CONSTERNATION
“Where away now, Bob?” asked Joe of his chum, as they rose from the
breakfast table one morning several days later.
“To the radio room,” was the answer.
“Might have known without asking,” put in Jimmy. “Bob will be having
a mattress moved in there before long.”
The center of interest for the boys on board the _Meteor_ was indeed
the wireless cabin, where they were prime favorites. The ship was
equipped with a powerful sending and receiving set, and they never
tired of examining and discussing the intricate details of the
delicate mechanism. The chief radio operator was an enthusiast in
his own line, and had facts and figures at his finger tips. He
claimed he could do almost anything in radio with the equipment he
had on board the _Meteor_, and the boys had little doubt that his
claims were justified.
“How would you like to be chief radio operator on board the
_Leviathan_?” asked Joe, that morning. “I’ve heard that that ship
has a better radio equipment than lots of the big land stations.”
“Well, it has a better equipment than any other merchant ship afloat
at the present time,” said Johnson, the chief operator. “Why, the
main transmitting set is almost six times as powerful as any set
installed on a merchant vessel before. In addition to this, they
have three additional radio stations, each one able to operate
independently of the others. It’s the last word, I can tell you.”
“Sounds that way,” admitted Bob. “How far can they transmit
messages, do you suppose?”
“About as far as they’ll ever want to, I guess. They have sent them
thousands of miles already, even under unfavorable static
conditions.”
“They must have a big antenna, then,” said Joe, somewhat
skeptically. “They probably use a pretty long wave length.”
“The main antenna is suspended between the topmasts, and is over six
hundred feet long. It’s about two hundred feet above the water, so
you can see that they ought to get good results. The aerial is
connected to a super-power vacuum-tube set of the latest design, and
the transmitter can be operated on wave lengths of from one thousand
eight hundred to two thousand eight hundred meters. Oh, I’ll admit I
wouldn’t mind being in charge of that equipment.”
“Well, you’ll likely enough work up to it,” remarked Bob.
“Somebody’s going to have the job, and why not you? You’re getting
lots of experience on the _Meteor_, that’s certain.”
“Yes, there’s plenty to do. It develops your speed, if nothing else.
And you have to be on the job every minute, too. We often get calls
for help, and that possibility keeps us up on our toes.”
“While you have to work hard, you get fine chow, just the same,” put
in Jimmy. “That dinner we had yesterday was a poem.”
“Trust Doughnuts to notice that,” laughed Herb. “I’ll bet you are
bosom friends with the chief cook already, aren’t you, Jimmy?”
“Well, I’ve had one or two little talks with him,” admitted the fat
boy. “He seemed to realize right away that I had sense enough to
appreciate his good work, and we got quite chummy. He’s even
promised to make me some doughnuts as soon as he gets a chance.”
“You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy,” said Joe, solemnly shaking his
head. “There isn’t a place on earth that you could put Jimmy where
he wouldn’t have obtained a plentiful supply of doughnuts within a
day or two after his arrival. Put him on a cannibal island, and he’d
have the king cooking doughnuts for him. Put him up at the North
Pole, and he’d hunt up the champion Eskimo doughnut baker and have
him on the job in no time. Wonderful, seems to me.”
“Oh, there’s nothing so wonderful about it,” said Bob. “It just goes
to show what can be done when you put your heart into a thing.
Probably if we hankered after dollars as much as Jimmy hankers after
doughnuts, we’d all be millionaires by now.”
“It’s an interesting theory,” laughed Johnson. “I can’t agree to it
from my own personal experience, though. I’ve hankered pretty
strongly after dollars at various times, and still I haven’t got
many of them.”
“That just shows you’ve wanted something else more,” replied Bob,
with a grin. “Now, in Jimmy’s case, there isn’t anything that he
wants more than doughnuts, so he concentrates on them, and very
successfully, too. It’s very seldom that he’s without any.”
“You’re an ungrateful bunch,” complained Jimmy. “Here I go and get
the cook to fix up a treat for you, and do I get any thanks for it?
None whatever, anywhere, any time, any place! You’ll get me so that
I won’t worry about you any more, and then you’ll be out of luck.
You know that you couldn’t get along without me to do your thinking
for you.”
“Thank heaven we don’t have to rely on your brain work,” remarked
Herb. “If we did, we’d all have been done for long ago.”
“All right, let it go at that. Just the same, you’ll eat some of the
doughnuts, won’t you?”
“Well, that depends on the cook,” answered Herb. “You try them
first, Jimmy, and if they don’t do you any harm, we can try them. If
you should die, we’d know enough to leave them alone and no damage
would be done.”
Jimmy gave him a withering look, but before he could think of a
suitable answer, the receiver clicked and Johnson raised his hand,
asking for silence.
“Part of the news reports sent out in compressed form every day, to
tell us what’s happening in the States,” he said. “If you fellows
listen, you can get the day’s news in tabloid. It’s almost as good
as having a newspaper, with the additional advantage that you’re not
bothered by the ads.”
The boys listened with keen attention. They had been away so long
from land that almost everything they heard had more or less
interest for them.
There was news of what was going on in Washington, political
measures, acts of Congress, treaties with foreign countries. Then
there were accounts of disasters, railroad wrecks, fires and
sinkings.
Suddenly the boys stiffened and sat bolt upright in their seats,
while their faces went pale with excitement. They held their breath.
They had caught the words:
“Great fire in Clintonia; town swept by flames; great property
damage; loss of life feared!”