful in such a diminutive man.
As the tanker’s boat was pulled by its stalwarts across the heaving
seas, the men at the oars, by turning their heads, could see in what
desperate straits were the handful of survivors.
“There’s a woman on board!” yelled Mr. Brown suddenly. “Pull for all
you’re worth, my lads! It’s a little girl, by the Polar Star!”
As if this information had given them new strength, the men gave way
with renewed energy. Jack, by twisting his head, could see, as the boat
topped a wave, the sight that had excited Mr. Brown. Astern, lashed to
the stump of the mizzen-mast, was the figure of a tall, spare,
gray-haired man. His arms were clasped tightly around a young girl,
whose hair was whipped out wildly by the wind.
Near by, another form was lashed to the wheel, while forward were two
figures, apparently those of sailors. They also were tied, in this case
to the windlass. This fact alone betrayed the desperate conditions
through which the unfortunate craft had fought her way.
“She’s a down-easter, from Nova Scotia or Maine. Lumber, I guess,”
opined Mr. Brown. “Good thing for them they had a lumber cargo, or she’d
have been keeping company with Davy Jones by this time. Give way, men!”
But all Mr. Brown’s urgings to “hit it up” were unneeded. The crew of
the boat were all Americans, and anyone who knows the merchant navy of
to-day, knows that it is by a rare chance that such a thing happens.
American ships are largely manned by foreigners; but aboard the
_Ajax_,—Captain Braceworth was particular in this respect,—the majority
of the crew were American. Consequently, they needed no driving to do
their duty when lives were at stake.
Jack, tugging at his oar, felt the strength of ten men. His whole being
thrilled to the glory of the adventure. This was real seaman’s work.
This was no job for a monkey-wrench sailor, but a man’s task, requiring
strength, grit and nerve.
But as they drew alongside the wreck, it was apparent that any attempt
to get close enough to take off the crew must infallibly end in
disaster.
Mr. Brown turned to his crew.
“Men, which of you can swim? I’m like a lame duck in the water or I’d do
it myself.” (And nobody doubted that he would.) “We’ve got to get a line
to that craft.”
Jack’s face flushed with excitement. He would prove worthy of his line
of sea-going forbears.
“I can swim like a fish, sir! Let me try it!”
At the same time that he spoke, four other voices expressed their
willingness to try. Mr. Brown looked at Jack.
“This is no job for a wireless kid to tackle,” he said grimly. “Dobson,
you spoke next. I’ll send you. Get ready and make fast a line around
your waist.”
But Dobson was already knotting a line about his middle. He stripped to
his underwear, and, while Jack looked on with bitter disappointment in
his face, the man tossed one end of the line to Mr. Brown and then,
without a word, plunged overboard.
Jack watched him with a thrill of admiration, as with strong, confident
strokes he cleft the sea. Then he looked in another direction. Off to
the leeward was the _Ajax_, tossing on the seas for an instant and then
vanishing till only the tops of her masts and a smudge of smoke were
visible.
It was growing dusk. A wan, gray light filled the air. The next time the
steamer rose on a swell, Jack saw that at her mast-head the riding
lights had been switched on. They glowed like jewels in the monotonous
sea-scape of lead and dull green.
Dobson reached the wreck. With clever generalship he had waited for a
big sea, and then, as it rose high, he had ridden on it straight for the
vessel. When the sea swept by, they saw him clinging to the main chains
and after an instant begin clambering on board with the line trailing
from his waist.
Those in the boat broke into a wild cheer. Jack’s voice rang out above
the rest.
“There’s a real seaman,” he thought; “one of the kind my father and
Uncle Toby were.”
As the hoarse shouts of the men in the boat rang over the waters, they
saw the form of Dobson creeping aft along the wreckage. They watched
through the thickening light as the shadowy figure toiled along. He
gained the side of the old man and the little girl.
Taking the line from his waist, he made it fast to the latter’s body.
“Give way, men,” ordered Mr. Brown, and the boat was warily maneuvered
under the stern of the wreck. It was dangerous, risky work, but while
the small craft tossed almost under the derelict’s counter, the forms of
the old man and the child were lowered into her. Although both were
badly exhausted, there were stimulants in the boat, and Mr. Brown
pronounced both to be safe and sound and not in any danger.
But the seaman who had made the rescues was, himself, in no condition
after his long, hard swim to do any more. When the girl and the old man
were safe in the boat, he, too, made a wild leap and boarded it.
Immediately it was sheered off.
Jack’s heart gave a wild leap. There were still two men in the bow. What
about them?
There was a second line in the boat and the young wireless man had
already made it fast around his middle.
“It’s my turn now, Mr. Brown,” he urged. “Let me go now, won’t you, and
get those two poor fellows in the bow?”
“Shut your mouth and sit still,” came hotly from Mr. Brown; and then a
sudden exclamation, “Great guns! He’s as brave a young idiot as I ever
saw!”
For Jack had taken the law into his own hands, leaped overboard into the
boiling sea and was now swimming with bold, confident strokes toward the
dim outlines of the derelict’s bow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Jack leaped overboard into the boiling sea.—_Page 94_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII.
JACK DISOBEYS ORDERS.
Outlined dimly in the distant gloom was the hulk of the steamer. Her
whistle was shrieking hoarsely, now sounding, as the mate guessed, a
recall to the rescue boat before darkness closed in.
Jack was a strong, able swimmer, but never had he received such a
breath-taking buffeting as fell to his lot in that wild commotion of
waters. But with grim determination he fought his way to the ship’s
side. Those in the boat saw him gain a foothold on the anchor chains and
scramble upward; but they could not guess what a supreme effort of nerve
and muscle those last few moments cost him.
As he gained the deck he was compelled, perforce, to cast himself
gasping on his face, and so he lay for a space. Then, from the gloom,
came a feeble call for help. It nerved him with fresh vim. Among the
tangled wreckage he scrambled till he reached the place where the two
men were lashed to the bitts.
Thanks to the oil-spread waters, the seas were no longer breaking over
the wreck, but the two men who had lashed themselves there to avoid
being swept over the side, were too feeble to sever their ties. Jack cut
them loose and signaled to the boat. It was brought as close alongside
as Mr. Brown dared, and one after the other the two seamen were hauled
on board. Last of all came Jack. He secured the rope to his waist as it
came snaking toward him from the boat like a lasso, and then jumped
outward. As he sprang, he felt the hulk drop from under his feet in a
wild yaw.
At the same instant the boy felt himself being drawn under water as if
in the grasp of a giant hand that he was powerless to resist. Then his
senses left him in a rocketing blaze of light and a roar like that of a
hundred water-falls.
When he came to, he was lying on the bottom boards of the boat. From a
bottle some stimulant was being administered to him. He sat up and
stared about him wildly for a moment, and then saw that they were almost
alongside the heaving hull of the tanker.
But of the wreck there was no sign.
“Went to Davy Jones like a plummet,” said Mr. Brown cheerfully, “and
almost took you along with her, my lad. We had a fine job hauling you
aboard, I can tell you.”
Now came the dangerous task of hauling up the boat of rescuers and
survivors. But it was accomplished at last by dint of cool-headed work
and seamanship. The two sailors were sent forward to get dry clothing
and hot coffee, while the elderly man, who was Captain Ralph Dennis of
the wrecked vessel, and his daughter Helen, were cared for in the
officers’ quarters aft.
Feeling rather shaky and dripping like a water-rat, Jack hastened to
make a change of clothing. By the time this was accomplished, the _Ajax_
was once more on her course. Hardly had he drawn on dry socks before the
old bos’n was at the door.
“The skipper wants to see you forward. I rather suspect there’s a storm
brewing for you, younker,” was his greeting.
“I’ll be there right away,” said Jack, and having pulled on his boots,
he hastened forward. As he went, his heart beat a little faster than
usual. What fault had he committed now, he wondered. Jack was a modest
youth, but he had suspected praise rather than censure for the part he
had taken in the rescue.
The skipper was in the chart-house giving a few directions before he
turned in, after an almost continuous twenty-four hours of duty.
He greeted Jack with a frown.
“Ready, who gave you orders to go away in that boat?” he demanded
sternly.
“No one, sir, but I thought——”
“You had no business to think. This is not a man-of-war or a passenger
boat, but if everyone on board did as they thought best, where would
discipline be?”
Jack stood dumbly miserable. He had performed what he thought a
meritorious act and this was his reward!
“I did the best I could to help when one of the men hung back, sir,” he
said.
The captain’s face softened a bit, but his voice was still stern as he
said:
“Mr. Brown was in charge of the boat. He should not have let you go. I
blame him more than you. But remember another time that you must do
nothing without orders so long as you sail under me. That is all,—and
Ready.”
“Sir?”
“I understand you conducted yourself according to the best traditions of
American seamanship. I was glad to hear that. Now get along with you and
try to relay a message to our owners, telling them of the rescue. If
there is another vessel within our range, inform me, as I wish to
transfer the shipwrecked men if possible. The craft was bound from
Portland, Maine, to the West Indies with lumber, and there is no sense
in taking the rescued company all the way across the Atlantic.”
Jack saluted and hastened off on his task. He felt considerably lighter
of heart when he left the chart-room than when he had entered it. There
had been a gleam of real human sympathy in the captain’s eye. That man
of iron actually had a heart after all, and Jack had read, under his
gruff manner, a kindly interest in his welfare and esteem for his act in
saving the two seamen.
“I’m glad I did disobey orders, anyway,” he said to himself; “if it did
nothing else, it has shown the skipper to me in another light than that
of a cruel task-master and slave-driver.”
That night Jack succeeded in relaying, through the _Arizonian_, of the
Red B Line, a message to the ship’s owners, telling of what had been
done. He also discovered that by noon of the next day they would pass on
the Atlantic track,—which is as definitely marked as a well-beaten
road,—the _Trojan_, of the Atlas Line of freighters. He made
arrangements with the captain of that craft to transfer the castaways of
the _Ajax_. This done, he informed the second officer, for the tired
captain was taking a well-deserved rest, and then turned in himself.
Next morning the gale had blown itself out and the _Ajax_ was pushing
ahead at top speed to make up for lost time. Black smoke crowding out of
her funnel showed that coal was not being spared in the furnace room.
Everyone appeared to be in good spirits, and the late autumn sun shone
down on a sparkling, dancing sea. It seemed impossible to believe that
only twelve hours before that same ocean had claimed its toll of human
lives and property.
Not long before eight bells, the look-out forward reported smoke on the
horizon. Jack, who had been in communication with the craft all the
morning, knew that the vapor must herald the approach of the _Trojan_.
He sent word forward to the captain by a passing steward, and the
castaways were told to prepare for a transfer to the other ship. Before
the two crafts came alongside, Captain Dennis had made his way to Jack’s
wireless room.
He looked forlorn and miserable, as well he might, for he had lost a
fine ship in which he owned an interest.
“How is your daughter coming along?” asked Jack, deeming it best not to
dwell on the stricken mariner’s misfortunes.
“Fairly well. We were two days in that gale. It’s a wonder any of us
lived. But I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. That was
a fine bit of work, and I can’t begin to express my gratitude.”
“We were glad to have happened along in time,” said Jack; but at this
moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the
captain’s daughter. Jack saw with surprise that the bedraggled,
white-faced maiden of the day before had, by some magic peculiar to
womankind, transformed herself into a remarkably pretty girl of about
his own age. She thanked him in a gentle way for his part in the work of
rescue, and Jack found himself stammering and blushing like a
school-boy.
“The _Trojan_ is almost up to us now,” he said, “and it will be time for
us to say good-bye. But I—I wish I could hear some time how you get
along after you get ashore.”
“We live in New York,” said the captain, coming out of a sad reverie,
“or we did. We’ll have to find new quarters now. But this address will
always find me.”
“And here is mine,” said Jack, writing hastily on a bit of message
paper. The captain glanced at it and then started.
“Are you any relative of Captain Amos Ready?” he demanded eagerly.
“I’m his son,” said Jack. “I live with my Uncle Toby and——”
But Captain Dennis was wringing his hand as if he would shake it off.
“This is a great day for me, boy, even if my poor old ship does lie at
the bottom of the Atlantic and Helen and I will have to start life all
over again. Why, Captain Ready and I sailed together many a year, but I
lost track of him and he of me. Where is he now?”
Jack sadly told him of his father’s death. Then there was only time for
quick farewells and hand-shakings, for an officer came hurrying up to
say that the boat was ready to transport the castaways to the _Trojan_.
The two big freighters lay idly on the ocean, bowing and nodding at each
other, while the transfer was made. Then the boat returned and was
hauled up and the vessels began to move off in opposite directions.
Jack stood at the rail gazing after the _Trojan_. He waved frantically
as the freighter got under way, and thought he caught a glimpse of a
white handkerchief being wafted in return. He felt a hand on his
shoulder. It was Raynor. There was an amused smile on the young
engineer’s face.
“Pretty girl that, eh, Ready? Pity she couldn’t have made the trip with
us.”
“Oh, you _shut up_!” exclaimed Jack, crimsoning and aiming a blow at his
friend’s head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII.
OLD ANTWERP.
Through varying winds and seas, the _Ajax_ plowed steadily on her way,
and in due course arrived at Antwerp and discharged her cargo. Of
course, while in port, Jack was at liberty, and he spent his time
roaming about the quaint old harbor and city.
Raynor joined him sometimes on these expeditions, but the young engineer
was kept busy making minor repairs on the engines and directing the
machinists. Since he was the junior member of the engine-room crew, this
work fell to his lot.
On the voyage across, and in port, too, whenever it was possible, he had
been steadily perfecting himself in the wireless craft till he was quite
proficient at it for a beginner. Jack proved an apt teacher and the
young engineer, himself unusually quick and intelligent, was a willing
scholar.
So the days passed pleasantly among the foreign scenes of the town and
harbor. All this time Jack had been noticing surprising vigilance
concerning the firemen and the crew of the big tanker.
One evening while they were roaming about the town, making purchases of
post-cards and other small articles, Jack asked Raynor about this.
“They’re on the look-out for the tobacco smuggling gang,” explained his
friend.
“The tobacco smuggling gang? What is that?” asked Jack.
“Do you mean to say that you have never heard of them or of their
activities?” asked Raynor.
Jack shook his head.
“Not till this minute, anyway,” he said.
“Well, then, you must know that most of the Sumatra tobacco used for
cigars and so on comes to this port, and it can be bought here very
cheaply. In New York there is a well-organized gang, as is known to
every seaman, that makes a practice of buying all that can be smuggled
into the country by the crews and firemen of ships trading out of this
port. Their activities have been reported in the papers many times, and
all sorts of means have been employed to check them, but somehow the
trade still seems to go on. So now you know why we keep such a careful
look-out while in this port.”
Jack was satisfied with the explanation and thought no more of the
matter, but a time was to come, and that before very long, when it was
to be brought vividly before him again.
Jack liked Antwerp, with its fine buildings and picture galleries. But
he found that along the docks were all manner of tough resorts where the
worst class of sailors spent their time while in port.
He was passing one of these places one day when a man, whom he
recognized as one of the engineers of the _Ajax_, approached him.
“Hullo, youngster,” he said, “come inside and have something. I want to
talk to you.”
Jack shook his head.
“I don’t go into places of that sort and I don’t smoke or drink.”
The man looked at him and then burst into a roar of laughter. “You’ll
not get very far at sea then,” he said.
“That’s just where I differ with you,” said Jack, and was passing on
when the man seized his arm.
“Well, forget it,” he said. “See here, you’re a pretty smart sort of lad
and I can put you in the way of making some money.”
“What sort of money?” asked Jack.
“Well, about the hardest part of your job will be to keep your mouth
shut.”
“You mean that there is something dishonest involved?” inquired the boy.
“That all depends on what you call dishonest. Some folks are pretty
finicky. This something doesn’t come within the law exactly, but there’s
good money in it.”
“I don’t want any of it,” said Jack, and moved off.
The man called after him.
“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it, but just forget
anything I said.”
Jack did not reply, but hurried on. He was bound for the Boulevard des
Arts, one of the most beautiful thoroughfares in Europe. As he walked
along, he wondered what the man who had intercepted him could have been
driving at. He finally gave it up as too tough a problem. But later on
he was to recollect the conversation vividly.
Jack’s pay was not very large, nor was that of his chum, Raynor, but the
two planned a trip one day on one of the canals. They boarded an
odd-looking boat and for a very small sum they voyaged across the
frontier into Holland with its quaintly dressed peasants, low, flat
fields and general air of neatness.
It was drowsy work gliding along the canal at a rate of not more than
six knots an hour. Jack declared that he would have gone to sleep for
the voyage, had it not been for the captain of the canal craft, who was
a most willing performer with his whistle, and tooted at everything and
everybody he saw.
From time to time they slowed up at a dock and the passenger, if a man,
jumped off without the boat stopping. When a woman traveler wished to
alight, the boat was brought to a standstill.
“Look over there!” called Raynor suddenly, as they passed a pretty
cottage on the canal banks.
There, on the roof, was a stork family, father, mother and two young
ones.
“Well, we sure are abroad,” declared Jack, gazing with pleasure at the
pretty picture.
“Low bridge,” or its equivalent in Dutch, was frequently called, and
then all hands ducked their heads till the bridge was passed. Clouds
began to gather, and one of the sudden rain storms which sweep over
Holland descended in a pelting downpour. The passengers were driven to
the cabin, which they shared with a cargo of cheese, traveling in state.
But the storm soon passed over and the sun shone out brightly once more.
Windmills were in sight everywhere, their great sails turning slowly. In
some places the roofs of the farm houses were on a level with the banks
of the canal.
Occasionally a broad-beamed canal craft, with a patched brown sail,
drifted lazily by, with a leisurely Dutchman standing at the stern
placidly smoking a big China-bowled pipe, his family, perhaps, or at
least a dog, voyaging with him.
“Nobody seems to be in a hurry over here,” said Raynor.
“No, it’s like that country where it is always afternoon, that we used
to read about in school,” said Jack.
“Hullo,” he added suddenly, “what’s coming off now?”
The little vessel was making for a sort of garden with tables set about
in it.
“Going to stop for dinner, I guess,” suggested Raynor.
This proved to be the case. A true Hollander cannot go long without
eating, and the amount of food the voyagers consumed astonished the
boys.
“They’ll sink the ship when they get back on board,” prophesied Jack,
looking about him with apprehension.
The boys did not see Antwerp again till late, as the returning boat was
delayed. They found everything closed up, although it was only eleven,
and the streets deserted. Antwerp believes in going to bed early, and
the hotels are all locked by midnight. But that didn’t trouble the boys,
for they had their floating hotel in which to stay and which they
reached without incident.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV.
SIGHT-SEEING.
The boys found Antwerp a straggly town full of fine buildings and
galleries, but almost like a maze without a plan. Jutting right off even
the finest thoroughfares were slums, and they were advised to follow the
tram lines and keep off the more squalid of the streets.
Jack, who was quite a student, struck up a friendship with a bookish old
man whom the boys met while exploring the great Cathedral. From this
mentor, who, fortunately, could speak English,—French being the tongue
most heard in the capital of Belgium,—the boys learned much of the
history of the town.
Of course, as they already knew, he told them that Antwerp was the
sea-port of the Schelde estuary, and one of the youngest of the Belgian
great cities.
The name originally meant “At the Wharf,” their old friend told them,
and even in antiquity there was a small sea-port here, of which no
traces, however, remain. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as
Europe quieted down, the city began to rise in importance. The large,
deep, open port floated the keels of vessels from all over Europe. Under
Charles the Fifth, Antwerp was probably even more prosperous and wealthy
than Venice, Queen of medieval sea-ports. The center of traffic was
shifting from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. In 1568 more than a
hundred craft arrived at, and sailed from, Antwerp daily.
It is to this period, so the old gentleman told the boys, that Antwerp
owes the cathedrals and other fine buildings, containing pictures and
objects of art, which still adorn it.
But the Cathedral itself is a mixture of different periods. Begun in the
middle of the fourteenth century, various parts were added till the
seventeenth.
The finest examples of the art of the two great painters, Quentin Matsys
and Rubens, are to be found in Antwerp. The works of many other painters
of minor importance, too, adorn the galleries and churches of the city
in great numbers.
The decline of Antwerp, if it can be so called, began in 1576, during
the attempt of the southern provinces of Flanders to throw off the yoke
of Spain. In that year a thousand fine buildings were burned, the town
hall razed and eight thousand persons massacred by fire and sword. In
1585 the famous Duke of Parma completed the destruction, and Antwerp
seemed to be completely crushed.
Then came the unhappy separation between Holland and Belgium. The Dutch
erected forts on their own territory at the mouth of the Schelde and
refused to allow ships to proceed up the estuary. Finally, in 1648, it
was agreed by a treaty that all ships should unload their goods for
Antwerp at a Dutch port, the freight being then transshipped to the
Belgian city by small river craft.
Naturally, this action proved a severe blow to Antwerp. Rotterdam and
Amsterdam took her place as commercial cities. In 1794, however, the
French, then in occupation, reopened navigation on the Schelde and
destroyed the commerce-killing forts at the mouth of the river.
The great Napoleon caused new quays and a harbor to be constructed, and
it began to look as though Antwerp were once more to enjoy some of her
pristine importance. But after Napoleon’s overthrow, the city underwent
another change in her fortunes. She was made over to Holland and thus
became, by a twist of fate, a Dutch sea-port.
Even when Antwerp became independent again in 1830, the Dutch still
maintained their heavy tolls on shipping. This was a constant drain on
the city which had already suffered much during the War of Independence
when it was subjected to a heavy siege.
In 1863, however, a large money payment bought off the Dutch
extortioners and Antwerp’s prosperity began to rise. As the boys’ friend
pointed out, the city was the natural outlet of the Schelde, and to some
extent of all the German Empire.
Since that time, so far as history is concerned, the rise of Antwerp to
her old place as one of the world’s great commercial centers has been
rapid. It was on this account, as the old man explained, that Antwerp
was such a strange jumble of the ancient and modern, for, until the
shipping embargo was lifted, she practically stood still in her
development.
The old man appeared to be very proud that Antwerp, unlike Brussels, had
retained her old Flemish ideas in spite of the march of her trade. He
told the boys that it would require at least four days to get a clear
idea of Antwerp, and after another day of exploration they began to
believe him.
But they made up their minds that they were going to be able to give the
folks at home a good account of the city, so they stuck to the task even
though Raynor did yawn over pictures of the Old Masters in dull colors
and frames. The young engineer was extremely practical, and loudly
declared in one of the galleries:—
“Well, that picture may be all right, but give me something with a
little ginger and color in it.”
“My, but you’re a vandal!” laughed Jack, consulting a catalogue. “That’s
one of the most famous pictures in Europe. It is by Rubens.”
“Guess I’m too much of a Rube-n to appreciate it, then,” was Raynor’s
comment.
But he was a methodical lad, as are most persons who have a mechanical
bent. He purchased and loyally used a small red note book, in which he
jotted down everything they saw, good, bad or indifferent. He soon had
one book full, when he promptly began on another, noting down whatever
was supposed to be of interest, whether he understood it or not.
The boys enjoyed sitting under the shady trees in the Place Verte,
surveying the scene. It is one of the few places in Antwerp from which a
clear view of the Cathedral can be obtained, mean-looking houses
shouldering up to the great structure and spoiling it from other points
of vision.
“Say, Jack,” exclaimed Raynor one evening as they walked rapidly
shipward, “I’m getting tired of moldy old cathedrals and rusty old
galleries full of Rubes,—beg pardon, I mean Rubens; can’t we do
something more lively?”
“What would you suggest?” asked Jack.
“Oh, let’s take a few trips around. Another canal boat ride, for
instance, or something like that.”
“That would be fine but for one consideration,” said Jack.
“And what is that?”
“Funds, old boy, dollars and cents. I don’t know about you, but I’m
pretty well down to my limit.”
“Same here. Say, you’ve got to be rich to enjoy these places, Jack.”
“I begin to think so, too,” declared his chum.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV.
AN ADVENTURE—
The boys were walking briskly down a tree-bordered, rather badly lighted
street in the residential quarter as this conversation took place. They
had been to the home of a friend of Captain Bracebridge with a
confidential note. The man to whom they had taken the message had been
absent at the theater. As they had a verbal message to deliver, too, and
supposed that it, like the note, was confidential, they had not wished
to confide it to a servant but had decided to wait. It was, therefore,
late when, their errand completed, they started back on a lonely walk
through the residential section to the ship.
The good folk of Antwerp go to bed early. No one else was on the street
as the boys hurried along. Tree shadows lay across the road in black
patches, where there were lights brilliant enough to effect such
results.
“Well, I suppose we ought to be glad to have the chance to get abroad at
all,” muttered Raynor, continuing the conversation whose record began in
the last chapter.
“Yes, indeed, we’re lucky fellows,” said Jack cheerfully.
“Yes, it’s a fine old city and all that,” admitted Raynor rather
grudgingly, “and I’ve certainly enjoyed my stay here; but I’d have liked
to look about a little more. I wonder if there isn’t some place where
they have machinery to show?”
“Gracious! I must say you’re a barbarian. Can’t you see all the
machinery you wish in that greasy, fire-spitting old engine room of
yours, without wanting a sight of more?”
“Well,” retorted Raynor, “would you trade one of those ‘old masters,’ as
they call them, for a dandy set of modern instruments to put in your
wireless room at home?”
Jack was fairly stumped. He broke into a laugh.
“That’s not a fair way of putting it,” he said after a minute. “I like
monkeying with wireless as much as you do with machinery, but I can
enjoy other things.”
“So can I. An ice-cream soda, for instance.”
“I’m with you there,” agreed Jack, “but we’ll have to wait for that.”
“Yes, till we get back to the U.S.A. The stuff they sell you for soda
here wouldn’t be offered you by a bankrupt druggist in Skeedunk with
bats in his belfry.”
Jack broke into a laugh, which suddenly changed into a quick exclamation
of astonishment.
“Hark!” he cried.
“What’s the matter?” breathlessly from Raynor. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“You didn’t? You must be—there it is again.”
This time it was Raynor’s turn to start.
“I heard it all right then,” he exclaimed. “It was——”
“A woman screaming.”
“That’s what. Gracious, what’s the matter?”
“It’s off down that street there,” decided Jack, pointing a little
distance ahead where a small street branched off the main thoroughfare
and skirted a small, unlighted park. “Come on,” he shouted to Raynor,
and was off.
“What are you going to do?” called Raynor.
“Find out what’s the trouble. There’s something serious the matter.”
Suddenly the cries stopped as abruptly as if a hand had been clapped
over the mouth of the person uttering them.
“There’s no time to lose,” panted Jack, sprinting.
“I’m with you,” gasped Raynor, running at his companion’s side.
The two lads dashed around the corner. Before them lay a narrow, gloomy
street, edged by the dark trees of the little park, which, at that time
of night, was, of course, deserted.
At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary appeared. Then they
suddenly saw the headlights of an automobile. As suddenly, the lights
vanished. They had been switched off by somebody.
“There’s where the trouble is,” cried Jack, and was conscious of a wish
that he had some sort of weapon with him. They were rushing into they
knew not what danger; but Jack was no quitter. Some woman was in
trouble, and that was enough for him.
The same was the case with Raynor. Both lads, typical Americans,
lithe-limbed, stout of heart and muscle, and with grit to spare, didn’t
give a thought to the danger they might be incurring by their daring
dash to the rescue. The mere idea that they were needed urgently was
enough.
“Some ruffians are attacking the auto!” came from Jack as they drew
closer.
“Yes. Look! There’s a woman in the car. Two of them,” added Raynor.
“They’ve been held up.”
“Looks that way.”
As the two boys neared the car, the whole scene became clear to them. It
was a limousine and three men, two on one side and one on the other,
were poking revolvers into the windows of the enclosed part. As the boys
came up, the chauffeur, who till then had been paralyzed by fear, leaped
from his seat and dashed off, taking the low stone wall, surrounding the
park, at one bound.
“The great coward! He might have been a big help to us, too,” exclaimed
Jack with indignation as he saw this.
“Yes, it’s three to two, and they are armed,” cried Raynor.
The next moment, with a startling yell they attacked two of the men
simultaneously. One of them went down with a crash under Jack’s powerful
right swing before he could do anything to defend himself, for none of
them had noticed the approach of the two American lads.
The fellow’s revolver went spinning over the wall and fell with a ring
of metal out of his reach. In the meantime, Raynor was not having such
an easy time with the man he had tackled. This fellow was a
heavily-built specimen of dock lounger, or worse, with a Belgian cap on
his head and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face.
As Raynor rushed him, he seized the young engineer in an iron grip and
pressed a weapon to his side.
“Fool, to interfere! This is your last moment on earth!” he snarled.
From the interior of the limousine, two women, one elderly and the other
young, looked out, paralyzed with alarm. Too frightened to scream, they
sat stock still as they saw what was about to happen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI.
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Jack saved the day.
With muscles of steel, tensed like tightly coiled springs, he leaped on
the back of the fellow whose revolver was pressing against Raynor’s
side, and threw his arms about his neck. Choked and dazed, the man
toppled over backward and fell with a crash to the concrete walk.
“Quick, old fellow, get his revolver before he can get up,” choked out
Jack.
Raynor, recovering from his struggle, bent over and picked up the weapon
and stood with it ready for action. Just as he did so, the third man,
who up to now had been deprived of action from surprise at the quickness
of the whole thing, came to himself and made a rush for Jack.
Before Jack could turn, the fellow had seized him and knocked him over.
At the same instant, in the distance, they heard the shrill screaming of
whistles.
“_Les gendarmes!_” shouted the man who had knocked Jack over.
The two recumbent men, aroused from their stupor by their fright at the
approach of the police, gathered themselves up, and the three sped away,
running at top speed across the little park where all was dark and
shadowy.
In the meantime, the cowardly chauffeur, who had been watching from
behind a tree, saw that the day was saved, and began to consider what he
should do to save himself and his reputation. He had plainly deserted
his employer’s wife and daughter, frightened out of his wits when the
three ruffians demanded the women’s diamonds as they were on their way
home from the opera. But now he leaped the wall again and shouted to the
women that he had merely gone to summon the police, seeing that the boys
had the case well in hand. Then he jumped to the seat, and, not wishing
to face a police examination himself or involve his employer in one, he
turned on full power and sped away.
Hardly was he out of sight, than there appeared a detachment of Antwerp
policemen, led by an officer running at full speed toward the boys. Some
timid householder had heard the screams and shouts, but, too timorous to
venture out himself, had telephoned the nearest station; and the sudden
appearance of the officers was the result.
“Bother it all,” exclaimed Jack, “here come the police. Although they’d
have been welcome a while back, we don’t want them now.”
“Why not?” asked Raynor, not unnaturally.
“Well, we have a very important letter to the captain with us. If the
police get hold of us, they’ll want to do a whole lot of questioning,
and goodness knows what time we’ll get back.”
“What shall we do?”
“Take to our heels, I guess. It doesn’t look very honest, but we must
get that letter to the captain to-night.”
“That’s so; he said he’d sit up and wait for us,” responded Raynor.
“That is why I’m so anxious not to be detained. Come on.”
The two boys set off, running at top speed.
“Keep in the shadow of the wall,” said Jack; “we don’t want them to see
us.”
But that is just what the police did do. Their leader happened to be
keen of eye and almost instantly he detected the two fleeing forms. He
shouted something in French.
The boys kept right on. They ran like greyhounds. But the police were
fleet of foot, too.
Then the boys heard behind them a series of sharp, yapping barks.
“What in the world are those dogs for?” asked Raynor pantingly.
They had passed the park now and were running through a street bordered
with dark houses. Jack’s reply was startling.
“They’re police dogs!”
“Police dogs?”
“That’s right. They have them in New York, too, and I remember reading
in the paper that they were imported from Belgium.”
Shouts came from behind them.
They were in French, but the boys readily guessed their import. As if to
emphasize their cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally that
they were in pursuit of the miscreants who had disturbed the midnight
peace, drew their revolvers.
Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.
“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.
“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack. “Quick, in here.”
He seized Raynor’s arm and pulled him inside an iron gate in a high wall
that surrounded a garden, in which stood a pretty, old-fashioned house.
It appeared to be unoccupied.
“We’re in a fine pickle now,” muttered Raynor.
“Yes, I’m sorry we ran. If they catch us now, we’ll have an awful time
explaining.”
Raynor shuddered.
“You don’t mean they’ll send us to jail?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about these foreign police. They’re
likely to do anything.”
“And we can’t speak their language,” added Raynor. “That makes it
worse.”
“I’m afraid that it does,” agreed Jack. “But hush! here they come.”
Headed by the nosing, sniffing, rough-coated police dogs, held in
leashes, the police came running down the street. The boys had outrun
them and hoped that by crouching in the shelter of the wall within the
iron gate, they could throw them off the track.
But in this, they had calculated without the dogs!
As the dogs came level with the gate, they stopped and sniffed
suspiciously. The police behind them began to talk excitedly, waving
their arms and talking with their hands as well as their tongues.
“It’s all off now,” whispered Jack.
“Couldn’t we run up that gravel walk and get back of the house?”
breathed Raynor.
Jack shook his head. He didn’t dare to talk.
Suddenly the leader of the police squad pointed to the iron gate.
“Open it and search the house and grounds thoroughly,” he said in
French. “These are desperate criminals, it is clear. Great credit will
come to us, _mon braves_, can we catch them.”
The iron gate was pushed open.
The next moment the two American boys with beating hearts stepped
forward and faced this body of men, who, it was plain, believed Jack and
his chum to be miscreants of the blackest sort.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII.
RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET.
It was the most unpleasant predicament of his life in which Jack now
found himself. Naturally, his chum felt the same way about it. The irony
of the situation was irritating.
Having chased away, at the risk of their own lives, some desperate
crooks, the lads who had done all this found themselves accused of being
nefarious characters.
“They are Anglise,” exclaimed one of the men as he turned a bull’s-eye
lantern on them.
“No, sir, we are not. We are Americans,” exclaimed Jack proudly.
The leader of the gendarmes laughed in an amused way.
“Your country should be proud of you,” he said in good English with a
provoking sarcasm.
In fact, neither Jack nor Raynor looked at his best just then. Their
caps were gone, lost in the struggle with the would-be robbers, their
hair was tousled, perspiration streamed down their faces and their
garments were torn and dusty.
Jack felt all this, and the knowledge of it did not tend to cheer him.
Had he been a policeman and known no more of the facts than did the
gendarmes, he felt that he would have been justified in acting in the
same way. But he determined to try to explain the case.
“We are off the American tank steamer _Ajax_,” he said. “To-night we had
an important errand in this section of the city. On our way back to the
ship we heard screams, and investigated. We found three men trying to
rob an old lady and a younger one who were seated in the closed part of
a blue limousine.
“After a struggle we disarmed them and put them to flight. Just as you
people came up, the chauffeur, who ran away during the fight,
reappeared, jumped into his seat and drove off. We were in a hurry to
get back to our ship and so, foolishly, as I can see now, we ran off,
thinking that if we stayed we might be detained and questioned.”
“Is that all?” asked the officer calmly.
“That is all,” responded Jack.
“It is enough.”
“Enough for what?” The man’s tone nettled Jack in spite of himself.
“Enough to secure you both a lodging in the prison of the city
to-night.”
The boys looked aghast.
“What! Do you mean to make us prisoners and lock us up?” asked Jack, who
had hoped that at the worst nothing more would be done than to question
them and, having ascertained the truth of their stories, set them free.
The officer nodded and then gave a brisk command. At his words, a
policeman took hold of both boys by the right and left arms, twisting
them back so that if they made any great struggle to escape, their arms
would be broken.
It was not till then that the full seriousness of their positions broke
over the boys. Raynor gave a wrench to free himself of the grip of the
police, but an excruciating pain that followed made him quickly desist.
“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this will all be straightened
out.”
Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.
“Of course we can send a message to the ship, and then you can speedily
ascertain that we are telling the truth and set us free,” he said
bravely, but with a sinking heart.
To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.
“You will be allowed to tell your story to the examining magistrate in
the morning,” he said coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to inform
you that if it isn’t any more probable than the one you told me,—well——”
He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his sharp-pointed, little black
mustache.
“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst out Jack.
“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us that,” was the reply.
Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s coat. It bulged
conspicuously in one of the pockets. He stepped quickly to the American
lad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out a revolver.
It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discovery
made things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. He
looked at them with a sneer.
“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding lads
carry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, _messieurs_, proves
that your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you really
come off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want
here.”
Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silence
and a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him.
The next moment, held as if they had been desperate characters, the two
boys found themselves, under armed guard, being marched through the
sleeping city of Antwerp to prison cells.
Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure. But protests, they
knew, would be worse than silence, and so they submitted to being
ignominiously marched along without uttering a word. Beside them
strutted the little officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,”
word of which he took care reached the newspapers that night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN DURANCE VILE.
The boys passed a sleepless night in a none too clean cell. A sentry
paced up and down in front of the bars, as if they stood committed for
some heinous offense. To keep their spirits up, they tried to make light
of the affair. But in that dreary place, with the stone-flagged floor
and the steel grating, it was pretty hard to be lively.
“Never mind; it won’t last long, and think what a laugh we’ll have on
these fool police once we are out,” said Jack with a dismal attempt at a
chuckle.
“Yes; but in the meantime, they have the laugh on us,” objected Raynor
with grim humor. “Anyhow, I’m not sorry. Those ruffians would certainly
have robbed those two women if we hadn’t done something,” he added.
“We made our mistake in not standing our ground and facing the police,”
decided Jack.
“I guess they’d have gathered us in on general principles, we being the
only people in sight. Their motto seems to be, ‘We’ve got to collar
someone and it might as well be you.’”
“That’s the way it appears to be,” agreed Jack with a sigh.
It seemed as if that night would never pass. But, like everything else,
it came to an end at last. With a great clanking and parade of police,
the boys were marched forth and ordered into a covered wagon. Then they
were jolted off over the cobbled streets and finally ordered to alight
in front of a building that looked as if the old burgomasters of the
place might have transacted business there.
It was, in fact, one of the ancient guild-houses of the city, and bore a
coat of arms on its ornate, time-stained front. Inside, it was cool and
dark, with scrupulously clean floors and furnishings. Had the boys been
in any more pleasant situation, they would have admired the quaint old
carved beams and the stone-work enriched by clever, bygone masons’
tools. But just then they had no eye for architecture.
They were ushered into a large room whose groined ceiling and dark oak
panels made it appear that only twilight ever filtered through the
stained-glass windows, set in frames of carved stone. At one end, behind
a high desk of dark, shiny wood, which looked as if it were as old as
the building, sat a dried-up dignitary with a skin like parchment,
peering through a great pair of heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles.
In front of him was a huge pewter ink-stand with pens sticking up in it
like quills upon a porcupine. Before this personage, whom they guessed
to be the officiating magistrate, the boys were marched with much pomp
and ceremony. Then the little mustached official who had played the
leading part in their arrest stepped forward.
With a bow and a flourish he explained the case. To the boys’
astonishment, too, they saw their caps handed up. Evidently the police
had found them and taken them up as evidence. This was a hopeful sign,
for in each cap the owner’s name was inscribed.
“They’ll know that we told the truth about our names, anyway,” said
Jack, nudging Raynor.
At this juncture there was a sudden disturbance in the back of the court
room, and in broke a burly, sun-bronzed man. It was Captain Bracebridge,
the last man in the world the boys wanted to have see them in such a
position. They crimsoned with mortification and felt ready to sink
through the floor.
The captain burst through a line of small Antwerp police, who tried to
restrain him, like a runaway horse through a crowded street. He came
straight up to the boys and gasped out breathlessly:
“Read about it in the papers and rushed straight here. What’s the truth
of it all?”
“Then you don’t believe that police story?” asked Jack gratefully.
“Of course not. Tell me all about it.” He turned to a short, sallow man,
carrying a big bag, who had followed him in, like the dust in the trail
of the whirlwind. “This is a lawyer. He’ll straighten this thing out in
a brace of shakes.”
The lawyer made a long harangue to the court, of which none of the
Americans understood a word; but apparently he had asked leave to take
his clients into a consulting room, for presently they were ushered into
a chamber which might have been, and probably was, used for the purpose
in medieval times. They were in the midst of their story, when another
disturbance occurred outside. A handsome automobile had driven up, out
of which stepped a portly personage with dignified, white whiskers,
gold-rimmed eye-glasses, top-hat and frock-coat.
“Monsieur La Farge, the head of the government railways,” whispered the
loungers in the court room as he hastened down the aisle and whispered
to the magistrate, who received him with great deference.
The next moment he, too, was escorted into the consulting room. To the
boys’ amazement, he rushed up to them and, with continental
demonstrativeness, began wringing their hands up and down and uttering a
tirade against the police, the methods they employed and the force in
general.
“You are interested in this case, sir?” inquired Captain Bracebridge.
“Interested!” M. La Farge appeared to be about to explode. “The police!
Bah! Dunderheads! Idiots! Assassins! These boys saved my wife and
daughter from ruffians who would rob them, and——”
“Your wife and daughter?” exclaimed the boys in one breath. Their case
was certainly taking a startling turn, for already their attorney had
whispered who the newcomer was and his high rank.
“Yes, they told me about it on their arrival home last night, and also
about the cowardly, foolish actions of Alphonse, the chauffeur, whom I
have discharged. When I read in the papers of the arrest of two American
lads and the story that they told, despite which the police had arrested
them, I was angry, furious. I knew then that the deliverers of my dear
ones had been arrested like felons,” exploded M. La Farge. “I hastened
here at once to make what reparation I could for such an act of the
idiots, the police! Bah!”
“Perhaps the police were not altogether to blame,” said Jack as the
peppery M. La Farge concluded his angry harangue. “We should not have
run away, and then perhaps we should not have been arrested.”
“It was all the fault of that foolish chauffeur in driving away as he
did,” exclaimed M. La Farge. “But in one sense I am glad all this has
happened, although I am deeply mortified at the same time. Had it not
been for this occurrence, I should never have known whom to thank for
the brave act you performed. I could not have rewarded you——”
He drew out a check book. But both boys held up expostulating hands.
“None of that, if you please, sir,” said Jack.
“He speaks for me, too,” said Raynor. “We’d do the same thing over
again, if it had to be done.”
“Police and all?” smiled Captain Bracebridge.
“I beg your pardon,” said M. La Farge, re-pocketing the check book. “I
should have known better than to offer money for such a service; no
money could repay it. But I must think of some other way. However, the
first thing to be done is to extricate you from this unpleasant position
and obtain the apologies of the police.”
For a man of M. La Farge’s influence, this was easy to do; and the boys
certainly felt that the humble apology that the little mustached officer
tendered them almost on his knees was due them.
That evening they were the rather embarrassed guests of M. La Farge at
dinner at his home. In order not to make them feel uneasy, there were no
guests outside the immediate family; but both boys had to endure what
was for them quite an ordeal when the pretty Miss La Farge and her
handsome, gray-haired mother thanked them again and again, and almost
wept in apologizing for the action of the police. Then, seeing that the
boys were really troubled by their thanks, they tactfully turned the
subject, and the boys, whose bashfulness soon wore off, enjoyed a jolly
evening. After dinner Miss La Farge, who was an accomplished musician,
played and sang for them, including in her program a medley of American
airs.
As they were leaving, receiving many cordial and pressing invitations to
come again, their host presented each of them with a small flat package.
“A slight remembrance,” he said. “It is inadequate to express the
gratitude of my wife, my daughter and myself, but perhaps it will help
you in recollecting that you always have three warm friends in Belgium.
Do not open them till you reach the ship.”
The boys stammered their thanks and then, after more warm good-nights,
they parted from their kind and grateful hosts. That they walked briskly
to the ship may be imagined. They were on fire with eagerness to see
what the packages contained. They hastened to Jack’s cabin and opened
them, and then gasped with delight. Inside each was a gold watch and
chain; but, more wonderful than this, was the inscription under each
lad’s name, “In grateful and unfading remembrance of the night of ——
from their steadfast friends, the family of M. La Farge.”
“Phew!” exclaimed Jack, mopping his forehead, not altogether on account
of the warmth of the night, “what do you know about that?”
“Nothing,” exclaimed Raynor, “nothing at all! Aren’t they bully! But
let’s see what is in these two flat pocket-books.” In the excitement of
finding the watches, they had not paid much attention to two flat cases
of dark leather enclosed in each package. The books were opened and
found to contain, under isinglass, like a commuter’s ticket in America,
two passes on the government railways, signed by M. La Farge and good
all over the Netherlands.
The boys’ cup of happiness was pressed down and running over.
“Just to think that only a few minutes before we ran into our big
adventure, we were kicking because we had no money to travel,” cried
Jack, as he eyed his engraved pass lovingly. “Now for a few trips!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FIELD OF WATERLOO.
The _Ajax_ was to remain two days or so longer in Antwerp, and the boys
readily obtained permission from the captain to make all the use they
could of their passes. They had already exhausted what they wished to
see of Antwerp, including the famous fort on the Tête de Flandre on the
opposite bank of the river, the great cathedral, the home of Rubens’
parents, and the magnificent picture gallery.
Now they could enlarge their opportunities, and they decided to take a
trip to Brussels and from there to the field of Waterloo. Accordingly,
they started in high spirits on their tour as soon as they could get a
train. Their passes were marked “first-class,” so they soon ensconced
themselves in a leather-lined compartment, while their less fortunate
fellow passengers had to be content with “second” and “third.”
“I wonder how this arrangement would go in America?” asked Jack as they
sank back in the soft-padded cushions.
“I guess everybody would go first-class,” laughed Raynor. “We haven’t
anyone at home willing to brand himself ‘second’ or ‘third’ in the
race.”
“Now who on earth is this?” wondered Jack presently, as a brightly
uniformed official entered the compartment which they had to themselves.
“Conductor, I guess,” hazarded Raynor.
The official removed his cap and bowed low.
“_Bonjours, messieurs_,” said he; “_les billets, si vous plait._”
“I guess he wants our tickets,” said Jack, fishing for his. This surmise
proved to be correct.
The politeness of the official was more marked, if it could be possible,
when he saw, from the signature on the passes, that the boys were
traveling under “royal auspices.” He raised his cap and bowed again. Not
to be outdone, the boys bowed back with equal suavity.
“_Merci bien_,” he said.
“_Merci bien_,” responded Jack, who had acquired some French at high
school.
“Mercy beans, too,” sputtered young Raynor, thinking that Jack was
giving an order for a Boston lunch. The conductor bowed again and
vanished, a bell rang and they were off. The ride lay through a farming
region and the road was cool, clean and smooth.
On their arrival in Brussels, they found accommodation at a hotel
overlooking the public square. The windows, although the _maître de
hotel_ had assured them that it was one of the best rooms in the house,
were only four feet high.
“Gee, we have to lie down to look out!” exclaimed Raynor.
“On the square?” asked Jack with a grin.
“No; on the level; that’s the way I lie,” chuckled Raynor. Both lads
were in high spirits. Their unexpected stroke of luck had surely proved
a windfall.
In the center of the Place Royale, the first place the boys explored,
stands an equestrian figure of Godfrey of Bouillon.
“It was on that spot that he first assembled his crusaders who won back
Jerusalem to the Christians,” said Jack, wise with guide-book knowledge.
“And to think that up to now I always thought Bouillon was a soup,”
remarked Raynor dryly.
Before the train left for Waterloo, they had time to visit the Royal
Museum, walking down the _Rue de La Régence_. The Royal Museum was
filled with fine pictures and statuary, but, to tell the truth, the boys
had become a little bit cloyed with art at Antwerp. It takes some
experience and training to be interested in, and gauge properly, such
things, although both felt that what they had seen had done them
permanent good.
Several times during their walk to the railroad station where they were
to take a train for Waterloo, the boys were much amused and interested
by the working dogs hitched to small carts. Sometimes the working dogs
got into a fight with the leisure-class canines, and then there was a
fine racket among the owners and the dogs, till things were straightened
out and humans and canines, both growling, went on their way.
“Almost all the shops say they cater to the King or the Court of
Flanders,” commented Raynor as they strolled along.
“I guess they get most of their real money from Americans, at that,” was
Jack’s comment.
The _Gare du Midi_, or Central Station, they found surrounded by a crowd
of shouting, noisy, officious guides, and also several individuals who
looked none too honest. They buttonholed every arrival, volunteering all
sorts of information in bad English. This, despite the fact that there
were plenty of signs in plain view.
It was half an hour’s ride to _Braine-l’Alleud_, for the most famous
battle of modern history was fought several miles from the village whose
name it bears. This is because Wellington sent his victorious despatches
from Waterloo, which has ever since claimed the honor of naming the
place of Napoleon’s downfall.
They took a small, rickety carriage at the station, and before long
Raynor was pointing to a mound with an ugly, clumsy-looking lion on it.
“Zat is zee Lion of Belgium,” volunteered the driver. “Eet ees model
from French cannon and mark zee spot where zee Prance of Orange was
wounded.”
“Is that so?” muttered Raynor. “Well, it looks more like a Newfoundland
dog than a lion to me.”
“Eet weigh twenty-eight ton,” volunteered the driver again, pointing
with his whip to the lion, close access to which was gained by a steep
flight of steps. There are two hundred and twenty-six of these steps,
and the boys, on climbing them, were considerably out of breath when
they reached the summit and saw the historic plain spread out under
their feet.
“I’m disappointed,” confessed Jack frankly. “I thought it was much
larger. Why, it doesn’t look like much more than a parade ground!”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a ‘parade’ at the time of the battle, with
three hundred thousand men tearing at each other’s throats for five or
six hours and leaving fifty thousand dead and wounded on the field,”
commented Raynor, who was well up in history.
Then they drove over the road built by Napoleon fifteen years before the
battle.
“Might have been a good cavalry road, but it sure is a bone-shaker in
this rig,” remarked Jack, and his companion agreed with him. They were
much interested in the farm house of Hougomont, or rather its
shell-battered ruins. This was the hottest point of the battle. The
French assaulted it for hours, but did not succeed in taking it.
The family, who own the house, make a good living selling souvenirs to
visitors.
“I’ve been told,” said Jack, with a smile, “that every fall they plant
little bullets and souvenirs. The winter snow and spring rains make the
crop ready to be plowed up.”
“Profitable farming,” laughed Raynor. However, the boys bought a grape
shot and what purported to be an insignia from an artilleryman’s cap.
“It must have been a great battle,” said Raynor as they paid off their
hack bill, the size of which made them raise their eyebrows.
“Yes, and the Belgians are still able to charge,” remarked Jack dryly.
In the railroad carriage on the way back a self-assertive Englishman was
holding forth on what a great victory Wellington had achieved. “Which,”
he added, turning to the boys, “was all the more creditable because he
fought with raw recruits. Most of our seasoned soldiers were in your
country at the time.”
“And most of them are planted there yet,” remarked Raynor.
The Englishman glared at him; but Jack smoothed things over and
everything was amiable till Raynor again disrupted international peace.
“Deuced funny clothes those beggars wear,” remarked the son of Britain,
gazing out at a wooden-shoed, baggy-breeched peasant.
“Oh, I don’t know. Not so much funnier than an Englishman’s,” said the
American lad; after which there ensued a silence lasting till the train
rolled into Brussels.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XX.
HOMEWARD BOUND.
The boys thought they had never seen so many vari-colored uniforms as
were on parade in Brussels. They passed a fresh one every minute.
“I guess every soldier designs his own,” said Raynor.
“Well, some of them certainly look it,” agreed Jack as a dapper little
man with a bottle green uniform with yellow stripes and facings and a
cap without a peak swung by.
They went to the Church of St. Gudule, an old Gothic structure on the
top of a hill, which Jack wished to see. Raynor came along for company.
“I’ve seen enough ruins,” he declared.
“Well, this will be the last one,” promised Jack.
In the church they found many people at prayer, especially in front of
an altar on which were hung models of arms, legs and every portion of
the human anatomy, as a reminder to the saint of what part of the body
needs help.
“There’s Adam and Eve,” exclaimed Raynor in low tones, motioning to the
figures of the father and mother of the race carved under a fine pulpit.
Some American tourists were admiring these figures at the same time as
the boys.
“Oh, look!” cried one of the lady tourists. “Wasn’t that sculptor a mean
thing?”
“Why?” asked her companion innocently.
“Just look! He’s put all the lions and tigers around Adam and given poor
Eve nothing but peacocks, monkeys and parrots. It’s a shame!”
The boys had dinner at a side-walk café. They found it very amusing to
watch the various types of Belgians who went strolling by, enjoying the
evening air. More uniforms than ever seemed to be out. To their surprise
the bill for their meal was moderate, although the café declared that it
“Catered to the King.”
“Well, if this is all he pays for his meals I wonder what he does with
the rest of his money,” was Raynor’s comment.
After dinner the boys went out to the “Kirmess,” which lasts six weeks
each summer.
“Like a cheap Coney Island,” was their verdict as, not much impressed,
they sought a theater. Here they found that they might as well have
saved their money—almost their last—for nearly every act they saw was
American.
Early the next day they had to return to Antwerp, tired out but happy
from sight-seeing and conscious of exceedingly light pockets.
“Anyhow, we’ve had our money’s worth,” declared Jack.
“Yes; both in adventure and sight-seeing,” added Raynor, as they
returned to the ship.
They found a warm invitation from the La Farge family awaiting them; but
had to decline it, with sincere regrets, for there were minor repairs to
be made on the wireless and, besides, Raynor was on duty in the fire
room.
The next day the _Ajax_ was ready for sea. She was to sail “in ballast,”
that is, without cargo. Jack thought her uglier than ever as she lay at
the dock with steam up, as a white plume from her scape pipe testified,
and with big patches of rust on her black sides; for the work of
repairing these ugly patches would not be done till a few days before
she arrived in New York.
Now that she was so high out of the water, the “tanker” looked like a
big black cigar with a miniature turret on either end.
“She’ll roll like a bottle going over,” the crew prophesied; a prophesy,
by the way, which was to be fulfilled.
But Jack forgot all this when at last the orders to sail came from the
agent’s office and, with a roaring of the whistle, the “tanker” started
on the voyage home.
Raynor came up to Jack as he stood gazing down at the puffing tugs which
were helping the marine monster clear.
“Glad to be going home, Jack?” he asked.
“What a question! Glad? I should say so! Of course I love my work and
all that, but after all there’s no place like home, you know.”
“That’s so,” assented Raynor, “although I haven’t much of a home. Both
my parents died when I was a kid, and except for a sister who lives way
up New York state, I haven’t a relative in the world that I know of.”
“I am almost as badly off,” confessed Jack, and he went on to tell
Raynor about his home life.
“What a jolly way to live,” cried the young engineer, “on a
flower-garden schooner! That’s the greatest ever!”
“I didn’t think so all the time, I can assure you,” said Jack with a
laugh, “but I guess the wireless I rigged up there made me think of this
way of life.”
The ship was in the stream by this time and it was Raynor’s turn on
watch. As he dived below, he took occasion to turn and grin at Jack.
“We ought to make a good run home,” said he.
“How is that?” asked Jack innocently.
“Oh, maybe a certain young lady has hold of the tow rope,” and, before
Jack could reply, he had dived below.
The _Ajax_ made the run through the Channel and out on to the broad
Atlantic without incident. Coming through the Channel, they encountered
fog and some bad weather, but on the whole the skipper was pleased with
the conditions and the ship’s behavior.
They had been two days on the ocean and a fairly high sea was running
one night, when Jack, who was seated in the wireless room, where he had
been exchanging information and wireless small-talk with half a dozen
other operators, noticed a sudden bustle on the deck outside.
A grimy fireman had run forward from the fire-room companionway and then
the captain had hastened aft. He went to the door and looked out. He was
just in time to see several men carrying up a limp form from the
engine-room and taking it into the captain’s cabin.
“An accident!” exclaimed the boy. “Somebody hurt! I wonder who it can
be?”
He hailed a passing fireman who was coming off watch and going forward.
“What has happened below?” he asked.
“An accident. Someone hurt.”
“Do you know who it is?”
The fireman shook his head.
“I was just coming off watch and didn’t stop to inquire.”
He made off and then Jack saw the captain hasten past and come hurrying
back with his surgical case. Jack would have asked him, if he had dared.
As it was, he buttonholed another grimy stoker on his way to the
forecastle and put his question again.
“Sure I know,” was the reply, “one of the engineers hurt.”
“Badly?”
“I dunno.”
“Who was it?”
“The third. Name’s Raynor, I guess.” And the man hurried on, leaving
Jack standing there aghast.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI.
SURGERY BY WIRELESS.
While he still stood there, the captain emerged from his cabin and, to
Jack’s surprise, came up to him.
“Know anything about surgery, Ready?” he asked.
“Why, no, sir. I heard there had been an accident. My friend Raynor. Is
he badly injured, sir?”
The question was put with painful eagerness.
“Not necessarily, my lad. His arm was crushed in a shaft while he was
oiling it. The deuce of it is, we’ve no doctor on board and I don’t know
how to care for it. I may have to amputate it. I did that once on a
sailing ship; and in that case, I’ll need assistants. That is why I
asked you if you knew anything of surgery.”
“You’ll have to amputate it? Oh, sir! Poor Raynor!”
“I don’t want to do it if I can help it, but I don’t want to run the
risk of blood poisoning. If only we had a doctor! It would go to my
heart to deprive the boy of an arm, but what am I to do?”
Never had the captain seemed so human, so sympathetic to the young
wireless man. He looked genuinely distressed.
“They ought to compel every ship to carry a doctor,” he said. “Accidents
are always happening, and—strike my topsails! What’s the matter with the
boy?”
For Jack’s eyes had suddenly begun to dance. He gave a sudden caper and
snapped his fingers.
“I’ve got it, sir! I’ve got it!” he cried.
“What, in the name of Neptune? St. Vitus’s dance?”
“No, sir. A doctor. I can get you a doctor, sir.”
“Have you suddenly gone mad?” demanded the captain. “We’re a thousand
miles out at sea.”
“I can get one by wireless, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the big liners carry doctors, sir. I was in communication with one
only a few minutes ago. The _Parisian_ of the Ocean Line.”
“Where is she?”
“About three hundred miles to the west of us on the Atlantic track,
sir.”
“Three hundred miles away! Then how can we get a doctor from her?”
“Very simply, sir, I think, as you say it may not be necessary to
amputate. Have Raynor brought in here and laid on my cot. I’ll raise the
_Parisian_ and get her doctor on the wire. Then I can flash a full
description of the case and the doctor can flash back to us, through the
_Parisian’s_ operator, full directions how to proceed!”
“Jove, boy! You have got a head on your shoulders, after all. It sounds
extraordinary, but why shouldn’t it be done?”
“It is worth trying, anyhow, sir,” said Jack, his face radiant at the
idea that he might be the means of saving his poor chum’s arm. The
captain hastened off to give the necessary orders, while Jack raised the
_Parisian_ once more.
In crisp, flashing sentences he sent, volleying through the air, an
explanation of the case. By the time poor Raynor, white and unconscious,
was carried to the bunk and laid out there, while the open-eyed sailors
looked on, the _Parisian’s_ doctor was standing by the side of the
liner’s operator listening gravely to the symptoms of the case as they
came pulsing through space.
The captain, with bandages, instruments, antiseptics and so forth, sat
by Raynor’s side, anxiously awaiting Jack’s first bulletin.
“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than once as Jack sat alert,
waiting for the first word from the doctor who was to treat a surgical
case across three hundred miles of ocean.
The silence was tense and taut, and broken only by the heavy breathing
of the injured engineer.
“What is the man doing?” said the captain impatiently at length.
“It takes even shore doctors time to give a correct diagnosis in some
cases, sir,” ventured Jack gravely. “I suppose he is considering the
conditions.”
“Absent treatment at three hundred miles,” muttered the captain. “Ready,
I begin to believe that this is a crack-brained bit of business, after
all.”
“Wait a minute,” warned Jack, holding up his hand to command attention,
“here is something coming now!”
His pencil flew over the pad and then stopped while he flashed back:
“Thanks, that’s all for now. I’ll cut in again when we are ready for the
next step.”
He turned to the captain and read slowly from his pad the doctor’s
directions for treating the injury.
“He says that, from your description, there are no bones broken. The arm
is merely crushed,” said the boy; and then, bit by bit, he read off the
far-distant surgeon’s directions for treating the injured member. As he
read, the captain and his assistant amateur surgeons plied dressings and
antiseptics with diligent care.
At last the doctor of the _Parisian_ said that he had no more advice to
give that night, but flashed a prescription for a soothing draught to be
compounded from the ship’s medicine chest.
By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully without any symptoms of
fever, and Jack cut off communication with the distant liner after
promising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII.
“YOU SAVED MY ARM.”
It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured arm in a sling, sat on
the edge of Jack’s bunk. They had passed out of range of the _Parisian_,
but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the crushed arm was getting along well,
and the “wireless doctor” had left instructions for the treatment of the
case as it progressed.
“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for me, all right, with those
Hertzian waves of yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I feel
about it. But how in the world did you ever come to think of such a
stunt?”
“I can’t claim that it was very original,” was Jack’s rejoinder; “in
fact, it has been done two or three times before on freight ships that
carry no doctors.”
“Tell us about it,” urged the invalid.
“Well,” was the answer, “one case I heard about occurred on board the S.
S. _Parismina_, while she was crossing the Gulf of Mexico. A sudden call
came to her from a small island out of the path of regular ships called
Suma. A small colony lived there like so many Robinson Crusoes, mining
phosphates.
“A tramp steamer happened along once in a while, and they could sail to
the mainland, but those were their only links with civilization. To
carry the phosphates from the mines to the coast, they had a narrow
gauge railway. One day this railway cut up didoes; a train ran away and
crushed a workman’s foot.
“Luckily, the island had a wireless station with a powerful equipment.
There was no doctor and the man was so badly injured that it was feared
he would die before they could get one. Well, what did the bright young
wireless man do but get busy and start sending out calls broadcast for a
doctor.
“At last the _Parismina_ picked up his message, and Dr. C. S. Carter of
the ship volunteered his services. The _Parismina_ was then just two
hundred miles away from the island. The doctor transferred his office to
the liner’s wireless room and took the patient’s pulse and temperature,
via the air line. Then he told them just how to prepare a strong
antiseptic and how to fix up the broken ligaments.
“The wireless treatment was kept up till the _Parismina_ was four
hundred and twenty miles away, when the doctor was able to dismiss the
case.”
“Some class to that,” said Raynor admiringly. “Do you know any more like
that?”
“Yes, there is one other I can recall, so you see that I can’t claim the
credit for any originality in the idea.”
“Tell us about that other one,” urged Raynor.
Jack paused a moment to adjust his instruments and send a message to
another ship, giving their position and the weather. Then he shut off
the connection and turned to his chum.
“This other one, as you call it, occurred on the freighter _Herman
Frasch_, while she was well out at sea. Captain McGray of the ship was
seized with a bad attack of ptomaine poisoning. He grew worse, although
they did all they could for him with the help of the ship’s medicine
chest and the book of directions that goes with it.
“The ship was out in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. The captain
suddenly thought of a plan by which his case might be treated
intelligently. He knew there was a government station at Dry Tortugas,
Florida, one hundred miles off. He ordered a despatch sent there.
“As it so chanced, the despatch was not picked up by the government
station, but by the operator of the Ward Liner _Merida_, which was just
leaving Progresso, Yucatan.
“‘Doc!’ he exclaimed, rushing into the cabin of the _Merida’s_ doctor,
‘there’s a man awful sick with ptomaine poisoning.’
“The doctor lost no time in grabbing up his medicine case.
“‘Where is he, my man? What stateroom?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to lose
any time on such a case.’
“‘Well, he’s about eight hundred miles to the west of us, Doc,’ said the
operator dryly, ‘but here is the diagnosis,’ and he handed the doctor a
long aerogram.
“The doctor whistled.
“‘Pretty bad,’ said he, ‘temperature 104, nausea, rash on face and
neck.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Give me an aerogram blank quickly.’
“He wrote out a prescription and a few minutes later it was being
flashed across the sea to the _Frasch_. The medicine was prepared, and
not long after the wireless reported that the captain was ‘Resting
easily.’
“The following morning the captain’s temperature was sent and he was
reported ‘a little better.’ The prescription was changed and the captain
improved rapidly. By this time a number of other ships had picked up the
messages, and the stricken skipper might have had a consultation of
physicians if his case had demanded it.
“So you see I did nothing very wonderful,” concluded Jack with a smile,
turning once more to his key.
“You saved my arm,” insisted Raynor stoutly, and then he left Jack to
his work and hastened off to the chief engineer’s cabin to ascertain how
soon he could be taken off the sick list.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII.
A RIOT ON THE DOCKS.
In due time the voyage ended at the port of New York. The _Ajax_ would
not be ready for sea again for two weeks to come, and in the meantime
her crew was paid off, Jack among them.
Raynor, after promising to call on the young wireless man on board the
_Venus_ as soon as he returned from a flying visit to his sister, shook
hands warmly with his young chum. He proffered his left hand, though,
for his injured arm was not entirely mended even then.
Uncle Toby received his young nephew with characteristic demonstrations
of delight. He inquired if he had had occasion to use anything from the
voluminous chest of medicines that the drug-compounding uncle had given
to the boy. Jack had not the heart to tell the anxious old man that the
contents of most of the bottles had gone overboard, although he had
given some of them to a stout old quartermaster, who was as fond of
dosing himself as are most sailors. The patient had drunk off the
embrocations and rubbed in the internal remedies and declared himself
much benefited; so that Jack could, without stretching the truth, tell
his uncle that his remedies had accomplished a lot of good on the
_Ajax_.
“I knew it! I knew it!” declared the old man, rubbing his hands
delightedly. “They were never known to fail. I’ll give you another
boxful when you are ready for sea again.”
“I’ve plenty left of the old lot, uncle,” declared Jack.
“Nothing like being well provided, though, my hearty,” said his uncle.
“I’d hate to think of you being sick, away out at sea, without some of
the ‘Universal Tonic and Pain Eradicator’ handy.”
The night after his return Jack bethought himself of some bits of
apparatus he had left in his cabin on the _Ajax_. He decided to go over
to her dock and get them. It would not take long and he was anxious to
conduct some experiments with a view to the betterment of his “wireless
alarm,” which had not worked quite satisfactorily.
The _Ajax_ was not berthed in the Erie Basin, there being temporarily no
room for her there, but lay at one of the Titan Line’s wharves in New
York City.
The dock was on West Street, and it was not a long trip across the
Brooklyn Bridge to where she lay.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he told his uncle as he left.
“All right, my hearty,” said the old salt, engrossed in the composition
of an invaluable malarial remedy for a captain bound for the South
American coast.
When Jack reached the ship the evening had turned from a cloudy, dull
twilight into a damp, disagreeable drizzle. A heavy Scotch mist filled
the air and the big electric lights on the pier shone through the haze
like blobs of pale yellow.
At the head of the gangplank was an old ship’s watchman who readily
passed him on board on his explaining his business. Jack was surprised
to see that there were several vague figures flitting about the elevated
after-structure of the “tanker.”
“I thought all hands were ashore,” he said.
“No; there’s the fireman and an engineer left on board,” said the
watchman. “They mean to keep up steam till it’s time to berth her over
in the Basin, I guess.”
Jack’s mission took him longer than he had thought it would. He decided
not to go home to supper, but to take it at any nearby restaurant and
then come back to search for what he wanted later.
He found a quiet, respectable place and ate a hearty meal. When he had
paid his check he returned to the ship and to his cabin. Some little
time longer was spent in getting together the odd effects he wanted.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a sound of shouting and yelling
and brawling somewhere, as near as he could make out at the river end of
the dock.
“Wonder what’s up?” thought the boy; and then the next minute, “Sounds
to me like a lot of firemen cutting up in a riot.”
There was a lull and then the clamor burst out afresh. Loud, angry
voices rose, and fierce shouts, as if the men on the dock were in deadly
strife.
Jack ran out of his cabin.
As he did so the old watchman came pattering along the steel decks and
clambered up the ladder to the superstructure, where Jack was standing.
“What is the matter?” demanded the boy.
“The firemen!” panted the watchman, pointing to the dock.
“Well, what’s the reason of all this racket? Are they fighting?”
“Fighting! They are trying to kill each other!” puffed the old watchman
in a scared voice.
The lad knew that the firemen of big steamers are about as hard a crowd
as can be found anywhere; but it was unusual for them to be making such
a racket so close to the ship. He surmised correctly that some of the
men had been ashore on a carouse while the others kept up steam.
“You’d better run for the police,” he told the scared watchman, and
while the old fellow pattered off on his errand Jack’s ears were
suddenly assailed by another sound.
Splash!
Something had struck the water right alongside the ship. Jack was just
about to shout, “Man overboard!” when he peered over and saw in the
fog-wreathed space between the ship and the dock a dark object drop from
some port in the fire-room below him and strike the water with a second
splash.
For a flash he thought it might be some fireman taking French leave of
the ship. But a second’s thought convinced him that what had dropped was
no human being but a big bundle of some sort.
“Now what in the world is going on?” he thought undecidedly.
On the dock the din of the fighting firemen still kept up. But right
then Jack was more concerned with the mysterious happenings on board the
ship itself. Something very out of the ordinary was going forward, that
was plain enough. But what could it be? What was being thrown out of the
fire-room port?
He was still struggling with the mystery when there came another sudden
sound.
Jack recognized it instantly as the noise of an oar moving in a rowlock.
A boat was moving about in the dark obscurity between the ship and the
dock. Peering over, Jack could see the dim outlines of the little craft
moving slowly about far below where he stood.
Then of a sudden another of those mysterious bundles dropped from the
fire-room.
He saw the boat impelled toward it as it lay floating, and then it was
hoisted on board.
“What black work is going on here?” thought the young wireless man as he
watched.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIV.
A CALL FOR THE POLICE.
Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the true meaning of the scene going
on below him dawned on the lad.
The tobacco smugglers! The men who worked with the gang of customs
cheaters, with their headquarters across the dark river in New Jersey!
Yes; that was undoubtedly the explanation of it. What was he to do? Go
below and alarm the engineer in charge of the fire-room crowd? No; the
man was only an apprentice engineer, as young Ready knew, and more than
probably he was in with the gang himself.
Back and forth moved the boat, dodging in and out of the black shadows
cast by the dock. It was an ideal night for such work. The fog lay
thick, like a blanket laid over river and city.
Through the curtain of mist boomed the hoarse voices of tugs and
ferryboats as they played a marine game of blind man’s buff in the fog.
Jack felt terribly alone. He might have summoned help from the dock, but
the rising and falling noise of the riot, which was evidently still in
progress, told him that the men in charge of the wharf already had their
hands full.
All at once the boy had one of those swift flashes of inspiration that
come sometimes like a bolt from the blue in moments of great emergency.
He would summon the police by wireless!
The police boats, as he knew, lay at Pier A, the Battery, with steam
constantly up, so as to be able to dart off on the instant after wharf
thieves and smugglers. They all carried wireless and he would be certain
to catch an operator on duty. At any rate, there was a wireless attached
to the marine police station itself, which was situated in a big
building adjacent to the Aquarium.
With Jack to think was to act. He was swift, to spring to his key and
begin sending out a call. He looked the code word up in his book and
almost instantly the heavy spark began crackling and snapping out a
summons:
“H.-P.-----H.-P.-----H.-P.”
“Harbor Police! Harbor Police! Harbor Police!”
Cracking like the lash of a giant whip, writhing like a tortured serpent
of flame, the lithe, green spark leaped between its points. Never had
Jack’s fingers worked so fast. Before he could summon the guardians of
the harbor it might be too late. The boat might have gathered up its
cargo of contraband and sneaked off like a thief in the night into the
impenetrable fog.
At last, after an interminable wait, came an answer from out of space.
“This is H. P. What is it?”
“This is the tank steamer _Ajax_, lying at Pier 29, North River.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
The answer came mapping back from amid a mystifying maze of other flying
dots and dashes.
“There is a gang of tobacco smugglers at work here!”
“The dickens, you say! Hold on a minute.”
“All right. But you must hurry men up here if you want to nail them.”
“Who are you?”
“The wireless man of the _Ajax_. I was here late and saw the work going
on.”
“Bully for you! We’ll rush _Launch B_ up there on the jump.”
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” chattered back Jack’s key; and then silence fell
once more.
Jack jumped up from his sending table.
“At any rate, I’ve done my duty,” he thought.
He went to the door. He wanted to look down into the black fog-filled
pit overside once more and see what was going on. Glancing cautiously
over, he almost gave a gasp of delight.
A second boat was at work!
“My gracious, if they get here in time they’ll make a fine haul of
doubtful fish!” he said to himself in a low voice.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when he felt a heavy hand on his
shoulder. He was spun round like a top and found himself in the clasp of
a giant fireman. The hairy-chested fellow was naked from the waist up,
and his coal-smeared face and blood-shot eyes did not add to the beauty
of his appearance.
Suddenly the man’s grip transferred itself to Jack’s neck. The fingers,
hard as iron, closed on his windpipe. He felt his breath shut off and
his eyes starting out of his head. The man threw him roughly to the
deck, and as he did so Jack recognized in him the sailor who had hung
back when the boat was to be launched to the rescue of the derelict, and
whose place he had taken. The fellow had been transferred to the
fire-room force as a punishment.
The boy could feel the giant’s hot breath fanning his face as the man
knelt over him, one knee crushingly on his chest.
“So, my young gamecock, you bane play the spy, hey?” he snarled. “You
bane forgat everything you seen, or overboard you go with your
figurehead stove in!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE NICK OF TIME.
The blood sang loudly in Jack’s ears. He fought for breath against the
remorseless pressure on his throat. But the two great, gnarled hands of
the fireman held him as if in a steel vise.
“You bane forgat what you see! You bane forgat it!”
The Norwegian emphasized what he said with a bump of Jack’s head against
the deck at every word.
Twisting in what he felt was his death struggle, Jack managed to loosen
the man’s hold ever so little. It was no time to consider fair tactics.
Seizing the advantage he had gained, the boy sank his teeth deep into
the man’s arm.
With a yell of pain, the fellow relaxed his grip, and in a flash Jack
was on his feet, while the Norwegian, disconcerted at this sudden
attack, lay sprawling on the deck. As he arose, staggeringly, Jack dealt
him a smashing blow in the face, but it only staggered the fellow for an
instant. It could have been little more than a mosquito prick to his
bull hide.
Roaring with rage, the fellow tore at Jack, who, feeling that his life
was at stake, tried to make a dart for the door of the wireless cabin.
But the man was too quick for him. He caught the boy in the embrace of a
maddened wild beast.
“I bane keel you for that, you young demon!” he cried, and bore Jack
toward the rail.
“Don’t! Don’t!” implored the boy, who felt that his last moment had
come. But the brute showed no mercy. Deliberately he raised the boy, who
was no more than a featherweight, in his arms, and was about to cast him
into the water when suddenly something unexpected occurred.
A bulky form rushed upon the scene, and the next instant the sailor went
staggering back under a crashing blow. Simultaneously a revolver flashed
and a harsh, stern voice exclaimed:
“Don’t move a step or I’ll shoot you down like the mongrel cur you are!”
“Captain Braceworth!” gasped out Jack, who could hardly keep his feet.
“That’s who it is, youngster, and just in time to save your life, I
imagine. I happened to be not far off and they summoned me to the dock
to quell that riot. When that was done I came on board, and I’m glad I
did. Don’t move, you despicable dog!” This to the fireman, who was
trying to sneak off.
At almost the same instant there came from below the sound of a pistol
shot.
“What in Neptune’s name does that mean?” demanded the captain. “What’s
happening to this ship?”
“I think I can explain, sir,” said Jack, while the captain still kept
the cowering fireman covered.
“Then do so by all means, and then I’ll trouble you to get me a pair of
handcuffs from my cabin for this fellow.”
“It’s this way, sir. To-night I came on board to get some bits of
apparatus and a book or two that I had left in my cabin. I happened to
see a big bundle dropped into the water and then I saw a boat cruising
about. I summoned the harbor police by wireless.”
“Jove! You’re not called ‘Ready’ for nothing!” exclaimed the captain,
eyeing the boy with unconcealed admiration.
“And then, sir, this man saw what I had been up to and threatened to
kill me if I told.”
“A threat, I believe, he is perfectly capable of carrying out. Don’t
move there, you,” to the fireman. “I see it all now. That struggle on
the dock was a blind to keep the watchman’s attention attracted while
the smugglers got that stuff out of the bunkers. Ready, you’ve foiled a
clever plot.”
More shots came from below.
“It’s the police, sir!” exclaimed Jack, “and I guess they’ve come in
time.”
Just then a police sergeant appeared on the upper deck. He had come on
board from the dock, having been summoned with a file of men by the old
watchman. He looked astonished, as well he might, at the picture before
him: a white-faced, shaking boy, a sullen, whipped cur of a fireman and
a stalwart seaman covering the man with a revolver. From below, where
the police were rounding up the smugglers, who put up a desperate
resistance, also came sounds of conflict.
“Sergeant, if you’ll handcuff this man, I’ll explain all this in a brace
of shakes,” said the captain. He speedily did so to the officer’s
satisfaction, and the malefactor was led off, after Jack had promised to
appear against him in the morning when the case came up in court.
As for the gang in the boats, they, too, were rounded up after several
shots had been exchanged without bloodshed. Jack was warmly
congratulated by the police, and it was late before he was able to slip
off home to the schooner.
He found his uncle anxiously waiting up for him, and Jack told his story
with as little melodrama in it as he could. But his throat was rapidly
turning black and blue where his assailant had grasped him, and his
uncle would not hear of the lad’s turning in till it had been anointed
with Captain Ready’s “Bruise Balm and Sore Soother.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVI.
A FRIENDLY WARNING.
The next day in court the fireman, whose name, by the way, was Lars
Anderson, and all the other smugglers were held for the higher tribunals
of the federal government, under whose jurisdiction their cases, with
the exception of Anderson’s, came.
Heavy sentences were prophesied for all of them. Many were the black
glances cast at Jack by the gang as they were led away. But these
malicious looks did not come alone from the malefactors. Out in the
courtroom was gathered a hard-looking crowd.
Coal passers and firemen of the _Ajax_ against whom nothing could be
proved, although it was morally certain that they were connected with
the gang, had gathered there to see how it fared with their companions.
When Jack was giving his testimony he saw many malevolent glances fixed
on him, and one man went so far as to shake his fist covertly at the
lad.
But Jack did not falter, and gave his story in a manly, straightforward
fashion that won him the approval of the court and the respect of the
attorneys. He left the courtroom with Mr. Brown, the captain having gone
uptown with some friends.
As they passed out of the door the firemen who had witnessed the scene
within were gathered about the doorway. They eyed Jack scowlingly and
more than one muttered threat was heard.
As soon as they had passed out of earshot, Mr. Brown spoke seriously to
Jack.
“I’d be very careful how I went about New York at night after this, if I
were you,” he said.
“Why?” asked Jack innocently.
“Simply because those fellows have it in for you.”
“But this is New York City. Surely they wouldn’t dare——”
“They’d dare anything fast enough if they could get you up a dark
street,” said the mate sententiously.
“But they’ll be sailing with us again, anyhow,” said Jack.
“They will not!” said Mr. Brown with emphasis. “But recollect that some
of them are desperate characters. Firemen, some of them at least, are as
bad as they make ’em. You’ve sent their pals to jail. Very well then,
their code of justice requires them to avenge themselves on you. So look
out for squalls!”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” laughed Jack as they shook hands and parted.
At the Brooklyn Bridge he paused to buy a paper. The first thing that
caught his eye made him flush and then laugh.
There at the top of the page and spread out over two columns was a
portrait of himself, drawn by an artist possessed of a vivid
imagination, inasmuch as he had never seen Jack.
Then there was a half-tone of the _Ajax_, labeled “Scene of the
Thrilling Battle for Life.”
Underneath came headlines:
WIRELESS HERO BATTLES FOR
HIS LIFE WITH TOBACCO
SMUGGLING GANG.
JACK READY HERO OF NIGHT FIGHT
ON THE FREIGHTER “AJAX.”
Message to Police Wings the Air and
Results in Capture of Daring, Desperate
Band.
“Well, that’s going some, as Raynor would say,” laughed Jack, hardly
knowing whether to be amused or indignant.
“There’s one satisfaction,” he thought as he rode over the bridge on a
surface car and digested the long interview with himself that he had
never given, “nobody would ever recognize me from that picture.”
A few days later Jack received a letter from the company. It enclosed a
handsome check “for valuable and appreciated services.” This time Jack
did not return the check.
“Still,” he mused, “if it had not been for Captain Braceworth, there
might have been a different story to tell.”
The letter, however, delighted him more than he showed. It demonstrated
for one thing that the company appreciated what he had done, and that,
if all continued to go well, he was in the line of promotion. He dreamed
night and day of his next step upward, and longed for a berth on one of
the Titan Steamship Company’s coasting vessels that ran to Galveston and
Central American and West Indian ports. They carried passengers, and
they paid their operators much more than the _Ajax_ class of wireless
men received.
“If I can only get some more opportunities to show what I can do,”
thought the boy, “I’m bound to get on. ‘Keep plugging,’ my dad used to
say, and that is just what I am going to do, no matter how many
discouragements or hardships I meet. And then, perhaps, some day——”
Jack went off into a day dream, and it was an odd thing that his reverie
led him into a sudden determination to seek out Captain Dennis at the
address that had been given him, and to call on the captain. Perhaps
there was another member of the captain’s household that Jack was
anxious to see, too!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
He found Captain Dennis installed in a pleasant, though small, flat in
that section of New York known as Greenwich Village. It is a queer old
quarter, full of once fashionable houses with dormer windows and white
doorsteps, and some of them with shutters. Captain Dennis had been
unable to find another ship, and was working for a ship chandler. But he
bore up bravely under his misfortunes, and as for his daughter Jack
thought that she was the most charming, enslaving bit of budding
womanhood he had ever seen.
Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the young wireless man
did not need to be pressed to stay to supper. How the time flew! Captain
Dennis dozed and only took part at times in the lively chatter of young
Ready and his “little gal,” but Jack did not find anything to object to
about this, you may be sure.
When at last he left with the promise to come soon again and his head
full of plans for a “regular party” on the old _Venus_, he found a raw,
foggy night outside, and at that late hour the streets of the
old-fashioned quarter almost deserted.
Now the streets of Greenwich Village twist and turn, as somebody has
said, “like a giant pretzel.” Tenth Street crosses Eleventh Street, and
Eighth Street runs through both of them in this topsy-turvy old quarter.
Jack’s course lay for the elevated station at Eighth Street, but, what
with the fog and his unfamiliarity with the section, he found himself
utterly lost after a short time, wandering about with no idea where he
was.
But to his nostrils came a whiff of the sea, and he suddenly bethought
himself of the fact that, although there were no late passers-by or
policemen to be seen in “the village,” he might be able to find somebody
on the waterfront who would direct him.
“I’m a fine sailor to lose my bearings like this,” he scolded himself as
he bent his steps in that direction.
If the village had been deserted, there was plenty of life—and life of a
very doubtful sort—on the waterfront. Saloons blazed with light, and
from within came discordant sounds of disorderly choruses and songs.
These places were the haunt of ’longshoremen, stevedores and the lower
class of sailors from the big liners, whose docks ranged northward in a
majestic line.
Jack had no desire to go into one of these resorts, but he looked about
in vain for some more respectable place in which to inquire. As is not
uncommon in New York, not a policeman was in sight, and the few
passers-by were too ruffianly-looking to make the boy feel inclined to
accost them.
At last he found himself opposite a small eating place—the Welcome
Home—that appeared to be fairly respectable. A full-rigged ship painted
in red and blue on its front window and the legends displayed in the
same place told him it was an eating house for sailors.
And so he decided to go in. In the front of the place was a glass
showcase filled with cheap cigars. Behind it were gaudily colored
posters of steamship lines.
There was no one behind the counter, and Jack started toward the rear,
where three men sat at a table talking rather boisterously.
One of them, a big, hulking fellow with the build of a bull, brought his
fist down on the table with a crash that made the plates and glasses
jump, just as Jack came in.
“The kid’s on the _Ajax_,” the lad heard him say in a rough voice, “and
if ever I catch him, I——”
He stopped short as he heard Jack’s footfall behind him. The next
instant he turned a bloated, brutal countenance, suffused with blood,
upon the boy.
Up to that instant, Jack had not connected himself with the subject of
conversation. But he did now. With a quick heart-leap he had recognized
the hulking brute at the table as one of the cronies of Anderson the
fireman.
The recognition was mutual. With a roar like that of a stricken bull the
man leaped to his feet.
“Mates!” he bellowed, “it’s the kid himself! After him! Keep the door
there, someone!”
A bottle came whizzing through the air at Jack’s head. He dodged it and
it burst in a crimson spatter of ketchup against the wall, spattering
the boy with its contents.
Like an arrow he darted out of the door. The proprietor, who was just
coming into the place from an errand next door, spread his arms to stop
him. Down went Jack’s head, and like a battering ram he butted the fat
landlord, gasping, out of his path.
After him came a shower of plates, glasses and bottles and loud, excited
shouts.
Jack ran as he had never run in his life before. Behind him came the
heavy beat of the firemen’s feet. How much mercy he could expect from
them if they laid hands on him, he knew.
Nobody was in sight. Jack’s safety lay in his own heels, a fact he
recognized with a quick gasp of dismay.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE HOSPITAL.
As he doubled the nearest corner, like a hare with the hounds close upon
it, Jack uttered a wild shout for help. He hoped that somebody might
hear it.
But there was no result from his appeal for aid. Were there no policemen
in New York?
The street he had blindly doubled into was lined on each side by tall,
dark, silent warehouses. The blank walls echoed back the sound of his
flying feet and the heavy footfalls of those in pursuit.
Jack realized, with a thrill of dismay, that they were gaining on him.
He heard the heavy exhalation and intake of the runners’ breaths.
Suddenly one of his pursuers whipped out a revolver and fired.
The audacity of the deed sent Jack’s heart racing faster than before. A
man who would dare to fire a revolver on a New York street, dark and
deserted though it was, would hardly stick at any act of violence.
“If I can’t throw them off, it’s all up with me,” thought the boy.
Bang!
Another report echoed back from the shadowy walls on either side. This
time the bullet came close, but it was only a random shot, for at the
pace they were running nobody could take careful aim.
The effect of the closely singing bullet was to make Jack lose his nerve
utterly. Blindly he plunged forward, not hearing the distant screaming
of police whistles and the thunder of nightsticks as they were rapped on
the pavements.
The sound of the revolver shots had aroused the police at last. From
every direction they came running; but Jack, in a perfect frenzy of
fear, knew nothing of all this. He did see, though, that he was coming
into a better lighted quarter. A few stores and residences blossomed
with lights, and help lay ahead if he could only make it in time.
Behind him he could hear only one set of footfalls now. Two of his
pursuers had dropped out of the chase. The boy put forth a supreme
effort, but in the very act he met with disaster. He had been running
with his head down, and suddenly, just as he gave a last desperate
sprint to gain the lighted quarter, he collided, crashingly, with an
iron lamp-post. The boy went down as if he had been struck with a club.
Fire blazed before his eyes; his senses swam, and then all became black.
It was just at this moment that a big black auto came whirling through
the street. In the tonneau sat a stout, prosperous-looking man who, as
he saw the sudden accident, started up and ordered his chauffeur to
stop. Master and man got out and went over to the recumbent figure, and,
as they did so, a hulking form glided off in the shadowy region toward
the waterfront.
“The kid’s broke his head without botherin’ me to do it for him,” the
man muttered as he slunk off.
“Now then, Marshall,” said the prosperous-looking man, “give me a hand
to pick this boy up. Lucky for him that we were coming this way home
from Staten Island or he might have lain here all night.”
They stooped over the lad and picked him up. As they did so, the light
of a street lamp fell on the pale face. The owner of the car gave a
sudden sharp exclamation:
“Gracious goodness! It’s young Ready! How in the world did he come
here?”
“He’s got a precious bad crack on his head, sir, and by the looks of him
won’t be able to answer that question for some time to come. My advice,
Mr. Jukes, is to take him to the hospital.”
“You are right, Marshall. I’m afraid the poor lad has a bad injury. Help
me put him in the tonneau and then make a quick run for the nearest
hospital.”
By a strange fate it was Mr. Jukes’ car that had approached Jack as he
fell senseless to the street. The shipping magnate was returning home,
as he had said, from a dinner party on Staten Island. Finding the
streets by the South Ferry torn up, he had ordered his chauffeur to
proceed along West Street and then cut through the village to Fifth
Avenue. Thus it came about that his employer it was who had picked up
poor Jack.
Straight to the Greenwich Hospital drove the chauffeur, and in less than
half an hour Jack lay tucked in a private bed, with orders that he was
to be given every care; and Mr. Jukes was speeding uptown, wondering
greatly how the young wireless operator happened to be in that part of
the city at that hour of the night.
The next morning Jack awakened in his bed at the hospital with the
impression that a boiler shop had taken up a temporary abode in his
head. For a few minutes he thought he was in his bunk on the _Ajax_,
then he shifted to the _Venus_ and at last, as he blinkingly regarded
the ceiling, memory came rushing back in a full flood.
The dark, deserted streets, the rough, brutal men, the mad run for life,
and then a sudden crash and darkness. What had happened? Had they struck
him down? Jack put his hand to his throbbing head. It was bandaged. So
they _had_ struck him. But he was uninjured otherwise seemingly, so
something must have happened to stop the savage fury of the firemen
before they had time to wreck their full vengeance on his defenseless
body.
He turned his head and saw a young woman smilingly regarding him. She
wore a blue dress and a neat white apron and cap.
“A nurse,” thought Jack, and then aloud, “is this the hospital?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but you must not talk till the doctor has seen
you.”
“But what has happened? How did I come here?” persisted Jack.
“If you will promise not to ask any more questions till after the doctor
has been here, I will tell you.”
“Very well. I’ll promise.”
“You were brought here in Mr. Jukes’ automobile.”
Jack tried to sit up in bed. What sort of a wild dream was this? His
last recollection was of a dark street, revolver shots and a stunning
blow, and now, suddenly, Mr. Jukes, his employer, was brought into the
matter.
“Mr. Jukes!” he exclaimed. “Why, how——”
“Hush! Remember your promise.”
Jack, perforce, lay back to wait, with what patience he could, the visit
of the doctor, after which he hoped he might be allowed to talk. It was
all too perplexing. Then, too, he recollected, with a pang of dismay,
that the _Ajax_ sailed the next day. What if she sailed without him? He
would lose his berth. The lad fairly ground his teeth.
“Just one question, ma’am,” he begged; “when can I get out of here?”
“Not for two or three days, at any rate,” was the reply.
Poor Jack groaned aloud and buried his face in his hands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIX.
JACK HAS VISITORS.
The doctor had come and gone, confirming the verdict that Jack had
dreaded to hear. In the meantime, by the kind offices of the hospital
authorities, a message had been despatched to his uncle informing him of
the lad’s plight.
The nurse had told the boy all she knew of the matter and added an
admiring eulogy on Mr. Jukes, who, she said, had promised to call that
day and had ordered that no expense was to be spared in caring for Jack
in the meantime.
But all this fell on ears that were deaf. The one bitter fact that the
boy’s brain drummed over and over to the exclusion of all else was that
his ship would sail without him and his accident might cost him his
berth.
“Isn’t there any way I can be patched up so as to get out to-morrow?” he
begged.
The nurse shook her head.
“The doctor wouldn’t hear of it. You must lie here two days, at least.”
“You might as well make it a year,” moaned Jack.
After a while he dozed off, but was awakened by the nurse, who, in tones
of suppressed excitement, informed him that Mr. Jukes had arrived to see
him. Jack, who had been expecting his uncle, felt disappointed, but
still, he reasoned, Mr. Jukes might be able to throw some light on the
dark hours through which Jack had passed.
With Mr. Jukes, when he entered, was a tall, delicate-looking lad of
about Jack’s age. He shrank rather shyly behind his father as he gazed
at the sunbrowned, bandaged lad on the bed.
“Well, my lad, how do you feel this morning?” asked Mr. Jukes in his
brisk, close-lipped way as he took the chair offered him by the nurse.
“Much better, sir, thank you,” rejoined Jack. “I—I want to rejoin the
ship, sir.”
“Impossible. They tell me you cannot get out for two days, at least,”
was the decisive reply. “But I must say you are a hard lad to kill. When
you struck that lamp-post——”
“That lamp-post!” exclaimed Jack.
“Yes, down in Greenwich Village. You were running along like one
possessed. All of a sudden I saw you strike the post like a runaway
locomotive, and then down you came. Now, my boy, it’s up to you to
explain what you were doing in that part of town at that time of night.”
Mr. Jukes compressed his lips and looked rather severe, but as Jack
launched into his story, the magnate’s brow grew black.
“The rascals! The infernal rascals! I’ll offer a big reward this very
day for their apprehension.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of getting them, sir,” said Jack.
“But it was fortunate indeed for me that you arrived on the scene,
although I cannot understand how it happened.”
This was soon explained, and then Mr. Jukes, turning to the
frail-looking youth, said:
“This is my son, Tom. Tom, this, as you know, is the lad who saved your
sister from drowning.”
“How d’ye do!” said Jack, gripping the other’s slim white fingers in a
grasp that made the lad wince, for, sick as he was, Jack’s grip had lost
none of its strength.
“Tom’s not very strong, but he’s crazy about wireless and the sea. Now
I’ve got to be off. Big meeting downtown. Tom, I’ll be back and get you
for lunch. In the meantime, stay here and get young Ready to tell you
all he knows about wireless.”
“That won’t take very long,” laughed Jack, which remark brought from Mr.
Jukes a repetition of the observation that it would be “hard to kill”
the young wireless man.
Mr. Jukes rushed out of the room as if there was not an instant to be
lost.
“That’s his way,” laughed Tom Jukes, as his father vanished, “always in
a rush. But he’s got the best heart in the world. Tell me all about your
trouble with those firemen and your life on the _Ajax_. I wish dad would
let me follow the sea. I’d soon get strong again.”
Jack, in the interest of having someone to talk to, forgot about his
damaged head. He gave a lively, sketchy account of life on the big
tanker, not forgetting the surgical operation performed by wireless, and
wound up with the story of the night raid on the tobacco smugglers and
his encounter of the night before with the revengeful firemen.
When he finished, Tom Jukes sighed.
“Gracious! That’s interesting, though! I wish I had adventures like
that. But they are doing their best to make a regular molly-coddle out
of me. The yacht and Bar Harbor in the summer, Florida in the winter and
a private tutor and a man-servant! It makes me sick!”
The lad shot out these last words with surprising vehemence. “I know a
lot of fellows who’d change with you,” said Jack.
“You do! They must be sap-heads,” said the rich man’s son; and then
suddenly, “How would you like to try the life for a time?”
“Me? Oh, I’ve never thought about it,” said Jack.
“Because if you would—but I forgot. I’m not to say anything about that.
That’s dad’s plan, and he’ll have to talk to you about it.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXX.
THE REJECTED OFFER.
Jack was much mystified, but Tom adroitly dodged further questioning by
turning the subject. He told the young wireless man of his trips to
Florida and California in search of health, and all about his father’s
fine yacht, the _Halcyon_, on which he had made many trips.
“But it’s all rot,” he concluded. “If they’d let me live the life any
ordinary kid does, I’ll bet I’d be as sound—as sound as you are before
very long.”
About noon Mr. Jukes came back. He burst into the room with his
customary bustle and hurry, and it was plain that he had something on
his mind to deliver in his usual blunt way.
Without any preliminaries he broke out:
“Ready, I’ve decided that you will make an excellent companion for Tom.
He needs the companionship of an active, cheery lad of his own age.
“I like you and I know he will. It’s a great chance for you. Stay here
till you feel all right, and then I’ll send you and Tom on a cruise to
Florida on the yacht. Life at sea is a dog’s life at the best. I’ll pick
out a different career for you and give you a desk in my office when Tom
is on his feet again. Come now, what do you say?”
While the magnate had been volleying out these rapid-fire orders,—for
that is what they amounted to,—Jack’s tired brain had been performing an
eccentric whirl. At first he had hardly understood, but now the full
meaning of it burst upon him.
Mr. Jukes wanted him to leave the sea, to drop his beloved wireless work
and take a desk in his office! He was also to act, it seemed, as a sort
of companion for Tom. It was a life of ease and offered a future which
few boys would have had the courage to decline.
Jack knew that every round of the ladder he had elected to climb could
only be won by stern fighting and keeping the faith like a man. On the
other hand, if he chose to give in to Mr. Jukes’ wishes or commands, he
was on the road to a life of ease and luxury and one that was as far
from the hardships and adventures of the sea as could be imagined.
Mr. Jukes eyed the boy as he hesitated with rising impatience. He was
not at all used to having his wishes disobeyed. Men jumped to carry out
his commands; and yet it appeared that this stubborn young sailor lad of
the ocean wireless wavered.
“What are you hesitating about, Ready?” he asked impatiently.
“I’m not hesitating, sir,” was the astonishing reply, “I’m trying to
find the best way to tell you that I can’t accept your offer.”
Mr. Jukes was as astonished as on the night when Jack had refused his
check. He flushed red and his cheeks swelled.
“Don’t talk like an idiot, lad,” he exclaimed, choking down his wrathful
amazement. “Of course you can do as I wish. It will be the making of Tom
and of you.”
“I’d like to do it if I could, Mr. Jukes,” said Jack, wondering why he
seemed to be doomed always to run afoul of this man who appeared bent on
doing him a kindness. “It’s a great offer. Please don’t think I do not
appreciate it.”
“Then why in the name of heaven don’t you accept it?” thundered Mr.
Jukes with rising wrath.
“Because I cannot, sir,” rejoined Jack bravely; while he thought to
himself, “This means I’ll have to look for another job.”
“Cannot! Why, of all the crass idiocy! What ails you, boy! Cannot,
indeed! Why?”
“Because I have chosen my own way of life, sir, and I must follow it
out,” replied Jack, as firmly as he could in spite of the bitter feeling
that filled him that he was killing his own chances with the Titan Line.
Tom Jukes tried to interpose, but his father angrily choked him off.
“Not a word!” he exclaimed. And then, to Jack, with an air of finality:
“I’ve no more time to dally words with an ungrateful boy. Is it yes or
no?”
“It must be _no_, sir,” said Jack, setting his teeth, “but, if you would
let me explain, I——”
“Say no more! say no more!” exclaimed Mr. Jukes, jamming on his hat.
“Come, Tom. As for you, Ready, I wash my hands of you. I’ve no desire to
interfere with your prospects on the line. You retain your job, but
expect no favors from me. You must work out your own salvation.”
“That is just what I want to do, sir,” was Jack’s quiet rejoinder, as
Mr. Jukes bounced out of the room, dragging Tom, who looked wistfully
back.
“The boy is mad! Stark, staring mad, by Jove!” exclaimed the angry
magnate as he stamped his way out of the hospital.
“I suppose anyone would think me a fool for what I’ve done,” thought
Jack, as he lay back on the pillows after the frantic Mr. Jukes’
departure, “but I couldn’t help it. I’m not going to be a rich man’s
pawn if I know it. What was it he said? Work out my own salvation? Well,
I’ll do it, and maybe I’ll astonish some folks before long. Too bad,
though I’m not such a chump as not to know what powerful friends and
influence can do in the world, and now, through no fault of my own, I’ve
had to chuck away both. But if grit and determination will help any,
I’ll get up the ladder yet.”
Not long after that Uncle Toby arrived with cheering news. The _Ajax_
was docked in the Erie Basin and would not sail for three days more,
owing to a defective boiler which would have to be repaired.
“So I can join her, after all,” thought Jack, cheered vastly by the
news. “Well, that’s a streak of fat to put alongside the lean!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXI.
A WHISPER OF DANGER.
Jack made his second eastward trip on the _Ajax_ under smiling skies and
seas almost as smooth as glass. Nothing out of the routine happened, and
in due course the _Ajax_, once more in ballast, cleared from Antwerp for
the home run. Jack had heard nothing more from Mr. Jukes and deemed that
the magnate had utterly cast him off.
Before he left the hospital, he had had visits from Captain Dennis and
his daughter and from Tom Jukes, who came secretly and brought the
information that, although his father was furious with the young
wireless man for rejecting what he deemed a magnificent offer, he would
yet pay Jack’s hospital bill.
“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Jack had flared up, and when he left the
institution, it was the lad himself who footed the bill.
It ate quite a hole in the check that was his reward for his share in
the detection of the tobacco smugglers, but it would have choked him to
think of accepting Mr. Jukes’ charity after the scene at his bedside the
morning after he had received his injury.
But the disfavor with which he was regarded by Mr. Jukes was the only
cloud on Jack’s horizon. Since that night in New York, Captain
Braceworth’s manner toward the young wireless boy had changed. He was
still austere and silent, but now and then, as he swung past the
wireless room on his way forward or to his cabin, he would exchange a
word or two with the lad. Perhaps he never guessed how much this
encouraged the boy who, on his first voyage, had set down the skipper of
the _Ajax_ as a cruel, harsh despot.
Knot after knot the steadily revolving engines of the _Ajax_ brought her
closer to home. The weather continued fine until one day, when Jack was
half wishing something would happen, the curtain began to draw up on
what was to prove a drama of the deep, destined to test every man on
board the big tanker.
A fog, dense, swirling and moist as a wet sponge, shut down all about
the _Ajax_ that morning soon after breakfast. The captain donned his
oil-skins and took up his position on the bridge, to stay there, as was
his custom, till the fog should lift and everything be secure again.
The chief engineer was sent for and instructed to keep his force in the
grimy regions below, keyed up for instant obedience to orders from the
bridge, for the _Ajax_ was on the Atlantic lane, a well-traveled,
crowded ocean track.
Like a blind man, the big tanker felt her way along, now starting
forward and now almost stopping with an air of fright, as some fancied
obstruction loomed in her path.
Through the weary day and the long night that followed, the _Ajax_
groped her way through the fog blanket that hung like a dense
mist-shroud over the sullenly heaving sea. It was a marine game of touch
and go, with possibly death and disaster for the stakes.
The engine-room telegraph spun in a weary succession of “Come
ahead”—“Slow”—“Ahead”—“Slow”—“Stop her”—and “Come ahead, slow” again.
When daylight came, it shone on the fog walls that bound the _Ajax_
prisoner. The wan light showed Jack the figures of the captain and his
first officer on the bridge. He knew that through the long night they
had kept their weary vigil. But so dense was the fog that it was not
always possible to see the bridge from the after superstructure.
Only when light and vagrant breezes sent the fog-wreaths fluttering and
writhing, like ghosts, could a blurred view of the forward part of the
ship be obtained.
Jack, too, had been on duty all night and he felt dull and wretched.
Through the fog had come calls from other ships, and vague whisperings
and chatterings, all fraught with fear and caution.
So far as those on the _Ajax_ knew, there was no ship closer to them
than the _Plutonia_ of the Smithson Lines. Jack had been busy through
the night, running back and forth with messages. Now, as he came to the
door of his cabin for a breath of the fog-laden air, he was musing to
himself on the anxious look on the captain’s furrowed face.
It was not the fog. Jack had seen the captain guide his ship through
even denser smothers than the present one. He had always been his calm,
collected, even cold, self.
But now the very air appeared to be vibrant with some vague apprehension
which the boy could not name or even guess at. But it was something that
lay outside the fog. Some overshadowing peril of more than ordinary
imminence.
As the steamer crawled forward, the mournful hooting of her siren
sounding like the very spirit of the mist, Jack revolved all these
things in his mind. He felt vaguely troubled.
It was no small thing that could worry the stalwart skipper of the
_Ajax_, as he palpably was worried. Fog was dangerous, yes, but what
with the wireless and the extraordinary caution observed, the peril was
reduced to a minimum.
The watches forward had been doubled and in the crow’s nest two men had
been stationed. But that was customary in a fog. Suddenly, as Jack stood
there, his wireless alarm,—he had perfected the device and had made
application for a patent on the same,—began to clamor loudly.
Jack hurried to his post. It was the _Westerland_, a hundred and fifty
miles east and considerably to the south, calling.
“Dense fog clearing here,” so the message ran, “but many large icebergs
in vicinity. If in fog, use great caution. Please repeat warning.
“KRAUSE, Master.”
Jack’s heart gave a bound.
“Icebergs!”
So it was fear of the white terrors of the north that kept the captain
chained to the bridge with that anxious look on his weather-beaten face.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXII.
ICEBERGS!
When he reached the bridge with this all-important despatch, Jack found
the captain in consultation with his officers. Tests of the temperature
of the water were being made, and the skipper was listening attentively
to the roaring of the siren.
If there was ice in the vicinity, the echo of the great whistle would be
flung back and serve as a warning.
“Well, boy?” the captain turned impatiently on Jack.
“A message, sir. I think it’s important,” said the boy deferentially.
The captain glanced through it and whistled.
“Important! I should think it is. Just what I thought. Confound this
ocean!”
He hastened over to his officers and showed them the despatch. A lively
consultation followed, which Jack wished he could have overheard. He
would have liked to know what further steps could be taken to avert the
dangers amid which they were crawling forward.
As a matter of fact, all that could be done had been done. Humanly
speaking, the _Ajax_ was as safe as she could be rendered in the midst
of the invisible dangers that, like white specters, might be swarming
about her even now.
Jack was ordered back to the wireless room and told to stand by for any
further information. The captain evidently placed great reliance on
getting further word of the location of the ice-fields and bergs.
But, although Jack worked ceaselessly, sending out his crackling,
sparkling calls, no reply came back out of the blinding fog. Clearly the
ship that had sent the wireless that was so all-important had passed out
of his zone, or else the “atmospherics” were arrayed against
communication.
It was a thrilling and not altogether a comfortable thought to consider
that at any moment there might loom above them, out of the choking mist,
a mountainous white form that might well spell annihilation for the
sturdy tanker.
Raynor, whose hand was now quite well, poked his head in at the door. He
was grimy and soot-covered but cheerful, and was going off watch.
“Hello, Jack,” he cried, “what do you think of this? Burning soft coal
in heaven, I guess! Isn’t it a smother, for fair?”
“It sure is,” rejoined Jack, “but the fog isn’t the worst of it.”
Raynor looked surprised.
“What are you driving at? They’ve had us on double watches since it
started, stopping and starting up the engines till they must think
they’re being run by a gang of crazy engineers.”
“It’s icebergs, old fellow,” said Jack in an awed tone.
“Icebergs! At this time of year, that’s unusual,” said Raynor.
“I don’t know about that, but I got a message from the _Westerland_
telling about them.”
“The dickens, you say! No wonder the old man is worried out of his
socks. Say, Jack,” went on the young engineer.
“Well?”
“What a fine chance we’d stand down below there, if we ever hit
anything, eh?”
And young Raynor, whistling cheerily, passed on to his room to wash up
and change.
Jack gave a shudder. “If they hit anything.” Well did he know what a
small chance the men in the grimy, sooty regions of the fire-room and
engine-space would stand in such a contingency. It would be their duty
to keep up the fires till the rising water put them out, and then—every
man for himself!
Woo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo! boomed the siren.
“Ugh! You sound as cheerful as a funeral,” shuddered Jack; and, to
divert his mind into a more cheerful channel, he fell to running the
wireless scale, in the hope that he might find himself in tune with some
other ship with fresh news of the white monsters of the northern polar
cap.
But the white silences were broken by no winged messages; and so the
afternoon waned to twilight, and night descended once more about the
fog-bound ship.
The strain of it all began to tell on the young wireless man. He made
hourly reports to the shrouded figures on the bridge that looked like
exaggerated ghosts in the smother of fog. The lights on the ship shone
through the obscurity like big, dim eyes, and the constant booming and
shrieking of the siren grew nerve-racking.
Vigilance was the order of the night. Bridge, deck and engine-room were
all alike keyed up to the highest pitch of watchfulness. At any moment a
message of terror might come clanging from the bridge to the engineers’
region.
The suspense made Jack, strong-nerved as he was, feel like crying out.
If only something would happen, he felt that he would not care so much,
but this silent creeping through the ghostly fog was telling on him.
Half dozing at times, Jack sat nodding at his key. All at once, without
the slightest warning what all hands had been waiting for with keyed-up
nerves happened.
From somewhere dead ahead the shriek of the siren was hurled back
through the fog in a volley of echoes.
It was Captain Braceworth himself who jumped to the engine-room
telegraph and signaled:
“Full speed astern!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE COLLISION.
At the same instant a voice boomed out from the fore-peak:
“Something dead ahead, sir!”
And then the next moment a heart-chilling hail from the crow’s nest:
“Ice ahead! A big berg right under our bow!”
Jack leaped from his instruments, a nameless dread clutching at his
heart. There had been no impact as yet, but he did not know at what
instant there might come a crashing blow that would tear the stout steel
plates of the tanker open as if they had been so much cardboard.
For a moment wild panic had him in its cold grasp. Then, heartily
ashamed of the cold sweat that had broken out on him and the wild
impulse he had had to cry out, he clenched his hands and regained
control of himself.
The whole fabric of the ship quivered as the mighty engines flew round
in the opposite direction to that in which they had been rotating. At
the instant Captain Braceworth’s order had been given it had been
obeyed.
For a breath there was killing suspense; and then suddenly there came
the shock of an impact. It was not a violent one, but just a grating,
jarring shock.
“Great Scott! We’ve struck!” exclaimed Jack, as the next instant there
came a second and more violent contact.
He was thrown bodily from his feet. Forward there came a babel of cries.
The ship listed heavily to port and then slowly, like a wounded
creature, she righted. Then came a sound of thunder as the masses of
ice, dislodged from the berg by the collision, toppled and slid from her
fore-decks.
Jack knew that what the skipper had dreaded had come to pass. In spite
of ceaseless, sleepless vigilance and the exercise of every caution a
man could use, the _Ajax_ had rammed an iceberg.
Above the yells and shouts of the seamen came the captain’s calm,
authoritative voice.
His orders rang out like pistol shots. Accustomed to obey, the seamen
stopped their panic and fell to their work. The mates were down among
them, silencing the more obstreperous in no very gentle manner.
A squad of men came running aft to the boats. For an instant Jack
thought that, in their panic, they were about to lower away and make
off. But he speedily saw, to his immense relief, that they were in
charge of cool-headed little Mr. Brown; they had been sent aft merely to
stand by the boats and tackle in case it became necessary to abandon the
ship.
Jack jumped to his key. If the ship was sinking, he would show them that
he could live up to best wireless traditions.
Out into the black, fog-bound night went thundering and volleying the
stricken ship’s appeal for aid. But the boy did not send out the S.O.S.;
that could only be done by the captain’s orders. His intent was to
inform any ship within his zone of their plight, so that they might
stand by to render assistance if it should be necessary.
But no answer came to the wireless appeal that the boy flung broadcast
through space. Time and again he tried to summon help, but none answered
his call.
The captain himself came aft, leaving things forward to the first
officer. The second officer and the carpenters were sounding the ship to
discover if her wound were mortal or if she could make port somehow.
Somewhere off in the fog Jack could hear the swells breaking as if on a
rocky coast. He knew they were beating against the iceberg that the ship
had crashed against!
Jack looked up as the captain entered the wireless room. Never had he
admired the man as he did in that instant. Pale, but stern and resolute,
Captain Braceworth looked the man of the minute, a fit person to cope
with the dire emergency that had befallen them.
“Any ships in our zone, Ready?” he asked calmly.
“No, sir, I’ve been trying to raise some and——”
“Very well. Keep on. If you get into communication, report to me at
once.”
“Yes, sir. Are—are we badly hurt, sir?”
“It is impossible to say. We are trying to find out now. I need not tell
you it is your duty to stay at that key till the last boat leaves the
ship.”
“You need not tell me that, sir,” said Jack, flushing proudly. “I’d go
down with her if it would do any good.”
The captain looked oddly at the boy a moment and then slapped him hard
upon the back.
“You’ve the right stuff in you, Ready,” he said and hurried off again.
The ship was still slowly backing. Presently Jack heard the mate’s big
voice booming out from forward.
“She’s flooded to the bow bulkhead, sir, but so far as I can see,
there’s no immediate danger. When daylight comes, we may be able to
patch her up.”
This was hopeful news, and a cheer arose from the men as they heard it.
But mingled with the cheer came another sound—a muffled roar like that
of wild animals or of an enraged mob.
What it meant flashed across Jack in a jiffy.
The firemen, The Black Squad, as they were called! They had mutinied
against being penned in the fire-room on a sinking ship and were rushing
to the deck.
Without knowing just what he was doing, the boy took his revolver out of
the drawer where he kept it and rushed outside. The first thing he saw
under the glow of the lights was the figure of Raynor.
The young engineer’s head was bleeding from a cut and in his hand he had
a big spanner. Pressing upward behind him as he backed out of the
fire-room companionway were the Black Squad, wild with panic. In their
hands they carried slice-bars, shovels, any weapon that came handy.
“Stand back, I tell you,” commanded Raynor, as Jack approached him.
“Stand back nothing,” bellowed a giant of a stoker. “Think we’re going
to the bottom on this rotten hooker? Stand back, yourself. Come on,
boys! The boats! We’ll get away while there’s time.”
“You’ll stay plumb where you are or be drilled as full of holes as
porous plasters!”
It was little Mr. Brown who spoke. Almost before he knew it, Jack was at
the doughty little officer’s side and stood with Raynor and Mr. Brown
facing that howling mob from the black regions below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIV.
QUELLING THE MUTINY.
“So you _will_ have it, eh?”
The leader of the Black Squad, a huge hulk of a fellow, stripped to the
waist and smeared hideously with coal-dust, sprang forward. Above his
head he brandished a heavy slice-bar.
He came straight for Jack and was raising his formidable weapon to
strike the boy down when something happened.
Crack!
There was the report of a pistol and the fellow fell headlong. But it
was not Jack’s pistol that had exploded. The boy could not have brought
himself even in that moment to fire on a fellow being.
It was Mr. Brown’s weapon that had spoken.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: He came straight for Jack ... when something
happened.—_Page 258_]
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“Any one else want the same medicine?” demanded the fearless little man,
indicating the form of the wounded fireman.
The men murmured sullenly. Their leader was gone, and without him they
wavered and hesitated. The captain came running aft.
“What in the mischief is going on here?” he shouted.
“Fire-room crew. Mutiny, sir!” said Raynor. “We held ’em as long as we
could, but the scoundrels overpowered us. The first is lying below
wounded, sir. That fellow Mr. Brown shot felled him with a slice-bar.”
The captain’s brow grew black as night.
“Back to your posts, you mutinous dogs!” he roared. “Back, I tell you,
or some of you will feel cold lead!”
He advanced toward them, driving them before him by sheer force of
character as if they had been a flock of sheep.
“You cowards!” he went on. “There is no danger, but at the first shock
of a small collision you leave your posts like the curs you are! Down to
the fire-room with you!”
Completely demoralized, the men shuffled below again. Certain men were
told off to attend to the wounded chief engineer, whose injuries were
found to be slight. As for the man Mr. Brown had shot, he turned out not
to have been injured at all. The chicken-hearted giant of a fellow had
simply dropped at the report of the pistol and lain there till the
trouble blew over. He was placed in irons and confined in the forecastle
to await trial in port on charges of mutiny.
And thus, by prompt action, the mutiny was quelled almost in its
inception. The thoroughly cowed firemen took up their work and nothing
more was heard of refusal to do duty. It had been a good object lesson
to Jack who, in ranging himself by the side of Mr. Brown and the young
engineer, had acted more on instinct than anything else.
Secretly he was glad it had ended as it had, without bloodshed, for, as
he knew, discipline on a ship must be upheld at any cost. He realized
that neither the captain nor Mr. Brown would have hesitated for an
instant to hold the men back with firearms, had they persisted in their
bull-headed rush.
“Well, we are all right for the time being,” said the captain to Mr.
Brown. “No need to keep these men by the boats.”
“Then we are not hurt as badly as you thought, sir?”
“No, the report is that the bow bulkhead is holding, although our
forward plates are stove in. Thank goodness, we didn’t hit harder!”
“Yes, indeed, sir.”
“When daylight comes we’ll start to patch up. I hope this witches’ broth
of a fog will have held up by then.”
“I’m glad that it was no worse, sir.”
“And so, indeed, am I, although, if it comes on to blow, there may yet
be a different yarn to spin.”
The captain and the officer went forward, and Jack was left alone.
He took the opportunity to snatch a nap, adjusting the “wireless alarm”
so that any ship that came within the zone would awaken him instantly.
Twice during the long night he tried to raise some other craft, but each
time failed.
“I guess they’ve called in all the ships on the ocean,” said the boy to
himself as, after the second attempt, he desisted from his efforts for
the time being.
When daylight came, the big tanker presented a forlorn picture. Of the
berg that had almost sent her to the bottom, there was no sign, although
the fog had lifted quite a little.
The stout steel bow was twisted and crumpled like a bit of tin-foil.
There was a yawning cavity in it, too, through which the water washed
and gurgled with an ominous sound. When Jack came on deck, huge canvas
screens were being rigged over it to keep out the water as much as
possible. The steamer was proceeding slowly ahead through the fog
wreaths, but, compared with her usual speed, she appeared hardly to have
momentum.
Besides the protection of the crumpled bow by the canvas screens,
another portion of the crew was sent below to strengthen the bulkhead
from within by heavy timbers. There was a space between the front end of
the tanks and the bulkhead, and in this they labored, bracing the steel
partition as firmly as possible.
But Jack, when he made his report, heard Mr. Brown, who had the watch,
remarking cheerfully to the second officer that the barometer had risen
and that the prospects were for good weather.
“Well, we deserve a little luck,” was the response.
About noon the captain reappeared on the bridge. He was as much
refreshed by his brief rest as most men would have been by a night’s
sleep.
He had not been there ten minutes, when Jack, his face full of
excitement, came hurrying up with a message.
“Important, sir!” he said.
The captain glanced the message over and then burst into an angry
exclamation.
“They are asking for assistance, you say?”
“Yes, sir. But all I could catch is on that message there.”
“Great guns! Mr. Brown, sir, disasters always appear to come in
bunches.”
“What’s the matter, sir?” asked the sympathetic officer.
“Why, young Ready, here, has just caught a message from the air. A ship
is in distress somewhere.”
“Any details, sir?”
The captain shook his head.
“None. This is all the wireless caught. ‘S.O.E.,’ and then a few seconds
later, ‘No hope of controlling it.’”
“Sounds like fire to me, sir,” said Mr. Brown.
“So it does to me. Hustle to your key, Ready, and get what more you can.
If we can help them, we will, though Lord knows we’re in bad enough
shape ourselves!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXV.
A CALL FOR HELP.
Jack’s fingers shook with excitement and suspense as he took his seat
again at the instrument and began searching the air for a clue to the
mysterious sender of the frantic summons.
Every fiber of the adventurous strain in his being responded to this
call for succor from the unknown. Impatiently he waited for more to come
beating at the drums of his receivers. But for a long time he heard
nothing.
Then, faintly and hesitatingly, there volleyed through the air some
figures. Latitude and longitude, Jack guessed them to be, but they were
so feebly sent and so jumbled, that in themselves they argued eloquently
the stress of the sender.
Then came a frantic appeal that set Jack’s pulses to throbbing:
“Help! S.O.S.!”
Then silence shut down again. The captain appeared in the doorway.
“Well?” he said interrogatively. “Anything more?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack, handing him the figures he had jotted down; “he’s
been trying to send us his latitude and longitude, I think. Can you make
this out?”
The commander scanned the figures and then gave an impatient snort.
“Confound that wireless lunatic!”
“What is it, sir? Are the figures no good?”
“Good! I should think not. This latitude and longitude would put that
ship somewhere up near Albany!”
The captain was irritated. His long vigil on the bridge had told upon
him.
“Confound it all,” he broke out testily, “if that fellow wants us to
come after him, why the dickens can’t he send some plain facts?”
“His current is very weak, sir. I can hardly hear the messages,”
volunteered Jack.
“Well, stand by, my boy, and report to me the instant you get anything
more,” said the captain. “It’s just like the luck. Here we are stove in
like an old egg-shell, and there’s not another ship they can pick on for
help but us.”
Under the circumstances the captain’s irritation was perhaps natural.
The _Ajax_ had already been delayed by the fog, and she was owned by a
corporation that expected its ships to run on time. Furthermore, her
injuries would cause her to limp along at a snail’s pace; and now, on
the top of all this, had come an appeal for help that could not be
disregarded, but which gave no facts or figures whatever!
“Who are you?—Who are—you?—Who are you?”
This was the message that went crashing out from the sender of the
_Ajax_.
The aerials took up the question and spread it abroad to all the winds
of heaven, but not the faintest whisper came back from the ether to tell
that the words had been caught.
Then, with the suddenness of lightning, came another startling appeal.
“Fire is spreading. Ship being abandoned. Help!”
It was maddening to sit there and listen to these futile prayers for
succor without being able to do a thing to reply to them.
“Why, oh why, won’t he send his position?” sighed Jack; and again he
sent a frantic query volleying along the air waves.
But the receiver remained as silent as the void itself. Not the faintest
scratching of an invalid fly’s footsteps came to reward Jack’s
vigilance.
Before he could report his failure to the captain that dignitary was
back again. He was fairly bubbling with impatience.
“It’s enough to drive a man mad,” he growled. “They must be a crew of
lunatics on that ship. I never heard of anything like it. Oh, I’d like
to drum some sense into their fool heads!”
“Hullo! Wait a jiffy!” cried Jack, startled out of his customary
deference. “By the great horn spoon, here comes something now!”
The captain’s burly form bent over the slim body of the young operator
as Jack’s nimble fingers flew over the receiving pad. He was excited and
made no effort to hide it, although his long years at sea had taught him
that nothing was too wildly improbable to occur on the great deep.
But that he should have collided with an iceberg and another ship within
his wireless zone should be simultaneously on fire appeared to be almost
without the pale of possibilities.
“Ah! Figures at last!” he said, as Jack jotted down a lot of numerals.
“Great Scott!” he shouted a moment later, “those figures put her within
forty miles of us to the southwest!”
“Hold on, sir, here’s some more!” warned Jack.
The diaphragms crackled and tapped as a hail of dots and dashes beat
against them like surf from the electric ocean. The sending was stronger
now from the doomed vessel, wherever and whatever she was.
“This is the yacht _Halcyon_, New York for the Azores. Owner and son on
board. For Heaven’s sake, send help! This may be good-bye.”
“Thunder and lightning!” roared the captain, more excited than Jack had
ever seen him. “This is news! Why, the _Halcyon_ is Mr. Jukes’ yacht!”
The pencil dropped from Jack’s nerveless fingers and he sat back,
gasping at this extraordinary intelligence.
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
LOOKING FOR THE BURNING YACHT.
“Mr. Jukes’ yacht!” repeated the young wireless lad. “And his son is on
board, too!”
“What, you know him?”
“Yes, I met him when I was in the hospital after those firemen, or
rather the lamp-post, gave me that crack on the head.”
“Great Scott! It’s a case of have to go now whether we want to or not,”
exclaimed the captain. “Of course,” he added, “we would have gone
anyhow, but still, under the present conditions, if another steamer had
been handy, I’d have left the job to them. But Mr. Jukes’ yacht, that’s
another pair of shoes!”
“Clang-g-g-g-g-g-g!”
The wireless alarm “rang in” with its sharp, insistent note. Jack bent
again to his instruments. In a trice he had turned into a business-like
young operator of the wireless waves.
“Maybe that’s some more from them,” exclaimed the captain, as Jack
picked up his pencil.
“Hurry!” was what Jack wrote. “Owner states he will give a million to
anyone who will come to his help. Good-bye. I’ve got to make a getaway.”
“Well, at any rate, that wireless chap on the _Halcyon_ is a cheerful
sort of cuss,” observed the captain. “I guess that will be all from him
now. I’ll go forward and see about proceeding to their aid.”
But the captain’s plans were destined to be changed. For a time they
moved steadily but slowly toward the location of the doomed yacht. By
noon the sun was out and the sea dancing a vivid blue under a bright
sun. There was a smart breeze, too, and, after considering all the
conditions, Captain Braceworth summoned Mr. Brown.
“Mr. Brown,” said he, “take a boat and go about twenty miles to the
sou’west. If that yacht’s boats are scattered about there, you should
sight some of them. You should be back not long after eight bells of the
dog-watch. I’ll have flares and rockets sent up so that you can find the
ship easily.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Brown, with sailor-like directness, and
hurried off to complete his preparations.
In the meantime, Jack and young Raynor had been having a consultation.
The latter was by this time quite an efficient wireless man, and this
just fitted in with Jack’s plan; for he was dying to go in that boat
which was about to set out after the castaways!
“How would you like to take the wireless this afternoon?” he inquired of
his chum.
“I can’t think of anything that would suit me better. Why?” was the
rejoinder.
“Because I am going to apply for a chance to go in that boat, if you
will do relief duty for me. You are not on watch this afternoon, and it
will be great experience for you.”
“Aren’t you the little wheedler, though?” laughed Raynor. “All right,
Jack, I’ll do it for you. Cut along, now, and see the skipper. You
haven’t any time to waste.”
In five minutes Jack was back and radiant.
“He says he doesn’t know why I should go hunting for trouble,” he
reported, “but he says I can go.”
“Well, that’s the main thing,” said Raynor cheerily, “and you’d better
see Mr. Brown right away. There goes the boat.”
The craft was, in fact, being slung out on the davits when Jack
approached the mate and told him that he was to form one of the party.
“Always digging up work for yourself,” grinned the mate.
“That’s what the captain said,” rejoined Jack demurely.
He took his place in the boat, and a few moments later the small craft
was being rowed away from the big tanker’s side by six pairs of stout
arms.
“Cheerily, men!” admonished Mr. Brown. “Remember it’s the owner we’re
going after. It may mean a dollar or two in every man’s pocket if we
hurry.”
This hint had the desired effect.
The men bent to the oars till the stout ash curved and the boat hissed
through the water. They had not gone more than a mile before a lively
breeze caused Mr. Brown to order the sail hoisted.
Naturally enough, nobody was averse to this, and soon, under the canvas,
they were speeding over the dancing sea. In his pleasure at this
agreeable break in the monotony of sea-life, Jack almost forgot the
seriousness of the errand on which they were bent.
But Mr. Brown reminded him of it by observing, “I’m hoping we are not
too late.”
This idea had not entered Jack’s head before. Too late!
What if they were too late, after all! That last message had broken off
with suspicious abruptness, although Mr. Jukes must have been then
aboard, because his offer of a million dollars to the unknown ship—Jack
had not sent the name of the _Ajax_—was characteristic of him.
The bright afternoon seemed to cloud over as he thought of this. Stern
and capricious as the magnate was, still, Jack, in his inner soul,
admired his forcefulness and driving power; and as for Tom Jukes, he had
formed a genuine liking for the frail lad.
He looked out over the sparkling sea. It was hard to believe that it
might have witnessed a marine tragedy within the last few hours.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MATE’S YARN.
Mr. Brown was soliloquizing.
“Nothing so bad as fire at sea,” said he. “Take any typical case. The
old man thinks he can fight it down and so do most of his crew. And so
they let it run on till it’s too late, and then it’s all off.
“I was on a coal ship once, Frisco to Hong-kong. Fire started in the
bunkers in mid-Pacific. We passed two or three ships while it was still
smoldering and you could smell the coal gas a mile away.
“Think the old man would call for help? Not much. If he did, his owners
would have jumped him for costing them salvage money! That’s another
reason so many ships sink and are burned,” he added in parenthesis.
“Well, sir, that old fire went from bad to worse. The crew had to berth
aft and the decks,—she was a steel ship,—began to get so hot that you
had to walk pussy-footed on ’em. But still the old man wouldn’t quit.
“‘If we only get a wind,’ he says, ‘I’ll bring her into port even if she
busts up when we tie to the dock.’
“‘If you get a wind,’ says I, ‘you won’t have to wait fer that. She’ll
go skyrocketing without any by your leave or thank you.’
“‘Pshaw, Brown, you’re nervous!’ says he.
“‘Of course I am,’ says I; ‘who wouldn’t be, going to sea with a
bloomin’ stove full of red-hot coals under their boots, instead of a
good wholesome ship? Keel-haul me if ever I sail again with coal,’ says
I.
“Things goes along this way for about two weeks, and then comes the
grand bust-up. We couldn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep, we could hardly
breathe.
“‘Get out the boats,’ says the old man at last, as if he’d made up his
mind that it was really time to get away.
“Well, sir, to see the way those bullies jumped for the boats you’d have
thought there was pocket money in every one of ’em, or a prize put up by
the old man to see who’d be overboard first.
“We got away, all right, the skipper last, of course. But he had to go
below to save his pet parrot. He’d just about reached the deck,
when—confusion!—up she goes.
“The whole blows up sky high and the skipper with it. One of the men
said he had stopped to light his pipe, and the flame of the match
touched off all that gas. But I dunno just how that might be. Anyhow,
for quite a while we could see that old skipper sailing up to
heaven,—’twas the only way he’d ever get there, I heard one of the men
say. Then down he comes, kerplunk!
“It was a hard job for us in the boat to reckernize him. You see, he’d
had a fine, full beard when he went up, but he come down clean shaved!
And the parrot,—well, sir, that parrot looked like a ship without a
rudder. Its gum-gasted tail had followed the skipper’s whiskers into
oblivion,—as Shakespeare says. Well, we got him into the boat, and two
days after we were picked up, but neither the skipper nor the parrot
were ever the same man or the same bird again.”
At the conclusion of this touching narrative, Jack saw fit to put a
question.
“By the way, what was the name of that ship, Mr. Brown?” he asked
mischievously.
“The name?” asked Mr. Brown, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Yes, I’d like to look that craft up.”
“Well, sir, I’ll not deceive you,” said Mr. Brown. “Her name was the
_Whatawhopper_. It’s an Injun name, they tell me, but gracious, I don’t
know anything about those matters! We had on board, besides the coal, a
cargo of beans,—took ’em on at Boston,—but they got wet and swelled and
we thought——”
But this was too much even for Jack.
“Mr. Brown, you’ve missed your vocation,” he said.
“How’s that?” inquired the mate with a serious face.
“You should have been a novelist,” laughed Jack. “With your imagination,
you’d have made a fortune.”
“Well, I’ll never make one at sea, that’s one sure thing,” said Mr.
Brown, with a conviction born of experience.
The crew managed the boat silently. They were cheered by Mr. Brown’s
extensive vocabulary and picturesque speech, and stuck to their duties
like real seamen.
As time passed, however, and there was not a sign of boats on the sea,
and the sparkling water danced emptily under the burning sun, some of
the crew become restive.
“Aw, you cawn’t moike me believe there’s a bloomin’ thing in this bally
wireless,” muttered a British sailor. “It’s awl a bloomin’ bit of spoof,
that’s what it is, moites. We moight as well go a choising the ghost of
Admiral Nelson as be chivvying arter this old crawft.”
His attitude toward wireless was typical of that of most sailors, and it
may be added—some landsmen!
Their intelligence appears to balk at grasping the idea of an electric
wave being volleyed through space, although they accept hearing and
eyesight,—dependent, both of them, on sound and sight waves,—as an
everyday fact.
Jack felt like giving a little lecture on wireless right then and there.
It nettled him to think that the wonderful invention which has done so
much to render sea-travel safe, accounts of which appear in the columns
of the newspapers every day, should be belittled by the very men who
owed so much to it.
“But what’s the use,” thought he. “It would only be wasted breath. But
if everyone could know it as I do, the world would be full of wireless
enthusiasts; and then what a job we’d have picking up messages!”
But as they sailed on and no sign of any boats appeared, even Jack’s
faith began to waver.
Could the message have been a hoax?
Such things, incredible as they may seem, have been known. The sailors
began to look at him derisively.
“I guess that kid dreamed that stuff about the bird cage aloft,”
muttered one. “It stands to reason there ain’t no way of sending
messages without wires. You might as well try to eat food without a
thing on yer plate!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
IN SIGHT OF SMOKE.
“I suppose I ought to take that view of the situation, too,” said Mr.
Brown to Jack, “but somehow I don’t want to give this thing up yet.”
“But surely we should have seen some trace of the ship by this time,”
objected Jack, who was beginning to get a little skeptical himself.
The blue line of the horizon was without a speck to mar its empty
spaciousness.
Mr. Brown had recourse to the glasses, which he had used frequently
since they had set out. But the powerful binoculars failed to disclose
any object the naked eye might not have discovered.
“If there really has been a fire on that yacht and the boats are
drifting about, it may prove an even more serious matter than we
imagine,” said the officer at length.
“You mean they may be lost?” asked Jack.
“Just that,” was the reply. “If the boats should drift beyond the
regular established routes and steamer lanes, it might be weeks and even
months before they are found.”
“Then the ocean beyond the regular routes is empty of life?” asked Jack.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but the Atlantic is covered with regular
sailing routes just as a country is mapped out with railroads. The
master of a ship usually makes no deviation from those routes; although,
of course, in the case of some ships, they are sometimes compelled to.”
They sailed on for some little time further and the officer was on the
point of giving up the search, when he once more resorted to the
binoculars.
He stood up and swept the sky line earnestly for some sign of what they
sought.
“There’s nothing visible,” he was beginning, when suddenly he broke off
and uttered a sharp exclamation:
“Jove! There’s something on the horizon. Looks like a tiny smudge on a
white wall, but it may be a steamer’s smoke!”
“If it is, it may be some other ship that has come to their rescue,”
suggested Jack.
Mr. Brown gave orders to the men to give way with increased power. The
breeze had dropped and the use of the oars was once more necessary.
“Should it be a steamer’s smoke, she may have rescued them,” observed
the officer; “if not, it may be the burning craft still floating.”
“Lay into it, bullies,” he added a moment later. “Let her have it!
That’s the stuff!”
Jack’s excitement ran high. Putting aside the adventurous nature of
their errand, the owner of the Titan Line from whom he had parted under
such unpleasant circumstances in the Greenwich Hospital, was aboard, and
his friend,—for so he called him, despite their brief acquaintance,—Tom
Jukes, might be there, too.
“My! Won’t they open their eyes when they see who it is has come to
their rescue!” he thought to himself. “Come to think of it, I must have
been as rattled as the operator of the _Halcyon_ or I’d have given the
name of the ship.”
The smudge of smoke grew as they rowed and sailed toward it, till, from
a mere discoloration of the blue horizon, it grew to be a flaring pillar
of smoke.
“No ship ever burned coal at that rate,” decided Mr. Brown. “Yonder’s
the blaze, men, and the old hooker is still on top, although it
surprises me that she hasn’t gone down long ago.”
While they all gazed, suspending their rowing for a moment in the
fascination of the spectacle, Jack uttered a shout:
“Look!” he cried, “look!”
Something appeared to heave upward from the surface of the sea. The
smoke spread out as if it had suddenly been converted into an immense
fan of vapor, and the air was filled with black fragments.
Then the smoke slowly drifted away and the ocean was empty once more.
“Well, that’s good-night for her,” said Mr. Brown. “Ready, that operator
certainly had a right to have a case of rattles.”
Jack did not answer. He was thinking of the wonder of the wireless, and
how by its agency the news of the disaster that had overtaken the
_Halcyon_ had been flashed to the rescue party.
“She just blew up with one big puff and melted away,” he said presently.
“Yes, I’ll bet there isn’t a stick or timber of her left,” said Mr.
Brown.
“Was she a fine boat?”
“A beauty.”
“Ever see her?”
“Yes, once in New York harbor. The old man was coming back from a cruise
to the Azores. That’s a favorite stamping ground of his, by the way.
There’s nothing cheap about J. J. when he comes to gratifying his own
whimsies, and the _Halcyon_ was one of them. Mahogany, velvet, mirrors,
and I don’t know what all,—but never mind that now. We ought to be
sighting some of the boats.”
The men rowed like furies now. Even the most skeptical had become
convinced that, after all, there was something in wireless.
It was almost sunset when Mr. Brown tapped Jack’s shoulder after he had
taken a long look through the binoculars.
“There’s something in sight off there,” said he; “take a look, if you
like.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ADRIFT ON A LIFE RAFT.
“I can’t quite make it out,” said Jack, as he returned the glasses. “Is
it a boat?”
“Looks like it. I’m sure I saw men on board it.”
“Let’s take another look.”
Jack picked up the binoculars once more and gazed through them long and
earnestly.
“It looks like a white dot,” he said, “and—yes, there are men on it!
They’ve seen us! They’re waving!”
“Give me the glasses, boy,” said Mr. Brown, trying hard to repress his
excitement.
The little officer stood up and focused the powerful binoculars on the
object that had aroused their attention.
“It’s not a boat,” he pronounced at length.
“Not a boat? Then what is it?” asked Jack, puzzled.
“It’s a life raft, one of those patent affairs. I can see men paddling
it with bits of wood. S’pose they had no time to get oars.”
The crew bent to their work with renewed fervor. They knew that not far
off from them there must be suffering and misery in its keenest form.
Mr. Brown did not need to urge them now, although he kept hopping about
and shouting his favorite:
“Give it to her, my bullies!”
As they approached the raft, they could see that it was crowded almost
to the water line with a wretched, forlorn-looking assemblage of
humanity.
It was clear that the yacht must have been left in the most desperate
haste.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: “Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully, “Don’t
worry; we’ll soon get you!”—_Page 293_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The clothes of the castaways were burned and their faces blistered and
smudged. They must have fought the fire desperately till the last
moment, when they found further effort useless.
“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully. “Don’t worry; we’ll soon
get you!”
“We can wait a while longer,” came back a cheery voice.
It proceeded from a stout, good-natured looking man whose clothes were
perhaps a trifle more disreputable than any of the others.
“I’m Wireless Willie,” he cheerfully explained, as he climbed on board.
“This is a fine note, isn’t it? I’ve lost everything and came pretty
near losing my mind. Do you blame me? She caught fire forward,
and—Pouf!—up she went like kindling wood.”
The others clambered on board, one after another, and last came two
seamen, who dragged a ragged, limp, smoke-blackened form from the raft
and handed it to the mate in the boat.
For a moment Jack had a shock. He thought the man was dead. But a groan
convinced him otherwise. At last all were on board.
“Now, bullies,” said Mr. Brown, addressing his crew, “it’s a long, hard
pull back to the ship, but think of what you’re going to get when J. J.
comes to!”
“Is Mr. Jukes on board?” asked Jack. “I thought maybe he was in another
boat and cast adrift.”
“What, you didn’t know him?” demanded the mate, in genuine astonishment.
“No, I——”
“Well, that’s J. J., right there.”
He indicated the unconscious form to which some of the sailors were
trying to administer nourishment.
“Yes, this is the owner, all of a heap,” volunteered one of them. “His
heart’s gone back on him, I reckon.”
“Looks that way,” assented Mr. Brown, glancing at the recumbent form.
“But where is Tom?” cried Jack, the thought of the son of the magnate
coming suddenly to him.
“Hush,” said one of the sailors from the _Halcyon_, “don’t talk too
loud. He might hear you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack, staring at the man.
“The boy went off in one of the boats. We lost them in the fog. The good
Lord only knows where they are now.”
“Drive the old man crazy when he hears of it, I reckon,” put in another
man, the mate of the yacht. “He thought the world and all of Tom, he
did.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” thought Jack; and then aloud to Mr. Brown:
“There’s another boat adrift, sir. Aren’t we going to look for it?”
Mr. Brown shook his head and pointed to the western horizon. The sun,
like a big copper ball, was sinking.
“It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “But
cheer up, they’ll be picked up somehow. You can depend on that.”
“I only hope so,” said Jack sadly.
He looked around at the empty sea. It made him shiver to think that
somewhere on that desolate expanse was a boat full of castaways looking
in vain for succor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XL.
THE RESCUE OF MR. JUKES.
“How did the fire happen?” asked Mr. Brown of the wireless man of the
_Halcyon_ as they rowed back to the ship, for the wind had now entirely
dropped.
“Well, it all came about so blessed quickly that I doubt if anyone knows
just what the start of it was,” came the reply. “The skipper thought he
could fight it (Here Mr. Brown nodded knowingly to Jack as if to say, “I
told you so”), and we battled with it for a long time. The fire affected
my dynamos, I guess, for my current was miserably weak.”
“I noticed that, all right,” said Jack.
“But you caught it though. Lucky for us you did. Well, to continue. The
old man,—Mr. Jukes, I mean, was furious. He wouldn’t hear of abandoning
the ship.
“He wanted to fight the fire to the last moment. But he sent his son off
in a boat. The fog had lifted a bit, and we thought it would be no job
at all to pick them up. But then the smother shut down again, and when
it lifted and we were forced to leave the ship, there wasn’t a sign of
that boat high or low.”
The prostrate figure of Mr. Jukes, who had been sedulously attended by
the sailors, stirred lightly and he gave a moan. Suddenly he sat bolt
upright.
The sight of him gave Jack a shock. Was this bedraggled, pallid,
soot-smeared scarecrow the once pompous and lordly head of the Titan
Steamship Company’s activities?
Yes, it was Mr. Jukes, sure enough. He sat up and asked in a hoarse,
husky voice:
“Where’s Tom?”
“He’s in the other boat, Mr. Jukes,” said one of the sailors soothingly.
“He’s all right.”
“Yes, but where is the other boat? What boat is this?”
“By a strange coincidence, Mr. Jukes,” said Jack, “it is one of the
boats from your tanker, the _Ajax_. Don’t you know me, Jack Ready? I
picked up your wireless call for aid.”
“Oh yes, yes, I know you now,” said the magnate dully. “But my boy Tom,
where is he? I want him.”
Some of the men were whispering.
“What’s that I hear?” said Mr. Jukes, turning quickly on them. “Tom
adrift? Adrift in that boat? Look for him. Find him, I tell you. Oh,
Tom, my boy! my boy! I didn’t mean to desert you!”
Jack patted him on the shoulder as he might have a companion in
misfortune. Gone now was the lordly, magnificent air of the head of the
steamship combine. Mr. Jukes was simply a sorrowing parent, crushed by
his misfortunes.
But in a minute his old domineering manner came back.
“You are in my employ, every one of you!” he shouted. “Find my boy!”
Mr. Brown shook his head.
“It’s almost dark, sir, and you yourself are badly in need of
attention.”
“What, you will abandon him?” shouted the magnate.
The unfortunate mate looked sorely puzzled.
“It would be useless to look for him now, sir,” he said. “To-morrow,
perhaps, by daylight.”
“To-morrow,” groaned Mr. Jukes.
“Don’t worry, sir. He’ll turn up all right,” said Mr. Brown consolingly.
“Oh, if I could only think so!” burst out the man of millions. “But to
think of my boy, my Tom, out on this desolate sea! Lost in an open boat!
How shall I ever face his mother?”
“He’ll be all right, sir,” was all that the mate could repeat.
“If we don’t pick them up, some other ship will,” added Jack.
It was a hard lesson that Mr. Jukes was learning. He was finding out
that money cannot buy everything. All his millions were as dross to him
at that moment.
“How can I face my friends?” he muttered presently. “I am saved and Tom
is gone! How can I explain to his mother? Oh, if it had only been me in
his place!”
Then suddenly his rage turned on Jack.
“You boy! You, whom I tried to help! Why are you here and my boy gone?
How is it you are safe and sound, and my son is lost?”
“I’m as sorry as I can be, Mr. Jukes,” said Jack. “If there was anything
I could do, I’d do it gladly, and you know it.”
“Bah-h-h-h-h!” was the contemptuous reply.
But Jack kept his temper.
“I’d stay out here a week, sir,” he said, “if that would do any good.”
But the half-crazed man only snarled at him and sat silent, till the
welcome sight of the _Ajax’s_ rockets and flares showed them that they
were nearing the ship.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XLI.
A JOYOUS REUNION.
The _Ajax_ was almost ready to proceed when the boat joined her. The
repairs had been made with even more success than the captain had dared
to hope.
When, therefore, Mr. Jukes informed him tremulously that he was not to
leave the vicinity till they found some trace of Tom Jukes, he did not
receive the orders with the best grace in the world. But, of course,
there was nothing for it but to obey.
Perhaps, too, the captain, who was a father himself, felt a sort of
sympathy for Mr. Jukes, although he did not believe for an instant that
Tom was in any danger.
Mr. Jukes passed a sorry night, and the next morning, haggard and gray,
he was up and about early. He came up to where Jack was leaning against
the rail.
“So it’s you, is it?” he said, in a softened tone. “I’m sorry I spoke as
I did last night, but I was almost beside myself with grief. You cannot
understand how this thing is preying on me.”
“I do understand, Mr. Jukes,” said Jack earnestly; “and as for being
sorry about the way you spoke of me, I don’t blame you one bit.”
The strangely softened magnate sighed and his tired eyes swept the sea.
“We must not leave here till we get some news of Tom,” he said.
Then he fell to pacing the deck, while Jack went back to his wireless.
Suddenly he picked up a message.
“_Ajax! Ajax! Ajax!_” buzzed the instrument.
Jack sent a replying message and then came this:
“This is the _Caronia_. We were in communication with you yesterday.
We’ve picked up a shipwrecked crew and——”
“What!” volleyed back Jack’s key.
“What’s the matter, are you crazy? Don’t butt in when I’m giving you the
news. Where are your manners?”
“Oh, stop that and get on!” sputtered Jack’s key.
“Well, you must have got out of bed the wrong side this morning!” came
the reply. “I said that we had picked up a shipwrecked crew. They want
to go aboard some vessel for New York, so I called you up. We’ll pass
you pretty soon now.”
“Was there a boy among them?” asked Jack.
“Yes. Name, Tom Jukes, son of the old millionaire. Why?”
“Because his father is on this ship!”
“For the love of Mike!”
“Yes; have you got a clear wire?”
“All clear now.”
“Then send for Tom. Let him speak to his father. The old man is almost
unbalanced over his loss.”
“Nothing easier than that.”
And so it came about that, ten minutes later, Tom’s greetings came to
Jack through the air, while Mr. Jukes, with tear-filled eyes and a heart
full of thankfulness, stood in the wireless room of the _Ajax_ and
dictated his answering messages.
He was a changed man from that instant, but he could hardly keep his
patience till the _Caronia_ came up and the transfer of the castaways
was made. The drifting boat of the _Halcyon_ had been picked up early
that morning by the liner, after her crew had become hopelessly lost and
bewildered.
What a meeting that was! And when the father and son had finished
wringing each others’ hands, it was Jack’s turn. Tom Jukes declared that
if it had not been for the wireless, he might at that very moment have
been on the _Caronia_ bound for Liverpool, and it might have been weeks
before he and his father were reunited.
“I suppose we can go ahead now, sir?” said Captain Braceworth, poking
his head into the wireless room where the joyous reunion had taken
place.
“Yes, captain. And, by the way, I want the names of those men you sent
to the rescue. There’s something handsome coming to them. As for this
lad,” smiling at Jack, “he’s too proud to accept a gift.”
“I know one he wouldn’t mind,” said Tom roguishly.
“And what’s that?” asked his father, patting the lad’s hand.
“A better job on a bigger ship.”
Jack’s eyes danced. Mr. Jukes smiled.
“Well, we shall see what we shall see,” he said; “but, if I do anything
like that, it will be on condition that you go along with him. He
wouldn’t have anything to do with you on land. Perhaps he will on the
ocean.”
“And I can learn wireless?” asked Tom.
“If Ready, here, will teach you. I’m convinced now that it is one of the
seven modern wonders of the world. Look at what it has done for us! And
I’m going to see that the lad who worked it isn’t neglected.”
Mr. Jukes was as good as his word. When the injured _Ajax_ came into
port ten days later, Jack’s reward came.
But what it was and how he carried out the additional responsibilities
imposed upon him by his new work must be saved for the telling in the
next volume of this series, which will be called: “The Ocean Wireless
Boys and the Lost Liner.”
THE END.
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Transcriber's Notes
In the text of this book, italicized phrases are presented by
surrounding the text with underscores, and boldface phrases are
presented by surrounding the text with equal signs.
Hyphenated words have been retained as they appear in the original
text, except as noted in the full list of changes below.
Changes made to the text:
table of contents - changed "Aim" to "Arm" to match the
actual chapter title
original text: XXII. You Saved My Aim
table of contents - added dash after "Adventure" to match
actual chapter title
original text: XV. An Adventure
page 10 - changed "shipowner" to "ship-owner" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Her dad, he’s Jacob Jukes, the big ship-owner
page 10 - changed "shipowner" to "ship-owner" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Someone had found the ship-owner
page 33 - changed "figure-head" to "figurehead" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Your figure-head looks like you
page 36 - changed "top-sails" to "topsails" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Douse my top-sails
page 55 - changed "oilskins" to "oil-skins" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: uncouth figure in dripping oilskins
page 70 - changes "pairs" to "pair"
original text: very red pairs of ears
page 100 - changed "ship-wrecked" to "shipwrecked"
to be consistent with other usage in the book
original text: transfer the ship-wrecked men
page 184 - added italics to "Ajax" to be consistent with
other usage in the book
original text: The Ajax would not be ready for
page 185 - added closing quote at end of paragraph
original text: you are ready for sea again.
page 190 - changed "is" to "in"
original text: Now what is the world is going on
page 196 - changed "fireroom" to "fire-room" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: had been transferred to the fireroom
page 218 - changed "water-front" to "waterfront" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: the shadowy region toward the water-front.
page 220 - changed "up-town" to "uptown" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Mr. Jukes was speeding up-town
page 226 - changed "lamppost" to "lamp-post" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: When you struck that lamppost——”
“That lamppost!” exclaimed Jack.
page 243 - added closing quote to sentence
original text: Please repeat warning.
page 258 - changed "thought" to "brought"
original text: The boy could not have thought
page 271 - added apostrophe to "Heavens"
original text: For Heavens sake, send help!
page 279 - changed "Keelhaul" to "Keel-haul" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Keelhaul me if ever I sail
page 297 - added closing quote
original text: was miserably weak.
page 305 - changed "Dukes" to "Jukes"
original text: Dukes, son of the old millionaire.
no page number - ad page "Log Cabin to White House Series"
changed "statemanship" to "statesmanship"
original text: of his statemanship
no page number - ad page "Log Cabin to White House Series"
changed "citzenship" to "citizenship"
original text: circles and private citzenship.
no page numbers - five advertisement pages (first, second, fourth,
fifth, and sixth) have a subheader line that contained a small
number followed by a square bracket - these two character
notations have been removed, as they appear to be some type
of typographical annotation not relevant to the text
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic" ***
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