THE WIRELESS BOY’S FIRST POSITION.
The power of eight thousand horses was driving the big tanker _Ajax_
through the Lower Bay, out past Sandy Hook, and on to the North
Atlantic.
As the big black steel craft felt the lift and heave of the ocean
swells, she wallowed clumsily and threw the spray high above her blunt
bow. Very different looked this “workman” of the seas from the spick and
span liner they passed, just after they had dropped the pilot.
Grim, business-like, and built for “the job,” the _Ajax_ looked like a
square-jawed bulldog beside the yacht-like grayhound of the ocean, whose
whistled salute she returned with a toot of her own siren.
Like all craft of her type, the _Ajax_ had hardly any freeboard. In the
bow was a tall superstructure where the crew and the minor officers
lived. Here, too, was the wheel-house and the navigating bridge. In the
extreme stern was another superstructure, square in shape, whereas the
bow-house was like a big cylinder pierced with port-holes.
From the stern upper-works projected the big black funnel with the red
top, distinctive of the Titan liners, and in this stern structure, too,
dwelt the captain, the superior officers and the first and second
engineers.
From the stern superstructure and the chart-house to the crew’s quarters
in the bow, there stretched a narrow bridge running the entire length of
the craft. This was to enable the crews of the great floating tank to
move about on her, for on board a tank steamship there are no decks when
there is any kind of a sea running. The steel plates that form the top
of the tank are submerged, and nothing of the hull is visible but the
two towering structures at the bow and stern, the bridge connecting
them, and the funnel and masts.
But for all her homely outlines the _Ajax_ was a workman-like craft and
fast for her build. In favorable weather she could make twelve knots and
better, and her skipper, Captain Braceworth, and his crew were proud of
the ship.
On the day of which we are speaking, however, there was one member of
the ship’s company to whom the big tanker was as fine a craft as sailed
the Seven Seas. This was a young lad dressed in a neat uniform of blue
serge, who sat in a small, steel-walled cabin in the after
superstructure. The lad was Jack Ready, sailing his first trip as an
ocean wireless boy. As he listened to and caught signals out of the maze
of messages with which the air was filled, his cheeks glowed and his
eyes shone. He had attained the first step of his ambition. Some day,
perhaps, he would be an operator on such a fine craft as the liner they
had just passed and with which he had exchanged wireless greetings.
Jack had secured the berth of wireless man on the _Ajax_ with even less
difficulty than he had thought he would encounter. Mr. Jukes, although a
busy, brusque man, was really glad to be able to do something for the
lad who had done so much for him, and as soon as Jack had proved his
ability to handle a key he got the job.
It had come about so quickly, that as he sat there before the newly
installed instruments,—it will be recalled that the _Ajax_ was making
her first trip as a wireless ship,—the boy had to kick himself slyly
under the operating table to make sure he was awake!
“I’m the luckiest boy in the world,” said the young operator to himself,
as gazing from the open door of the cabin, he watched the coast slip by
and the rollers begin to take on the true Atlantic swell.
His reverie was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Harvey, the first
officer.
“Message from the captain to the owners,” he said briefly; “hustle it
along.”
It was only a routine message, but Jack thrilled to the finger tips as
he sent out the call for the station at Sea Gate, from whence the
message would be transmitted to New York. It was the first bit of
regular business he had handled in his chosen calling.
The air appeared to be filled with a perfect storm of messages coming
and going. Newspapers were sending despatches of world-wide importance.
Ships were reporting. Here and there an amateur,—Jack was out of this
class now, and held them in proper contempt,—was “butting in” with some
inquiry or message. And friends and relatives of persons outward or
homeward bound across the ocean track added their burden to the mighty
symphony of “wireless” that filled the ether.
But at last Jack raised the Sea Gate station, and in a second his first
message from shipboard was crackling and spitting from the aerial. He
sent crisply, and in a business-like way. The operator at Sea Gate could
hardly have guessed that the message was coming from a lad who had but
that day taken his place at an ocean wireless station.
When this message had been sent, Jack sat in for an answer. Before long,
out of the maze of other calls, he picked his summons and crackled out
his reply, adding O.K. G.—“Go ahead.” When he had finished taking the
message, merely a formal acknowledgment of the captain’s farewell
despatch, Jack grounded his instruments and went forward with the reply
in search of the skipper.
He found the _Ajax_ wallowing through a somewhat heavy sea. Looking down
from the narrow bridge, he could see the decks with their covered
winches, steam-pipes and man-holes only at times through a smother of
green water and white foam that swept over them.
Jack clawed his way forward and found the captain with his first officer
on the bridge. The wheel was in the hands of a rugged, grizzled
quartermaster, who stood like a figure of stone, his eyes glued to the
swinging compass card. Occasionally, however, he gave an almost
imperceptible move to the spokes of the brass-inlaid wheel he grasped,
and a mighty rumbling of machinery followed. For the _Ajax_, like
practically every vessel of to-day, steered by steam-power, and a twist
of the wrist was sufficient to move the mighty rudder that was distant
almost a tenth of a mile from the wheel-house.
But the boy did not give much observation to all this. He was intent on
his duty. Touching his cap, he held out the neatly written message,—of
which he had kept a carbon copy on his file.
“Despatch, sir!” he said respectfully.
The captain took the message and read it, and then eyed the boy
attentively.
Captain Braceworth was a big figure of a man, bronzed, bearded and
Viking-like. He was also known as a strict disciplinarian. Jack had not
spoken to him till that moment. He decided that he liked the skipper’s
looks, in spite of an air of cold authority that dwelt in his steady
eyes.
“So you’re our wireless man, eh?” asked the skipper.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Jukes——”
“Humph! I know all about that. I understand this is your first voyage.
Well, you have lots to learn. Do your duty and you’ll have no trouble
with me. If not, you will find it very uncomfortable.”
He turned away and began talking to his first officer. Jack made his way
back to his cabin with mingled feelings. The captain had spoken to him
sharply, almost gruffly. He began to revise his opinion of the man.
“He is a martinet and no mistake,” thought the boy; “a bully too, I’ll
bet. But pshaw, Jack Ready, what’s the use of kicking? You’ve got what
you wanted; now go through with it. After all, if I do my duty, he can’t
hurt me.”
But as he took his seat at his instruments again, Jack, somehow, didn’t
feel quite so chipper as he had half an hour before. In his own
estimation he had rated himself pretty highly as the wireless man of the
_Ajax_.
“But I reckon I don’t count much more than one of the crew,” he muttered
to himself as the memory of the captain’s brusque, authoritative manner
rankled in his mind.
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