THE MYSTERY GROWS DEEPER
The three men in the stateroom were astir early the next morning.
Roy had to get back to the _Lycoming_, but before he went, he sought
and obtained an interview with Captain Hardwick. The commander liked
his looks, and felt drawn toward him, as indeed every one was, for
Roy was a prime favorite with all who knew him.
“Captain Hardwick,” he said, after Henry had introduced him and
withdrawn from the cabin, “I want first of all to thank you for your
courtesy in allowing me to come to Henry and stay with him
overnight. He feels this matter very keenly, and it is certainly
hard to think he should start out so unfortunately. I suppose the
chief electrician has told you that the difficulty with the wireless
was in a coil that had grounded in the field. He will try to learn
why it grounded. But no matter what he finds, I want to say that you
can have absolute confidence in Henry. I’ve known him a good many
years, and he would be the last person in the world to do anything
dishonorable.”
“We will go into this matter thoroughly,” said the captain, without
committing himself, “and I have no doubt we shall get to the bottom
of it. You may be sure that I shall do whatever is right.”
Roy thanked the captain, was set ashore by the launch, and made his
way back to his own ship.
Life aboard the _Iroquois_ went on as it ordinarily did. Now that
the ship lay in harbor, with fewer duties for the seamen, the
captain put the crew to work drilling. Some of these drills Henry
had seen the first day or so he was on board the ship. During the
extraordinary events that had occurred on that trip, drills had been
suspended. Now the captain put his men through their paces with
renewed vigor, as though to make up for lost time.
Naturally the thing that attracted Henry most was the practice with
the big guns. There were two four-inch guns mounted on the forward
deck. The crews of these guns were assembled in their proper places.
Then the captain, standing on the bridge, gave an order, the
gun-breeches were thrown open, the big shells inserted and the
breeches locked, the guns sighted, and, at a word of command, crack
they went. But the crack was only a click, for the shells were
imaginary, and all the rest of the drill was also largely a matter
of the imagination. How Henry did wish he could see the guns really
fired at something! What a noise they would make! And how far their
shells would go tearing across the water!
He was especially interested when the captain showed him the
range-finder. Never had he seen anything like this before. It was a
small horizontal tube, containing prisms and reflecting mirrors.
There were eyepieces in the middle of the sides of the tube. When
one looked through this range-finder at a distant ship, or target,
that target seemed to be divided into two parts, half above and half
below a common line. By twirling a screw, and so moving the
reflectors within the tube, the parts of the ship moved into place
until at last there stood forth a perfect image of a ship. Above
this image was a scale, which indicated the range. To find the
range, all the commander had to do was to look through this tube at
his target, twirl the screw until the image of the target became
perfect, and then read the figures that stood just above the image.
The collision drill was also interesting. In imagination, the
_Iroquois_ had run into another ship, and a great gaping hole had
been torn in her hull. At the captain’s word of command the crew
sprang to their places, and a collision mattress was quickly
produced and unrolled. This was then lowered over the side, so as to
cover the hole in the hull. In practice, of course, the collision
mattress was not actually lowered into the water, but it was brought
to the side of the ship and balanced on the rail, ready to be
dropped over. It required little vision to see how useful such an
article would be after an actual collision. Unless the hole in the
ship were too large, the mattress would be caught in it as it was
drawn inward by the suction of the inrushing water, much as a cork
might be drawn fast by suction down the neck of a bottle. The
mattress, of course, was meant to act like a cork and keep the sea
out.
The abandon-ship drill would have had more fascination for Henry had
he not by this time been so familiar with the process of lowering a
small boat. Nevertheless it was interesting to see the men prepare
themselves, just as they would if they were really going to abandon
the ship, with compasses and rifles, and provisions, and then line
up opposite the boats while the roll was called and each man
mustered. Of course the men did not actually get in the boats,
though these were lowered even with the rail. Likewise this drill
gave Henry a chance to examine the small boats better. Though these
were new, they were much like those the _Iroquois_ had lost. The
quartermaster called his attention to the water-beakers and the
boat-boxes that contained certain kinds of food, fishing-lines, etc.
They were so snugly stowed away that Henry had hardly noticed them.
A crew adrift in one of these boats would have food and water for
some time.
The fire drill had little novelty for Henry. Too often he had seen
the firemen in his native town couple their hose to a fire-plug and
squirt water, to be much excited about a similar display now, though
it was rather interesting to see eight streams going at one time.
The infantry drill had more attraction for him. It was not exactly a
novelty, either, but it gave him a new idea of the Coast Guard men.
He had not previously thought of them as soldiers. But when the
quartermaster told him that in time of war the Coast Guard becomes
part of the navy, he saw that marines on a battleship were no more
necessary than they were on a Coast Guard cutter.
Probably Henry would have enjoyed all these exhibitions more, had he
not been under the shadow of suspicion. No formal charges had been
made against him, and he was not exactly a prisoner. Neither was he
free to leave the boat. He hoped that the captain would soon get to
the bottom of the mystery. Henry did not feel free to say anything
to the chief electrician about the matter, lest the latter think
that he was seeking to influence him. So he stayed away from the
radio shack. He was no longer a part of the wireless force, for the
return of the chief electrician had taken his job from him.
But while Henry was disconsolately considering the matter, things
were moving briskly in the wireless shack. Though he was now really
sick, the chief electrician continued on duty. Alone on his watch,
he was working patiently to uncover the difficulty with his grounded
coil. Once more he had examined this coil thoroughly, yet he could
see no external indications of impairment.
Slowly he now unwound the covering cords that formed the outer
casing for the wrapped wires within. There was still nothing visibly
wrong. But when he had cleared the cords away, and had gotten to the
coil itself, his sharp eye detected a shining little dot, hardly
bigger than a large pinhead, among the wire wrappings. With the
point of his knife-blade he picked at this shining point and found
it was hard, like metal. He believed he had found the difficulty.
Getting a large wooden spool, he began to unwind the copper wire
from the coil, rolling it up on the empty spool as he unrolled it
from the coil. Swiftly he transferred the wire from one cylinder to
the other. As his coil grew thinner he saw that he had found the
difficulty. The bright dot was the head of a long, thin finishing
nail. Presently it was sticking up a half inch above the winding of
the coil. The chief electrician started to pull it out, then thought
better of it and desisted. But even his first slight tug at the nail
showed him it was pretty tight. He went on unwinding. But now he
examined the wire carefully as it unrolled. In piercing the coil,
the nail had cut the insulation of practically every wire it had
touched. In one or two places it had even severed the wire wrapping
itself. When at last the chief electrician unwrapped the last
winding of the coil, the nail dropped to his desk. Its end was bent
over at an angle, and the metal core was scratched where the nail
had been bent sidewise. The whole thing was as plain as day now.
Some one had driven the nail through the coil, finishing the job
with one or two hard blows that had bent the point against the core
of the coil, sinking the head far below the corded cover. The
question was, who had done it.
As soon as he had made this discovery, Mr. Sharp carefully removed
all traces of his work, locked the parts of the damaged coil in his
private drawer, bundled himself up, and sought the captain. The nail
he had in his pocket.
“I have found the trouble, Captain Hardwick,” the chief electrician
reported, when he was alone with the captain in the cabin. “There it
is,” and he laid the bent nail before his commander.
“You look half sick, Sparks,” said the latter, looking at him
keenly. “Be careful of yourself.”
“It’s that wretched cold I got from my ducking at Cape Cod,” laughed
the chief electrician. “I’ll be all right soon.”
The captain picked up the nail and examined it curiously. “Well?” he
said inquiringly.
“That was in the grounded coil,” said the chief electrician. “That
is what grounded it. Some one drove that nail into the coil.”
The captain stared at the nail long and fixedly. “It beats me,” he
said at last. “You think that it was done maliciously, don’t you? Is
there a possibility that it might have been done in an experimental
way? Now, young Harper is very ambitious and desirous of learning.
Might he have been experimenting, trying to learn something, by
fooling with the outfit?”
“In my opinion, Captain, whoever did this did it with perfect
knowledge of what would happen. I cannot think it was done for any
purpose except to put the wireless out of commission.”
The captain frowned. “I fear you are right, Sparks. But who would
want to put the wireless out of commission? I can think of only two
reasons why any one should do that. Some one might have it in for me
or for the operator. If it weren’t that young Black was asleep when
this was done, I’d think he did it. You know he and Harper had some
words.”
“That would explain everything,” said the chief radio man, “but the
facts won’t fit the case.”
“So far as we know, not a soul was on deck except the men on watch.
If some one entered the radio room while Henry was up in the chart
room with me, he would have had to be both sly and slick. He would
have had to watch young Harper’s every movement, and be all prepared
to run in and drive this nail home. It was a terrible risk to run,
for it was certain that the wireless man wouldn’t be away from his
key for more than a minute or two. Discovery was almost certain. The
more I consider it, the more it seems to me that young Harper must
have been experimenting. Did you find anything else out of its usual
order?”
“Now that you speak of it, I did find some loose screws, as though
some of the other instruments had been tampered with.”
“I hate to think of it,” replied the captain, “but it looks very
much as though young Harper took advantage of his position to tinker
with the instruments.”
“That might be true about the other instruments, Captain, but he
would certainly know what would result from driving a nail into a
field coil.”
“Maybe so, maybe so, but he may not know half as much about wireless
as you think. All I can do is to go according to the facts. They
point to young Harper. But we shall have to have more evidence on
the matter before I decide what to do. Furthermore, the situation is
so very unusual that I am puzzled as to what should be done, even if
I knew Harper to be the culprit. In a sense he was a regular
operator. I made him one temporarily. But he is under age, and we
did not have the consent of his mother to his enlistment. And
finally, I should have to take into consideration the very real
service he rendered us during the storm. Strictly, I suppose, he was
only a volunteer that I put in charge for a time.”
“I can’t help feeling that the lad is innocent,” urged the chief
radio man. “He undoubtedly knows a lot about wireless, and no one
who knows anything about it would have done what he did unless he
intended to cripple the service.”
“We must go by the facts, young man, not by theories,” said the
captain a little testily. “But let’s get all the facts. Say nothing.
Let no one know you have discovered the cause of the trouble. If the
culprit thinks he is undiscovered, he may give himself away.”