[Illustration: Then, shoving the men aside, he dived from the edge of
the dock.—_Page 8._]
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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
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Copyright, 1914,
BY
HURST & COMPANY
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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
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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.
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