STARTLING NEWS
There was a chorus of approval from all but Jimmy.
“Don’t forget it’s near supper time,” he objected.
Joe threw up his hands in mock despair.
“That precious stomach of yours!” he groaned.
“Nothing can make Jimmy forget that,” laughed Bob. “Nero fiddled
when Rome was burning. Jimmy would eat if the _Meteor_ were
sinking.”
“He’d rather die full than live empty,” put in Herb.
“And Jimmy’s been nibbling at doughnuts all the afternoon, at that,”
Joe said accusingly.
“I’ve had to keep up my strength,” was Jimmy’s defense of himself.
“And, anyway, I’ve given Hector a good share of them. Haven’t I,
Hector?”
The dog gave a series of barks that Jimmy interpreted as being in
the affirmative.
“He isn’t to be relied on,” declared Herb. “He’d back you up in
anything.”
“Anyway,” Jimmy hinted darkly, “I haven’t eaten all the doughnuts
that I brought on deck. Somebody swiped two of them from my pocket.
I’m not mentioning any names, but you fellows and Ensign Porter are
the only ones that have been near me, and I’m dead sure that Mr.
Porter didn’t do it.”
“That seems to put it up to us,” observed Joe. “Jimmy, it goes to my
heart to have you think so poorly of those you know so well.”
“That’s just it,” said Jimmy. “I know them too well.”
“If any of us has done it,” said Herb—“mind, I say _if_ any of us
has done it—the only motive was to prevent your having an attack of
acute indigestion. We think a lot of you, Jimmy.”
“That’s very beautiful,” replied Jimmy. “So beautiful that it almost
makes me cry. How did that crumb of doughnut come on your coat?”
Herb hastily brushed his coat and Jimmy laughed loudly.
“There wasn’t any crumb there,” he finally said. “But I know now who
got my doughnuts. I see I’ll have to put padlocks on my pockets.”
The laugh was on Herb, and Jimmy good-humoredly but persistently
dwelt on the subject as he led the way to the supper table.
They still ate, as at the start of their voyage, with the petty
officers of the ship. Captain Springer, who was very grateful to the
boys for having once saved his life, had invited them to eat with
him and the other chief officers at their mess. But the boys had
felt that they would often be in the way when the officers were
talking over official matters, and so, while thanking the captain
warmly for his courtesy, they had asked to remain where they were.
They felt, too, more at their ease without frills or formalities to
worry about, and they found themselves in the company of a genial,
intelligent lot of men where laughter was free and jokes were
plenty. And as far as the food was concerned, both in quantity and
quality, they could ask for nothing better. Jimmy had pronounced it
“bang up,” and anything that received that epicure’s approval left
nothing else to be desired.
“Coming to see you tonight, Mr. Johnson,” Bob announced to the chief
wireless operator.
“Come right along,” answered Johnson, heartily. “You’ll be as
welcome as the flowers in spring.”
The Radio Boys took a short turn on deck after supper, and then
accepted the operator’s invitation. When they trooped into the
wireless room, they found Dr. Fisher, the medical officer of the
ship, sitting beside the sending set of Marston, the assistant
operator.
The doctor was a short, round, jolly man, with whom the boys had
already made acquaintance. He was a great favorite with them. He was
full of tales of the sea, which he had sailed for many years. But
the genial manner and the quips and jokes with which he abounded did
not obscure the fact that he was thoroughly educated and very
skillful in his profession.
Johnson was also extremely busy when they went in, and so was
Maxwell, who attended to the maps and charts. So the boys seated
themselves quietly and listened to the conversation that was going
on over the radio.
This, they soon found, was of absorbing interest. The doctor had
been summoned to the wireless room by a call from a steamer two
hundred miles away. It was a merchant vessel, and while it had an
adequate supply of ordinary drugs on board, it had no medical
officer.
A seaman on the vessel had developed an abscess that had formed in
the tear duct of one of his eyes. He was suffering intensely, and it
was feared that he might lose the sight of the eye. The captain was
at his wit’s end as to how to handle the case. Could the surgeon on
the _Meteor_ help him?
Dr. Fisher could and did. With Marston to send the message, the
doctor rapidly and concisely gave directions about the application
of the proper lotions and other treatment needed. He finished by
directing the captain to call him up again in the morning and report
on the progress of the case. Then, as he turned away from the
instrument, he caught sight of the boys.
“Hello,” he said, with a smile. “Didn’t know you were listening in
on my long distance clinic.”
“It was mighty interesting,” said Bob. “Do you have much of that
kind of work to do?”
“Lots of it,” replied the doctor. “As a matter of fact, I think I do
more prescribing for people off the ship than I do on it. A
Government ship these days is nothing more nor less than a traveling
dispensary. Scarcely a day passes without some call of this kind.”
“I should think it would be especially hard when you can’t see your
patient,” remarked Joe.
“It is,” the doctor admitted. “I can’t feel their pulse, I can’t
note their temperature, I can’t judge by their appearance, I can’t
do a dozen things a doctor likes to do when he’s treating a case. I
have to depend on descriptions, more or less intelligent. But with
all those handicaps, an immense amount of service can be rendered
over the radio. A great many lives have been saved and a great deal
of suffering relieved by means of wireless that wasn’t possible
before it was invented.
“Just a little while ago, I got a call from a ship, one of whose
seamen was temporarily paralyzed through lack of proper circulation
in the legs. Another man who had intestinal troubles I had put in
ice packs. I prescribed medicines in addition, and a little later,
when the vessels were on their return voyages, I received messages
of thanks that told me both had been rapidly cured. Those are only a
few scattered instances. I could mention dozens of the same kind.
And what I’ve been able to do in that direction is being done in
other instances by hundreds of ship’s doctors every day.
“They tell me you boys are radio fans,” he concluded, as he rose to
leave the room. “Well, I congratulate you. Radio’s the greatest
thing in the world.”
Marston, who had just taken down another message, turned to the
group.
“Would one of you boys mind calling McDonald?” he said.
McDonald was the chief engineer of the ship, a dour, grizzled
Scotchman, snappy and cranky, but one who knew his work and loved
it. His engines were the apple of his eye, and while he was at work
he talked and crooned to them as though they were his children.
“I’ll go,” said Joe, springing to his feet.
“Lucky if you get back without having your head snapped off,”
laughed Bob.
In a short time, Joe returned, followed by the old engineer, puffing
and grumbling.
“An’ wha’ is eet ye’re callin’ me up here for?” he demanded
truculently.
“Listen, Mac,” said Marston, placatingly. “Here’s a captain of a
ship that’s operated by a Diesel engine and he’s running out of
Diesel oil.”
“Mair fule he,” growled McDonald. “Wha’s that my beesness?”
“Well, you see,” explained Marston, “he’ll have to stop his voyage
to re-fuel, and at the nearest port he can get only heavy oil. He’s
never used that kind before, and he wants to know what the effect
will be on his engines. He——”
Here the choleric old engineer exploded, and the air was blue for a
while as he stamped around and roared about the “fule cap’n” that
ought to be sailing toy boats in a bathtub instead of commanding
ships on the high seas. Marston let him rave until his wrath and
scorn had subsided, and then returned to the attack.
“Oh, come along, Mac, and be a good fellow,” he urged. “The man’s in
a fix, and he needs advice. No doubt he’s a fool and all that, but
you can’t expect him to know all that you do about engines. Who
does, for that matter? There’s only one McDonald,” he concluded,
with a side wink at the boys.
That the “salve,” though rather crudely laid on, was not without
effect was shown by the final consent of the old fellow to give the
necessary information, though only on condition that Marston should
give it in his exact words. As these, however, involved a number of
uncomplimentary references to the “blitherin’ fule” that needed to
ask such questions, it is needless to say that Marston toned it down
to the proper extent, and finally with a last blast against “tin
sailors,” McDonald clumped out of the room and down again to his
beloved engines.
“This seems to be a regular clearing house for information of one
kind or another,” commented Bob, after they had had a good laugh at
McDonald’s expense.
“That’s what it is,” agreed Johnson, looking up from his instrument.
“You’d be astonished and often amused at the multitude of all kinds
of questions that are hurled at us. Most of them are sensible, and
we are able to be of real service. But the loneliness of the sea is
a thing of the past—that is, to all vessels equipped with wireless,
and most of them are nowadays.”
“You said that this was a busy place, and now we know it is,”
remarked Joe.
“Yes. And yet you have heard tonight only the side issues, as it
were,” was the reply. “We have to be on duty here every minute of
the twenty-four hours of the day, working, of course, in different
shifts. Our first duty is to comb the seas that are likely to be
strewn with icebergs, steaming along on a zigzag, a rectangular or
triangular course, as conditions may require. The moment a berg is
discovered, we have to find out all about it, measure it, chart it,
photograph it, and send out warnings as to its exact position.”
“That alone would seem to be enough to take up all your time,” said
Jimmy.
“It takes a good deal of it,” returned Johnson. “When the night is
dark and stormy, we have to keep the searchlight playing on the berg
all night, so that it won’t be lost sight of. When a vessel enters
the dangerous area, we have to keep her successive positions plotted
on the map, so that we’ll always know where she is until she passes
again out of the zone. Once a day, we have to send in the day’s
report to the Hydrographic Office in Washington. Then, twice a day,
we’re required to send in a meteorological report to the Weather
Bureau. Oh, take it from me, we don’t have a chance to get rusty on
this job.”
The weather remained fine, and several days passed busily and
fruitfully, the Radio Boys becoming more and more familiar with the
fascinating work of the iceberg patrol. Their keen interest in radio
cemented the friendship between them and the operators, who gladly
showed them all they knew. So expert did the boys become, and so
frequent were the opportunities afforded them, that before long any
one of them, but especially Bob and Joe, could, on a pinch, have
taken the places of the regular operators.
They would have been perfectly happy had it not been for the shadow
of dread that hovered over them concerning the fire in Clintonia.
They had not yet succeeded in getting news any more definite than
that contained in the first meager dispatches, and their
apprehension seemed at times more than they could bear. To banish it
as far as possible, they sought to engross themselves in the work of
the ship. But many a night they tossed restlessly on their pillows,
a prey to torturing thoughts and fears.
Blended with their more personal fears was anxiety about Mr. Strong.
It was possible that he might have been picked up and the fact not
generally broadcasted. But, as far as they knew, he might have found
a grave in the Atlantic.
One morning, after the boys had been conscious at intervals through
the night of much coming and going on the _Meteor_, they were
surprised to note that Johnson and Marston were missing at the
breakfast table. There were many other vacant seats also, and the
boys looked at the steward in wonderment.
“What’s the big idea?” asked Bob, indicating with a sweep of the
hand the empty places.
“Sickness,” replied the steward. “Heap of trouble on board. Captain
Springer told me to ask you to come to his cabin as soon as you had
finished breakfast.”