John Goldfrap - The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Lost Liner

The West Indian liner, Tropic Queen , one of the great vessels owned by the big shipping combine at whose head was Jacob Jukes, the New York millionaire, was plunging southward through a rolling green sea about two hundred miles to the east of Hatteras. It was evening and the bugle had just sounded for dinner.

The decks were, therefore, deserted; the long rows of lounging chairs were vacant, while the passengers, many of them tourists on pleasure bent, were below in the dining saloon appeasing the keen appetites engendered by the brisk wind that was blowing off shore.

In a small steel structure perched high on the boat deck, between the two funnels of the Tropic Queen , sat a bright-faced lad reading intently a text-book on Wireless Telegraphy. Although not much more than a schoolboy, he was assistant wireless man of the Queen . His name was Sam Smalley, and he had obtained his position on the ship – the crack vessel of the West Indies and Panama line – through his chum, Jack Ready, head operator of the craft.

To readers of the first volume of this series, “The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic,” Jack Ready needs no introduction.

Here he comes into the wireless room where his assistant sits reading in front of the gleaming instruments and great coherers. Jack has been off watch, lying down and taking a nap in the small sleeping cabin that, equipped with two berths, opens off the wireless room proper, thus dividing the steel structure into two parts.

“Hello, chief,” said Sam Smalley, with a laugh, as Jack appeared; “glad you’re going to give me a chance to get to dinner at last. I’m so hungry I could eat a coherer.”

“Skip along then,” grinned Jack; “but it’s nothing unusual for you to be hungry. I’ll hold down the job till you get through, but leave something for me.”

“I’ll try to,” chuckled Sam, as he hurried down the steep flight of steps leading from the wireless station up on the boat deck to the main saloon.

“Well, this is certainly a different berth from the one I had on the old Ajax ,” mused Jack, as he looked about him at the well-equipped wireless room; “still, somehow, I like to look back at those days. But yet this is a long step ahead for me. Chief wireless operator of the Tropic Queen ! Lucky for me that the uncle of the fellow who held down the job before me left him all that money. Otherwise I might have been booked for another cruise on the Ajax , although Mr. Jukes promised to give me as rapid promotion as he could.”

Readers of the first volume, dealing with Jack Ready and his friends, will recall how he lived in a queer, floating home with his uncle, Cap’n Toby. They will also recollect that Jack, who had studied wireless day and night, was coming home late one afternoon, despondent from a fruitless hunt for a job, when he was enabled to save the little daughter of Mr. Jukes from drowning. The millionaire’s gratitude was deep, and Jack could have had anything he wanted from him.

All he asked, though, was a chance to demonstrate his ability as a wireless man on the Ajax , a big oil tanker which had just been equipped with such an outfit. He got the job, and then followed many stirring adventures. He took part in a great rescue at sea, and was able to frustrate the schemes of some tobacco smugglers who formed part of the crew of the “tanker.” This task, however, exposed him to grave danger and almost resulted in his death.

At sea once more, after the smugglers had been apprehended and locked up, Jack’s keen wireless sense enabled him to solve a problem in surgery. The Ajax carried no doctor, and when one of the men in the fireroom was injured, and it appeared that a limb would have to be amputated, a serious question confronted the captain, who, like most of his class, possessed a little knowledge of surgery, but not enough to perform an operation that required so much skill.

The injured man was a chum of Jack’s, and he did not want to see him lose a limb if it could be helped, or have his life imperiled by unskillful methods. Yet what was he to do? Finally an idea struck him. He knew that the big passenger liners all carried doctors. He raised one by means of the wireless and explained the case. The injured man was carried into the wireless cabin and laid close to the table. Then, while the liner’s doctor flung instructions through space, Jack translated them to the captain. The result was that the man was soon out of danger, but Jack kept in touch with doctors of other liners till everything was all right beyond the shadow of a doubt.

This feat gained him no little commendation from his captain and the owners. Next he was instrumental in saving Mr. Jukes’ yacht which was on fire at sea. In the panic Mr. Jukes’ son Tom, who was the apple of the ship-owning millionaire’s eye, was lost. By means of wireless, Jack located him and reunited father and son.

His promotion was the result, when the regular operator of the Tropic Queen went west to receive a big legacy left him. As the services of the retiring operator’s assistant had been unsatisfactory, Jack was asked to find a successor to him. He selected an old school chum, Sam Smalley, who had owned and operated a small station in Brooklyn and was an expert in theory and practice. The ship had now been at sea two days, and Sam had shown that he was quite capable of the duties of his new job.

An old quartermaster passed the door of the wireless cabin. He poked his head in.

“Goot efenings, Yack,” he said, with easy familiarity. “How iss der birdt cage vurking?”

This was Quartermaster Schultz’s term for the tenuous aërials swung far aloft to catch wide-flung, whispered space messages and relay them to the operator’s listening ears.

“The bird cage is all right,” laughed Jack. “Dandy weather, eh?”

The old man, weather-beaten and bronzed by the storms and burning suns of the seven seas, shook his head.

“Idt is nice now, all righdt,” he said, “but you ought to see der glass.”

“The barometer? What is the matter with it?”

“Py gollys, I dink der bottom drop oudt off idt. You may have vurk aheadt of you to-night.”

“You mean that we are in for a big storm?”

“I sure do dot same. Undt ven it comes idt be a lollerpaloozitz. Take my vurd for dat. Hark!”

The old quartermaster held up a finger.

Far above him in the aërials could be heard a sound like the moaning bass string of a violin as the wind swept among the copper wires.

“Dot’s der langwitch of Davy Chones,” declared Schultz. “Idt says, ‘Look oudt. Someding didding.’ I’fe heardt idt pefore, undt I know.”

The old man hurried off on his way forward, and Jack emitted a long whistle.

“My, won’t there be a lot of seasick passengers aboard to-night! The company will save money on breakfast to-morrow.”

Just then Sam came back from dinner and Jack was free to go below to his meal. He was about to relinquish the instruments when there came a sudden call.

“To all ships within three hundred miles of Hatteras: Watch out for storm of hurricane violence.

“Briggs, Operator Neptune Beach U. S. Wireless Service.”

Sam was looking over Jack’s shoulder as the young wireless chief of the Tropic Queen rapidly transcribed the message on a blank.

“Phew! Trouble on the way, eh?” he asked.

“Looks like it. But we need not worry, with a craft like this under our feet.”

But Sam looked apprehensive.

“What is the trouble? Not scared, are you?” asked Jack, who knew that, excellent operator though he had shown himself to be, this was Sam’s first deep-sea voyage.