THE ICEBERG PATROL
An interested stir ran through the group of Radio Boys at the
announcement that it was Captain Springer at the front door.
“I suppose he’s started calling around to see our folks, as he said
he would,” remarked Bob. “They’ll be calling us down in a minute.”
Sure enough, a short time later, a call came from the foot of the
stairs.
“Come down, Bob, and bring your friends with you,” came the voice of
Mr. Layton. “There’s a friend of yours here who wants to see you.”
The boys hurried down and went into the living room, where they saw
Captain Springer in animated conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Layton.
The captain rose to his feet and greeted each of the boys with a
warm grasp of the hand.
“I’m in luck to find you all together,” he said genially, as he
resumed his seat. “Though I’m going to call personally at each of
your homes,” he added. “I’ve just been telling Mr. and Mrs. Layton
something of what happened this afternoon. Of course I know you’ve
already told them about it, but I know how modest you are, and I
wanted them to know not only the truth but the whole truth.”
The boys blushed, and the captain laughed. “You’d have blushed still
more if you had heard all I said,” he observed. “But at that I
didn’t say enough. Your parents ought to be proud of you.”
“Here are two parents that are,” observed Mrs. Layton, and her
husband smiled assent.
“I was talking with an old friend of mine some weeks ago,” remarked
the captain, “and we were discussing whether American boys were what
they used to be in the older and rougher days, when even the younger
members of the family had to be trained to hold off an attack by
Indians. He held that there was still as much good stuff in them as
there ever was, and to prove it he told me about a group of boys
that were with him in Spruce Mountain not long ago. And if what he
told me was true—and I never knew him to say anything that wasn’t—he
proved his point.”
“Tell us about it,” urged Mr. Layton, exchanging a meaning glance
with his wife, while the boys looked at each other with an unspoken
question in their eyes.
“I don’t remember that he mentioned names,” went on the captain.
“Simply said that they were interested in radio and that at his
invitation they’d come to spend a few weeks in the mountains. He’s a
Forest Ranger and uses radio a lot in his work, and I suppose that’s
what got him in touch with the boys. They went there just for a
lark, but while they were there a big fire broke out—one of the
toughest fires to fight he’d ever seen. Well, Mr. Layton, he told me
that those boys—none of them over sixteen and some scarcely
that—behaved like veterans. They fought the fire with all their
strength, were here, there and everywhere, and did as good work as
any of the rangers who had been accustomed to fighting fires all
their lives. And when they were finally trapped by the flames they
made a raft, got out on a lake, and by rigging up some kind of radio
contrivance, fought off some bears that tried to climb on the raft.
Bentley got quite worked up while he talked to me about them.
Couldn’t say enough in praise of them.”
“Did you say his name was Bentley?” asked Mr. Layton.
“Yes, Paul Bentley,” replied the captain. “Why, do you know him?” he
asked quickly.
“I know him very well,” replied Mr. Layton, with a quiet smile. “In
fact he’s one of the best friends I have.”
“And do you know the boys he was speaking of?” asked the captain.
“I certainly do,” was the amused reply. “Here they are, the whole
bunch—count them—four of them, the very boys you’ve been talking
about.” For once the captain lost his calm repose of manner.
“Well, well, that’s one on me!” he exclaimed. “To think I’ve been
telling you about something you know far better than I do! I’ll have
to write Bentley and tell him about the coincidence. He’ll be
pleased to know of this fresh proof of his good judgment.”
“If he thinks as much of us as we do of him, it’s plenty,” said Bob.
“Mr. Bentley is one of the finest men we ever came across.”
“He surely is,” assented the captain warmly. “I’ve known him for
years, and he’s my ideal of what a man should be. He chose the land
for his life work and I chose the water for mine, but every once in
a while we find ourselves together and have a chat about old times.”
“You are an officer in the navy, I understand,” remarked Mr. Layton.
“Yes,” replied the captain. “I’ve been captain of a destroyer for
some years. Saw service in European waters during the war. But I’m
contemplating a change just now. This limitation treaty has tied up
a lot of our ships and is going to tie up more, and I’ve no fancy
for shore duty. So I’ve applied for a transfer to the Iceberg
Patrol, and I’ve received assurances that my application would
probably be granted.”
“The Iceberg Patrol!” exclaimed Bob. “I remember Doctor Dale telling
us about that once. That’s the Government service that aims to warn
steamships in the ocean lanes against icebergs, isn’t it?”
“That’s it,” assented the captain. “But it isn’t only our Government
that does that. Fourteen other nations have combined to do the same
thing, and we do our part along with the rest. That helps to make it
interesting. There’s a friendly rivalry between all the nations to
prove which fleet is the most efficient.”
“It must be wonderfully interesting and exciting,” said Joe, to whom
the frozen North had always made a strong appeal.
“It’s all of that,” replied the captain. “That’s why I’m seeking the
appointment. It was rather exciting work over on the other side when
we didn’t know what moment we’d strike a mine or be torpedoed by a
submarine. Now in these piping times of peace, I feel that I’m
getting rusty and I want the stir and danger all over again, and I
look for plenty of it up there.”
“The Iceberg Patrol is a comparatively recent development in the
naval service, isn’t it?” inquired Mr. Layton.
“Yes,” was the reply. “The thing that really stirred our own and
other governments to action was the terrible disaster to the
_Titanic_ in nineteen hundred and twelve. The world rang with the
horror of that. You, Mr. Layton, remember that an underwater spur of
an iceberg ripped through her side as she turned in an effort to
escape and sank her with the loss of hundreds of lives. The
determination not to permit a thing of that kind to happen again
caused the nations to get together and establish the Iceberg
Patrol.”
“It was a frightful calamity,” remarked Mrs. Layton. “I suppose that
the same thing has happened more than once, only on a smaller
scale.”
“No doubt of it,” assented the captain. “The records of the sea are
full of stories of vessels that have never reached port and of which
no traces have ever been found. Many of these, no doubt, met the
same fate as the _Titanic_, but as all on board were lost, the tale
could never be told.
“You see,” he went on, as he settled himself deeper in his chair,
“it used to be supposed that a captain could know of the presence of
an iceberg in fog or at night by a sudden damp and vault-like chill
that came into the air. But experiments have proved that this has
very little basis in fact. It may have helped sometimes, but it is
wholly unreliable.
“And if a ship ever strikes an iceberg, I suppose it’s good-night
for the ship,” ventured Herb.
“It always is if it hits it full,” replied the captain. “The ship
has no more chance than if it struck the Rock of Gibraltar. Why, do
you know that some of those monster bergs are ten times the size of
the Woolworth Building in New York City?”
“Gee!” exclaimed Jimmy. “The Woolworth Building is seven hundred and
ninety-two feet high. Do you mean that the iceberg is ten times as
high as that?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” rejoined Captain Springer, with a
smile. “Not that all of that shows above the water. You know that
seven-eighths of an iceberg is submerged, so that of its total
height only one-eighth rises above the surface. But if you measured
from the bottom to the top of the berg it would be many thousands of
feet in height. So you can see what chance a ship would have if it
struck one of those floating mountains. It would be crushed like an
eggshell.”
His hearers involuntarily shuddered at the thought.
“I suppose radio is your chief reliance in giving warning to vessels
of the presence of icebergs,” remarked Mr. Layton.
“Practically the only reliance,” replied the captain. “If the
transmitting set of the vessel were put out of commission, she might
as well be laid up in port for all the good she could do.”
“Trust old radio to do the work!” said Bob, with enthusiasm.
“I ought to tell you,” observed Mr. Layton, with a smile, “that when
radio is mentioned among these boys, they all sit up and take
notice. Every one of them is a radio fan.”
“Is that so?” asked the captain. “Then that’s another bond between
us, for it’s my most fascinating study. I’ve studied it day and
night, awake and asleep.”
At this last word, the boys looked at each other in surprise.
“Aren’t you joking when you say you learned it while asleep?”
queried Mr. Layton.
“Not a bit of it,” replied the visitor. “One of the new developments
at the naval stations has been a method of teaching students to send
radio code messages more speedily by giving them data through their
earpieces while they are asleep. I know that sounds suspiciously
like a fish story, but it’s an actual fact.”
“How is it done?” asked Bob.
“What’s the idea?” queried Jimmy.
“It came about through the experience of a man who was in charge of
a ground school of radio instruction at an air station,” explained
Captain Springer. “While he himself was practicing receiving words
at the rate of thirty-five a minute, he fell asleep, but the
mechanical sender which he was using continued to send messages to
him. When he awoke, he claimed that he was able to catch from ten to
fifteen more words a minute than he had previously done. His theory
was that while he was asleep, his subconscious mind had been trained
to the higher speed.”
“Must have sounded like a pipe dream when he first told that story,”
put in Jimmy.
“So it did,” agreed their visitor. “But he was so earnest about it
that the naval authorities entered on a series of tests and found
that he was right, and now it’s a regular part of the instruction.
Before turning in at night the student adjusts on his head the
receivers that are used in the ordinary class. A regular watch is
stood through the night by expert operators on the sending key, and
throughout the night they send at high speed—about ten words in
excess of the student’s ordinary capacity of receiving. It has been
found that in his conscious hours on the following day the student
is able to receive messages at the rate they were sent to him while
asleep.”
“By jinks!” exclaimed Herb, with more energy than he usually showed,
“that hits me hard. I’m going to take a hack at it myself.”
“Herb thinks he won’t have to work so hard that way,” chaffed Joe,
and there was a general laugh at the lazy boy’s expense.
“I suppose you have a pretty good set yourself, since you’re so
interested in it,” said the captain, addressing himself to Bob.
“Fairly good,” answered Bob modestly. “I get Cuba without any
trouble, and I’ve often picked up the signals from Nauen, Germany,
and Eiffel Tower, Paris.”
“Then it must be more than fairly good,” returned the visitor. “I’d
like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind.”
“Only too glad,” was the reply. “It’s in the room upstairs.”
Excusing himself to Mr. and Mrs. Layton, the captain accompanied the
boys to Bob’s room.
He examined the set with the eye of an expert, and Bob was delighted
with the keen appreciation the visitor showed of the high degree of
perfection to which he had brought his set almost entirely by his
own endeavors, except for what assistance he had secured from his
comrades and Doctor Dale.
“Put on the ear pieces and see how perfectly you can hear anything
that happens to be going on,” urged Bob.
“All right,” replied the captain, suiting the action to the word.
“Though with this terrible storm that’s come up, old man static will
be getting in his fine work.”
As a fact, the wind outside was whistling along at a rate of seventy
miles an hour. A sudden storm had come up within the last two hours,
and a gale was sweeping in from the Atlantic, accompanied by sheets
of blinding rain.
For a minute or two the captain listened, adjusting the mechanism,
but apparently unable to distinguish anything clearly. Then suddenly
a look of interest, not unmingled with alarm, flashed into his face.
The alarm deepened as he listened.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bob, quickly.
“Matter enough,” replied the captain. “The biggest dirigible of the
United States Navy has been torn from her moorings and is adrift in
the storm!”