J. Duffield - Bert Wilson, Wireless Operator

As they stood at the rail, filling their lungs with the invigorating air, and watching the animated scenes about them, Ralph came up to them, accompanied by an alert, keen-eyed man, whom he introduced as his father.

He shook hands cordially with the boys, but when he learned that Dick and Tom, as well as Bert, were all students in the college from which he had himself graduated, his cordiality became enthusiasm. He was one of the men who, despite the passing of the years and the growth of business cares, remain young in heart, and he was soon laughing and chatting as gaily as the boys themselves. There was nothing of the snob about him, despite his wealth and prominence, and, in this respect Ralph was “a chip of the old block.”

“So you are the Wilson whose fadeaway ball won the pennant, are you?” as he turned to Bert. “By George, I’d like to have seen that last game. The afternoon that game was played, I had the returns sent in over a special wire in my office. And when you forged ahead and then held down their heavy hitters in the ninth, I was so excited that I couldn’t keep still, but just got up and paced the floor, until I guess my office force thought I was going crazy. But you turned the trick, all right, and saved my tottering reason,” he added, jovially.

The boys laughed. “It’s lucky I didn’t know all that,” grinned Bert, “or I might have got so nervous that they would have knocked me out of the box. But since you are so interested, let me show you a memento of the game.” And running below, he was back in a minute with the souvenir presented to him by the college enthusiasts.

It was a splendid gift. The identical ball with which he had struck out the opposing team’s most dangerous slugger in the ninth had been encased in a larger ball of solid gold on which Bert’s name had been engraved, together with the date and score of the famous game. Now it was passed from hand to hand amid loud expressions of admiration.

“It’s certainly a beauty,” commented Mr. Quinby, “and my only regret is that I wasn’t called upon to contribute toward getting it. I suppose it will be rather hard on you fellows,” he went on, “to have to go without any baseball this summer. If I know you rightly, you’d rather play than eat.”

“Oh, well,” broke in Ralph, “they may be able to take a fling at it once in a while, even if they are abroad. It used to be the ‘national’ game, but it is getting so popular everywhere that we’ll soon have to call it the ‘international’ game. In Japan, especially, there are some corking good teams, and they play the game for all it is worth. Take the nine of Waseda University, and they’d give Yale or Princeton all they wanted to do to beat them. Last year, they hired a big league star to come all the way from America, to act as coach. They don’t have enough ‘beef,’ as a rule, to make them heavy sluggers, but they are all there in bunting and place hitting, and they are like cats on the bases.”

“Yes,” said Dick, “and, even leaving foreigners out of the question, the crews from Uncle Sam’s warships have what you might call a Battleship League among themselves, and every vessel has its nine. Feeling runs high when they are in port, and the games are as hotly contested as though a World’s Series were in question. I’m told that, at the time of the Boxer rebellion, there were some dandy games played by our boys right under the walls of Peking.”

Just here the captain approached, and, with a hearty handshake and best wishes for the journey, Mr. Quinby went forward with him to discuss business details connected with the trip.

Ten o’clock, the hour set for starting, was at hand. The first bell, warning all visitors ashore, had already rung. The last bale of freight had been lowered into the hold and the hatches battened down. There was the usual rush of eleventh hour travelers, as the taxis and cabs rattled down to the piers and discharged their occupants. All the passengers were on the shore side of the vessel, calling to their friends on the dock, the women waving their handkerchiefs, at one moment, and, the next, putting them to their eyes. The last bell rang, the huge gangplank swung inward, there was a tinkling signal in the engine room and the propellers began slowly to revolve. The steamer turned down the bay, passed the Golden Gate where the sea lions sported around the rocks, and out into the mighty Pacific. The voyage of the Fearless had begun.

Down in the wireless room, Bert had buckled to his work. With the telephone receiver held close to his ears by a band passing over his head, he exchanged messages with the land they were so rapidly leaving behind them, with every revolution of the screws. Amid the crashing of the sounder and the spitting blue flames, he felt perfectly in his element. Here was work, here was usefulness, here was power, here was life. Between this stately vessel, with its costly cargo and still more precious freight of human lives, and the American continent, he was the sole connecting link. Through him alone, father talked with son, husband with wife, captain with owner, friend with friend. Without him, the vessel was a hermit, shut out from the world at large; with him, it still held its place in the universal life.

But this undercurrent of reflection and exultation did not, for a moment, distract him from his work. The messages came in rapidly. He knew they would. The first day at sea is always the busiest one. There were so many last injunctions, so many things forgotten in the haste of farewell, that he was taxed to the utmost to keep his work well in hand. Fortunately he was ambidextrous, could use his left hand almost as readily as his right, and this helped him immensely. From an early age, more from fun than anything else, he had cultivated writing with either hand, without any idea that the day would come when this would prove a valuable practical accomplishment. Now with one finger on the key, he rapidly wrote down the messages with the other, and thus was able to double the rapidity and effectiveness of his work.

Before long there was a lull in the flood of messages, and when time came for dinner, he signaled the San Francisco office to hold up any further communications for an hour or so, threw off his receiver, and joined his friends at the table.

“Well, Bert, how does she go?” asked Dick, who sat at his right, while Tom and Ralph faced them across the table.

“Fine,” answered Bert, enthusiastically. “It isn’t work; it’s pleasure. I’m so interested in it that I almost grudge the time it takes to eat, and that’s something new for me.”

“It must be getting serious, if it hits you as hard as that,” said Tom, in mock concern. “I’ll have to give the doctor a tip to keep his eye on you.”

“Oh, Bert just says that, so that when he gets seasick, he’ll have a good excuse for not coming to meals,” chaffed Ralph.

“Well, watch me, fellows, if you think my appetite is off,” retorted Bert, as he attacked his food with the avidity of a wolf.

“By the way,” asked Dick, “what arrangements have you made for any message that may come, while you are toying with your dinner in this languid fashion?”

“I’ve told the San Francisco man to hold things up for a while,” replied Bert. “That’s the only station we’re likely to hear from just now, and the worst of the rush is over. After we get out of range of the land stations, all that we’ll get will be from passing ships, and that will only be once in a while.”

“Of course,” he went on, “theoretically, there ought to be someone there every minute of the twenty-four hours. You might be there twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes, and nothing happen. But, in the last minute of the twenty-fourth hour, there might be something of vital importance. You know when that awful wreck occurred last year, the operator was just about to take the receiver from his head, when he caught the call. One minute later, and he wouldn’t have heard it and over eight hundred people would have been lost.”