John Goldfrap - The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic

“It is the first time in my experience that I ever encountered such a singular lad as this. Hang me if I don’t think there’s a screw loose somewhere. But after what you did for me this afternoon, never hesitate to call on me if you need anything at any time. Here’s my card.”

He rose, and with a comical mixture of astonishment and indignation on his face, regarded Jack somewhat as he might have looked at some strange freak in nature.

“Thank you, sir,” said the boy, taking the bit of pasteboard, “I didn’t mean to offend you; but – but, well, I couldn’t take that check, that’s all.”

“Well, well, we’ll say no more about it,” said the great man testily. “But remember, I’ll always stand your friend if I can.”

He started to leave the cabin, when he suddenly brought up “all standing,” as the captain would have said, with a sharp exclamation of pain.

“What is it, sir?” demanded that veteran with some concern. “Your figurehead looks like you had some sort of a pain.”

“It is nothing. Just a sharp twinge of my old trouble, rheumatism,” explained the great man. “The damp air of the Basin may have brought it on.”

“Anchor right where you are!” exclaimed the captain, and before Mr. Jukes could say another word, he had darted into the “drug-store” and was back with a bottle full of a villainous-looking black liquid.

“My rheumatiz’ and gout remedy,” he explained.

“Yes, but I am under medical treatment. I – ”

“Keel-haul all your doctors. Throw their medicine overboard,” burst out the captain. “Try a few applications of Cap’n Ready’s Rheumatiz and Gout Specific. Cap’n Joe Trotter of the Flying Scud cured himself with two bottles. Take it! Try it! Rub it in twice a day, night and morning, and in a week you’ll be as spry as a boy, as taut and sound as a cable.”

“Well, well, I’ll try it,” said the magnate good-naturedly in reply to Captain Toby’s outburst of eloquence; “how much is it?”

“One dollar, guaranteed to work if used as directed, or your money back,” rattled on the captain, pocketing a bill which Mr. Jukes peeled off a roll that made Captain Toby open his eyes.

And so, burdened with a bottle of the “Rheumatiz and Gout Specific,” and with the memory of the first person he had ever met who was not willing to accept his bounty, the shipping magnate stepped ashore from the Venus .

“He’ll be dancing a hornpipe in a week,” prophesied Captain Toby; “the Specific has never failed.”

But if he could have seen Mr. Jukes carefully drop the bottle overboard as soon as he reached the shore end of the dock, his opinion of him would have fallen considerably. As it was, the old seaman was loud in his praise.

“Think of him, the skipper of a big corporation and all that, wisiting us on the Wenus !” he exclaimed. “Why, Jack, that’ll be something to tell about. The great Mr. Jukes! Maybe this’ll all lead to something! If the Specific works like it did on Cap’n Joe Trotter, he may make me his physician in ordinary.”

“Let’s hope it won’t work the same way on him that it did on Captain Zeb Holliday,” said Jack with a smile.

“Huh! That deck-swabbing lubber!” cried the captain, with intense scorn. “He drank it instead of rubbing it in, although the directions was wrote on the bottle plain as print. But, Jack, lad, why didn’t you take that check? Consarn it all – ”

“It’s no good talking about it, uncle,” said the boy, cutting him short; “I couldn’t take it; that’s all there is to that.”

“Confound you for a young jackass! Douse my topsails, but I’m proud of you, lad!” roared the captain, bringing down a mighty hand on Jack’s shoulders. “And now let’s pipe all hands to supper.”

Two days later, Jack happened to pass the dock where the Titan liner lay. She was taking aboard her cargo from a pipe-line – crude, black oil destined for Antwerp. Because of the adventure in which he had participated alongside her, Jack felt an interest in the ugly, powerful tanker. As he was looking at her, he noticed some men busy at the tops of her squat steel masts.

All at once they began to haul something aloft. What it was, Jack recognized the next moment. It was the antennæ of a wireless plant. They were installing a station on the ship, which bore the name “ Ajax ” on her round, whaleback stern.

Jack’s heart gave a sudden leap. A great idea had come to him. Mr. Jukes owned the Titan Line. The ship-owner had said to him only two nights before: “Remember, I’ll always stand your friend if I can. Never hesitate to call on me if you need anything at any time.”

And right then Jack needed something mighty badly. He needed the job of wireless operator on board the Ajax .

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.