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.dt The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic, by Captain Wilbur Lawton - A Project Gutenberg eBook
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//[Illustration: Then, shoving the men aside, he dived from the edge of
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.nf c
THE
OCEAN WIRELESS BOYS
ON THE ATLANTIC
.sp 4
BY
CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON
AUTHOR OF “THE BOY AVIATORS’ SERIES,” “THE
DREADNOUGHT BOYS’ SERIES,” ETC., ETC.
.sp 2
ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES L. WRENN
.sp 4
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
.nf-
.pb
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.ce 3
Copyright, 1914,
BY
HURST & COMPANY
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CONTENTS
.sp 2
.ta r:10 l:40 r:5 w=80%
CHAPTER | | PAGE
I. |#Looking for a Job:chap01#| 5
II. |#Jack’s Home:chap02#| 13
III. |#Captain Toby Ready—Doctor-at-Large:chap03#| 19
IV. |#The Rejected Reward:chap04#| 27
V. |#The Wireless Boy’s First Position:chap05#| 38
VI. |#Learning the Ropes:chap06#| 47
VII. |#In the Teeth of the Storm:chap07#| 55
VIII. |#Sighting the Wreck:chap08#| 62
IX. |#A Talk on Wireless:chap09#| 70
X. |#Oil on Troubled Waters:chap10#| 77
XI. |#To the Rescue:chap11#| 87
XII. |#Jack Disobeys Orders:chap12#| 95
XIII. |#Old Antwerp:chap13#| 106
XIV. |#Sight-seeing:chap14#| 115
XV. |#An Adventure—:chap15#| 123
XVI. |#And Its Consequences:chap16#| 130
XVII. |#Raynor’s Unlucky Pocket:chap17#| 137
XVIII. |#In Durance Vile:chap18#| 143
XIX. |#The Field of Waterloo:chap19#| 155
XX. |#Homeward Bound:chap20#| 164
.bn 005.png
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.pn +1
XXI. |#Surgery by Wireless:chap21#| 172
XXII. |#“You Saved My Arm”:chap22#| 178
XXIII. |#A Riot on the Docks:chap23#| 184
XXIV. |#A Call for the Police:chap24#| 192
XXV. |#In the Nick of Time:chap25#| 198
XXVI. |#A Friendly Warning:chap26#| 204
XXVII. |#An Unexpected Meeting:chap27#| 210
XXVIII. |#In the Hospital:chap28#| 216
XXIX. |#Jack Has Visitors:chap29#| 224
XXX. |#The Rejected Offer:chap30#| 230
XXXI. |#A Whisper of Danger:chap31#| 237
XXXII. |#Icebergs!:chap32#| 244
XXXIII. |#The Collision:chap33#| 250
XXXIV. |#Quelling the Mutiny:chap34#| 258
XXXV. |#A Call for Help:chap35#| 266
XXXVI. |#Looking for the Burning Yacht:chap36#| 272
XXXVII. |#The Mate’s Yarn:chap37#| 278
XXXVIII. |#In Sight of Smoke:chap38#| 285
XXXIX. |#Adrift on a Life Raft:chap39#| 291
XL. |#The Rescue of Mr. Jukes:chap40#| 297
XLI. |#A Joyous Reunion:chap41#| 303
.ta-
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.h1 nobreak
The Ocean Wireless Boys|on the Atlantic
.pi
.pm chapnopb 01 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
.bn 007.png
// 007.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 008.png
// 008.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 009.png
// 009.png
.pn +1
“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.
.bn 010.png
// 010.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 011.png
// 011.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 012.png
// 012.png
.pn +1
“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.”
.bn 013.png
// 013.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 014.png
// 014.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 02 II. "JACK’S HOME."
It was an odd home for which Jack was bound.
Tucked away in a quiet corner of the bustling
Basin was a sort of ocean graveyard. Here old
ships that had outlived their usefulness lay in
peace until they were sold to be broken up or to
be converted into barges or to meet some such
end. Tall-sparred clippers that had once proudly
swept the seven seas, rusty old tramp steamers,
looking like the wrecks of marine hoboes that
they were, and venerable ferryboats, all rubbed
sides in this salt water cemetery.
In the farthest part of this quiet corner of the
Basin lay a derelict two-masted schooner of an
entirely different type from the other craft. To
begin with, she was much smaller, and then again,
instead of displaying rusty iron sides, or gaping,
.bn 015.png
// 015.png
.pn +1
bleached wooden ones, she was gayly painted,
with red and green hull and bulwarks. Her deck-house
astern was a veritable marine garden, and
bright-colored blossoms of all kinds, even though
the season was late, bloomed from numerous
boxes placed on the roof and about the taffrail.
A plank connected this queer-looking craft
with the shore, and a column of smoke ascending
from a pipe stuck through the cabin roof,
as well as the curtained windows and general look
of neatness, showed that someone made a home
on this retired wanderer of the seas. It bore the
name “Venus” on either side of a dilapidated figurehead,
doubtless intended to represent the goddess
of love. The effigy’s one remaining eye sadly
surveyed the deep-sea vagabonds about her.
If the above evidences that the old schooner
was used as a habitation had been lacking, there
still would have remained proof that Captain
Toby Ready made his home there, for, nailed to
one side of the flowering cabin-house, was a large
.bn 016.png
// 016.png
.pn +1
sign. On it in sprawling characters of white on
a black background was the following inscription:
.nf c
CAPTAIN TOBY READY
Herb Doctor and Common-Sense Medico-at-Large
to the Sea-Going Profession
.nf-
.nf b
All sailors who want to be strong and be steady,
Call ’round to see Capt’n Toby Ready.
Although the Captain is no M.D.,
He’ll fit you out quite Ready for sea.
.nf-
Here it was that Jack had made his home since
the death of his father, Captain Amos Ready, at
sea some years before. His Uncle Toby was thus
left his sole surviving relative, for his mother
had died soon after Jack’s birth. So Jack had
lived with his eccentric relative on the old schooner,
bought by Captain Toby many years before
as a Snug Harbor.
The boy had helped his uncle compound his
liniments and medicines, which had a ready sale
among the old-time ship captains. They had
more faith in Uncle Toby’s remedies than in a
.bn 017.png
// 017.png
.pn +1
whole shipload of doctors. Captain Toby had,
in his day, commanded fast clippers and other
sailing vessels. On long voyages he had amused
himself by studying pharmacy till he believed
himself the equal of the entire college of surgeons.
At any rate, if his medicines did no good,
at least they never did any harm, and Jack was
kept busy delivering orders for Captain Toby’s
compounds to various vessels.
With such a line of sea-going ancestry, it was
natural that the boy should have a hankering for
the sea. But, together with his love of a seafaring
life, Jack had developed another passion,
and this was for wireless telegraphy.
Slung between the two bare masts of the old
schooner was the antennæ of a wireless apparatus,
and down below, in his own sanctum in the
schooner’s cabin, Jack had a set of instruments.
It was a crude enough station, which is hardly
to be wondered at, considering that the boy had
constructed most of the apparatus himself.
.bn 018.png
// 018.png
.pn +1
But Jack had a natural leaning for this sort of
work, and his home-made station gave satisfactory
results, although he could not catch messages
for more than fifty miles or so. This, however,
had not prevented him from becoming an
adept at the key, and his one great ambition was
to get a berth on one of the liners as a wireless
operator.
So far, however, he had met with nothing but
rebuffs. Wireless men appeared to be as common
as blackberries.
“Come back when you’re older. We can’t use
kids,” the head of a big wireless concern had
told him. And that was the substance of most
of the replies to his applications for a job at the
work he loved.
That day he had tramped on foot to Manhattan
and made his weary round once more, with
the same result. Footsore and thoroughly discouraged,
he had trudged back over Brooklyn
Bridge and across town to the region of the
.bn 019.png
// 019.png
.pn +1
Basin, where the air bristled with masts and derricks,
and queer, foreign, spicy smells issued
from the doors of warehouses. He walked, for
the excellent reason that he was young and
strong, and every nickel saved meant a better
chance to improve the equipment of his station
on the old Venus.
He cheered up a bit as he came in sight of his
floating home. He had grown to like his odd
way of life, and he had a sincere affection for his
eccentric old uncle. Determined not to let the
old man see his disappointment, he struck up
“Nancy Lee,” whistling it bravely as he crossed
the rickety gangplank, walked over the scrupulously
scrubbed deck and dived down the companionway
into one of the strangest homes that
any boy in all New York ever inhabited.
.bn 020.png
// 020.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 03 III. "CAPTAIN TOBY READY—DOCTOR-AT-LARGE."
As Jack entered the cabin he was greeted by
a succession of shrill shrieks and whoops.
“Ahoy, my hearty! Never say die! Don’t
give up the ship! Kra-a-a-a!”
“That is good advice, Methusaleh,” laughed
the boy, addressing himself to a disreputable-looking
parrot that stood balancing itself on a
perch in a cage that hung in one corner of this
queer abode.
The ports which the cabin had originally
boasted had been enlarged and formed into windows,
through which the light streamed cheerfully.
Red cotton curtains hung at these casements
and gave a dash of color to the dark wooden
walls of the place. In the center was a swinging
table and some rickety chairs; at one end was
.bn 021.png
// 021.png
.pn +1
a sea-stove, a relic of the schooner’s sea-going
days, and at the opposite end of the cabin, at the
stern portion of it, was a bulkhead and a door.
From beyond this door came the clinking of
glasses and the sound of pounding. It was Captain
Toby hard at work in his sanctum compounding
his medicines. Jack turned into another
door alongside the stove, on the other side
of which there was a similar portal.
These doors led into the cabins respectively of
Jack and his uncle. Jack’s cabin was a neat little
combination workshop and sleeping place.
On a shelf opposite his bunk was his wireless
set, with the wires leading down to it from the
aerials above. Another shelf held his stock of
books, mostly of a scientific character, dealing
with his favorite pursuit. The rest of the space
in the not very large cabin was occupied by a
work bench, cluttered with tools and stray bits
of apparatus.
.bn 022.png
// 022.png
.pn +1
Jack had no wish to worry his uncle with an
account of the happenings of the afternoon, so,
before seeking him, he slipped out of his wet
clothes and donned the overalls in which he usually
worked. There was another reason for this,
too, for the suit in which he had dived to the
rescue of little Marjorie Jukes was the only one
he boasted.
Having hung up his garments carefully, so
that they would dry as free from wrinkles as
possible, Jack left the cabin and made for his
uncle’s sanctum in the stern.
“Well, Jack, my hearty, what luck?” inquired
the old man as the boy entered.
Jack shook his head.
“The same old story, Uncle Toby. What are
you busy at?”
“An order for the ‘Golden Embrocation and
Universal Remedy for Man and Beast’ for Cap’n
Styles of the Sea Witch,” rejoined his uncle in
his deep voice, hoarse from many years of shouting
.bn 023.png
// 023.png
.pn +1
orders above gales and storms. “If you really
want to go to sea, Jack, I’ll get you a berth
with Cap’n Styles. The Sea Witch is a fine old
Yankee ship; not one of your smoke-eating tea-kettles.”
“But she has no wireless?” questioned Jack,
gazing about him at the compartment, which was
stocked with the tools of the captain’s trade:
herbs in bundles, bottles, pestles and mortars and
so forth. A strong aromatic odor filled the air,
and the captain hummed cheerily as he poured a
yellow, evil-smelling liquid from a big retort into
half a dozen bottles, destined to cure the ills of
Captain Styles.
“Wireless! Of course not, my hearty. What
does a fine sailing ship want with a wireless?
Take my word for it, Jack, wireless is only a newfangled
idee, and it won’t last. Give a sailor
sea-room and a good ship and all that fol-de-rol
is only in his way.”
.bn 024.png
// 024.png
.pn +1
“And yet I saw the news of another rescue at
sea by means of the wireless when I was looking
at a newspaper bulletin-board to-day,” rejoined
the lad. “The crew of a burning tramp steamer
was rescued by a liner that had been summoned
to their aid by the apparatus. If it hadn’t been
for wireless, that ship might have burned up with
all hands, and no one ever have known her fate.”
His uncle grunted in the manner of one unconvinced.
“Well, I ain’t saying that wireless mayn’t be
all right for one of them floating wash-boilers,
but for Yankee sailors, good rigging and canvas
and a stout, sweet hull is good enough to go to
sea with.”
As he went on with his work, he began rumbling
in a gruff, throaty bass:
.in +4
.nf l
“Come, all you young fellers what foller the sea!
Yo ho, blow the man down;
And pay good attention and listen to me,
Oh, give me some time to blow the man down.”
.nf-
.in
“That’s the music, Jack,” said he. “I wish
you’d go inter sails instead of steam, and follow
the examples of your dad and your uncle, yes,
and of your granddaddy, Noah Ready, afore
’em.”
.bn 025.png
// 025.png
.pn +1
Jack made no rejoinder, but set about straightening
up the litter in the place. The contention
between them was an old one, and always ended
in the same way. His uncle knew many seafaring
men of the old school who would gladly
have given Jack a berth on their craft. But
they were all in command of “wind-jammers,”
and the boy’s heart was set on the wireless room
of a liner, or at any rate a job on some wireless-equipped
vessel.
Meantime the captain went on compounding
and mixing and pouring, rumbling away at his
old sea songs. He was an odd-looking character,
as odd in his way as his chosen place of residence.
Years of service on the salt-water had tanned
his wrinkled skin almost to a mahogany color.
Under his chin was a fringe of white whiskers,
and his round head—covered with a bristly white
thatch—was set low between a pair of gigantic
.bn 026.png
// 026.png
.pn +1
shoulders. He was dressed in a fantastic miscellany
of water-side slops which flapped where
they should have been tight, and wrinkled where
they should have been loose. Add to this an expression
of whimsical kindness, a wooden leg
and a wide, rough scar,—the memento of a battle
with savages in the South Seas,—and you have
a portrait of Captain Toby Ready.
Presently the captain drew out a huge silver
watch.
“Two bells. Time to stand by for supper, lad,”
he said. “That stuff’ll have to go to Cap’n Styles
to-morrow. There’s plenty of time; he don’t sail
for goin’ on a week yet. Slip your cable, like a
good lad, and set a course for the bakery. We’re
short of bread.”
“And I’m short of the money to get it,” said
Jack.
The captain thrust a hairy paw into his pocket
and drew out an immense purse. He extracted
a coin from it and handed it to the boy.
.bn 027.png
// 027.png
.pn +1
“An’ how much, lad, is a penny saved?” he
inquired, peering at Jack from under his bushy
white brows.
“A penny earned,” laughed Jack.
“Co’-rect,” chuckled the captain, grinning at
Jack’s quick reply to the almost invariable formula,
“an’ if Captain Toby Ready had thought
o’ that when he was young, he wouldn’t be here
on the craft Wenus making medicines fer sea-cap’ns
with a tummy ache.
“I’ve got an apple pie in the oven, Jack,” said
he, as the boy left the “drug-store,” as he and
his uncle called it, “so cut along and hurry back.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” cried the boy, bounding up
the cabin stairs with alacrity.
Apple pies were not common on board the
Venus, nor was Jack too old to appreciate his
uncle’s announcement.
.bn 028.png
// 028.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 04 IV. "THE REJECTED REWARD."
When Jack returned, he was surprised to hear
voices in the cabin. His uncle had a habit of
talking to himself, but there was another voice
mingling with the old sailor’s deep, rumbling
tones.
Wondering greatly who the visitor could be,
for somehow the voice sounded different from
the bellowings of the old sea cronies who visited
the Venus either on business or socially, Jack
descended the cabin stairs.
The swinging lamp was lighted and shone
down on his uncle and another man, seated on
opposite sides of the table.
“By the great main boom, the lad never told
me a word of it!” his uncle was saying. “Dived
overboard an’ saved your little gal, eh? Well,
sir, Jack’s a chip of the old block!”
.bn 029.png
// 029.png
.pn +1
The man who sat opposite the captain was a
portly gentleman with a bald brow, gold-rimmed
glasses and close-cropped gray mustache. He
spoke with curt, sharp emphasis, as if his minutes
were dollars.
“Lucky that a watchman saw and recognized
the boy as he sneaked away,” this individual replied.
“If it had not been for that, I might
never have found him. But I must see him.
Where is he?”
“Here he is, sir, to answer for himself,” said
the captain, as he heard Jack’s step on the stair.
As the boy entered the cabin the ship-owner
jumped to his feet. He crossed the place with a
quick, rapid stride and grasped Jack’s free hand.
“I’m proud to shake hands with a youngster
like you,” he said in his swift, incisive way, “yes,
sir, proud. If it had not been for you, my daughter
might have drowned with those dolts all
standing round doing nothing. Jove——”
.bn 030.png
// 030.png
.pn +1
He mopped his forehead in an agitated way
at the very thought of what might have happened.
“That’s all right, sir,” said Jack, “I’m glad I
was there when I happened to be. When I knew
the little girl was all right, I came away.”
The boy had recognized the shipping magnate
from pictures of him that he had seen in the
papers. Had he not come around another way
from the bakery, he would have been prepared
for this august visitor by the sight of his limousine,
lying at the head of the dock.
“’Sarn it all, why didn’t you spin me the
yarn?” sputtered the captain in an aggrieved
tone.
“Oh! there really wasn’t much to tell,” said
Jack. “The little girl was clinging to a pile and
I went down and got her up. That’s all there
was to it. If I hadn’t done it, somebody else
would.”
.bn 031.png
// 031.png
.pn +1
“That is just the point,” roared Mr. Jukes,
“somebody else wouldn’t.”
He drew out a check-book and signed his name
to a check. He shoved this across the table to
Jack, who was standing by his uncle.
“Fill that in for any amount you like, lad,”
he said in his dictatorial way. “Make it a good,
round sum. Jacob Jukes’ account can stand it.”
Jack colored and hesitated.
“Well, what’s the matter, boy?” sputtered the
ship-owner, noting the boy’s hesitation. “That
check won’t bite you. I know a whole lot of
lads who’d have grabbed at it before it was out
of my hand.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” rejoined Jack,
“you’re very generous and—and all that. Maybe
you’ll think me ungrateful, but I can’t take that
check.”
“Wha—what! Can’t take my check! What’s
the matter with the boy?”
.bn 032.png
// 032.png
.pn +1
“Hev you slipped the cable of your senses,
Jack?” hoarsely exclaimed his uncle, in what was
meant to be a whisper.
“I don’t want money for just doing a little
thing like that,” said the boy stubbornly.
“You don’t mean it. Come, take that check at
once. Don’t be a fool!” urged Mr. Jukes with a
very red face. “Why can’t you do as I tell
you!”
The magnate’s tone was almost angry. He
was not used to having his commands disobeyed,
and he was commanding Jack to take the check.
But the boy resolutely shook his head.
“Why, confound it all, I can’t understand it.
Make him take the check at once, captain.”
“Don’t see how I can, if he’s so sot and stubborn
about it,” rejoined the captain. Then, turning
to Jack, he made another appeal. “Why
won’t you take it, Jack?” he growled. “Shiver
my timbers, what ails you?”
.bn 033.png
// 033.png
.pn +1
“Nothing; but I can’t accept money from Mr.
Jukes or anybody else, for doing what I did,”
said the boy quietly.
Mr. Jukes, with a crimson face, gave up the
battle. He reached across the table, took the
check and slowly tore it into fragments.
“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.”
.bn 034.png
// 034.png
.pn +1
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——”
.bn 035.png
// 035.png
.pn +1
“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.
.bn 036.png
// 036.png
.pn +1
“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——”
.bn 037.png
// 037.png
.pn +1
“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.
.bn 038.png
// 038.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 039.png
// 039.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 05 V. "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.
.bn 040.png
// 040.png
.pn +1
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
.bn 041.png
// 041.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 042.png
// 042.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 043.png
// 043.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 044.png
// 044.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 045.png
// 045.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 046.png
// 046.png
.pn +1
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.
.bn 047.png
// 047.png
.pn +1
“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.
.bn 048.png
// 048.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 06 VI. "LEARNING THE ROPES."
Having sent his “T.R.”—as the first message
from an outward bound ship is, for some mysterious
reason known,—Jack occupied himself by
occasionally chatting with some other operator
and exchanging positions.
As the Ajax forged on, the boy began feeling
ahead with his key for the wireless stations at
Sagaponack or Siasconset. Messages to and
from Nantucket he had already caught, and had
sent in a report of the Ajax and her position.
Supper time came and Jack ate his meal in
company with the second and third engineers.
The captain and the other officers were far too
important to sit down with a wireless man on
his first voyage. The second engineer was a
lively youth with a crop of hair as red as the
.bn 049.png
// 049.png
.pn +1
open door of one of his own furnaces. His
junior was not more than two years older than
Jack, a stalwart lad, with a bright, intelligent
face, named Billy Raynor.
Young Raynor and Jack struck up quite a
friendship at supper, and after the red-headed
second, whose name was Bicket, had left the
table, they fell to discussing the ship and its
officers.
“I happened to be on the bridge,—message
from the chief,—this afternoon when you were
talking to the old man,” said Raynor. “From
the look on your face, I fancy you thought him
a bit overbearing.”
Jack flushed. He did not know that he had
let his mortification be visible.
“Well, I had expected rather a different reception,
I must say; but I’m not such a baby
as to kick about anything like that, or even a
good deal worse.”
.bn 050.png
// 050.png
.pn +1
“That’s the way to talk,” approved Raynor.
“The old man’s bark is worse than his bite, although
I don’t come much in contact with him.
Mr. Herrick, the chief, is my boss.”
He rose to go below to his duties.
“Some time when I’m off watch, I’d like to
come up to your coop and have a chat with you
about wireless,” he said.
“I wish you would,” said Jack, heartily glad
to find,—for he was beginning to feel lonely,—that
there was at least one congenial soul on
the big steel monster, of which he formed a part
of the crew.
Jack’s day ended at eight o’clock, but before
his time to go off duty, there came a peremptory
message from the captain. The weather had
been steadily growing worse, the sea was mounting
and the wind increasing. Jack was to stay
at his post and try to catch messages from vessels
farther out at sea, concerning conditions on
the course.
.bn 051.png
// 051.png
.pn +1
As the night wore on, the gale increased in
violence. The tanker wallowed through giant
seas, the spray sweeping over even the elevated
bridge linking her bow and stern. Her hull, with
its cargo of oil and coal and the mighty boilers
and engines that drove her forward, was as submerged
as a submarine.
The young wireless operator sat vigilantly at
his key. The night was a bad one for wireless
communication, although a storm does not, of
necessity, interfere with the “waves.”
At last, about ten o’clock, he succeeded in obtaining
communication with the Kaiser, one of
the big German liners, some one thousand miles
to the eastward.
Back and forth through the storm the two
operators talked. The Kaiser’s man reported
heavy weather, rain-squalls and big seas.
“But it is not bothering us,” he added; “we’re
hitting up an eighteen knot clip.”
.bn 052.png
// 052.png
.pn +1
“Can’t say the same here,” flashed back Jack;
“we have been slowed down for an hour or more.
This is a bad storm, all right.”
“You must be a ‘greeny’; this is nothing,” came
back the answer from the Kaiser man.
“It is my first voyage as a wireless man,”
crackled out Jack’s key.
“Bully for you! You send like a veteran,”
came back the rejoinder; and then, before Jack
could send his appreciation of the compliment,
something happened to the communication and
the conversation was cut off.
When he opened the door to go forward with
his message for the skipper, the puff of wind
that met the boy almost threw him from his feet.
But he braced himself against the screaming gale
and worked his way along the bridge. He wished
he had put on oil-skins before he started, for the
spray was breaking in cataracts over the narrow
bridge along which he had to claw his way like
a cat.
.bn 053.png
// 053.png
.pn +1
“Well, whatever else a ‘Tanker’ may be, she is
surely not a dry ship in a gale of wind,” muttered
the boy to himself, as he reached the end
of his journey.
On the bridge, weather-cloths were up, and
the second officer was crouched at the starboard
end of the narrow, swaying pathway. But pretty
soon Jack made out the captain’s stalwart figure.
The skipper elected to read the message in the
chart-house. He made no comment, but informed
Jack that in an hour’s time he might turn in.
Nothing more of importance came that night,
and at the hour the captain had named, the
young wireless boy, thoroughly tired after his
first day at the key of an ocean wireless, sought
his bunk. This was in the same room as the
apparatus, and as he undressed, Jack figured
on installing, at the first opportunity, a bell connecting
with the apparatus by means of which
he might be summoned from sleep if a message
came during the night. He had made several
experiments along these lines at his station on
.bn 054.png
// 054.png
.pn +1
the old Venus, which now seemed so far away,
and had met with fair success. He believed that
with the improved conditions he was dealing with
on the Ajax, he could make such a device practicable.
When he went on deck at daylight, he found
that the storm, far from abating, had increased
in violence. The speed of the Ajax had been cut
down till she could not have been making more
than eight knots against the teeth of the wind.
The white-crested combers towered like mountains
all about her. Nothing of the hull but the
superstructures were visible, and the latter looked
as if they had gone adrift,—with no hull under
them,—in a smother of spume and green water.
It was almost startling to look down from the
rail outside his cabin and see nothing but water
all about, as if the superstructure had been an
island.
.bn 055.png
// 055.png
.pn +1
He went back to his instruments and picked
up a few messages concerning the weather. Two
were from liners, and one from a small cargo
steamer. All reported heavy weather with mountainous
seas.
“Not much news in that,” thought the boy, as
he filed the messages and prepared to go forward
with his copies.
As he opened the cabin door, the man at the
wheel must have let the ship fall off her course.
A mighty wave came rushing up astern and
broke in a torrent of green water over the gallery
on which Jack stood. He was picked up like a
straw and thrown against a stanchion, with all
the breath knocked out of him.
Here he clung, bruised and strangling, till the
wave passed.
“Seems to me that the life of an ocean wireless
man is a good bit more strenuous than I
thought,” muttered the boy, picking himself up
and discovering that he must make fresh copies
of the messages he had been taking forward.
.bn 056.png
// 056.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 07 VII. "IN THE TEETH OF THE STORM."
An old German bos’un came by as Jack was
picking himself up.
“Hullo! Almost man overboard,—vat?” he
chuckled. “Don’d go overboard in dis vedder,
Mister Vireless, aber vee nefer see you no more.”
“Did you ever see a storm as bad as this?”
sputtered the dripping Jack.
“Dis not amount to much,” was the reply.
“Vait till you cross in midt-vinter, den you see
storms vos is storms.”
He hurried off on his work, while Jack, having
recopied his messages, started forward again.
This time he met with no mishaps.
On the reeling bridge he found Captain Braceworth.
The captain was clinging to the railing,
a shining, uncouth figure in dripping oil-skins.
.bn 057.png
// 057.png
.pn +1
The clamor of wind and sea made speech almost
impossible, but Jack touched the captain on the
elbow to attract his attention.
In spite of his feeling, almost of aversion to
the grim, strict captain, Jack felt a sensation of
admiration for this stalwart, silent figure, guiding
his wallowing ship through the storm as
calmly as if he had been seated at a dinner table.
One thing was certain, Captain Braceworth was
no fair-weather sailor. Martinet though he
might be, he was a man to meet a crisis calmly
and with cool determination.
The captain took the messages silently and
once more retired to the wheel-house to scan
them. At the other end of the bridge the chief
officer stood, an equally silent figure, looking out
over the tempest-torn ocean. The captain was
soon back on the bridge. He went over to the
chief officer and Jack could see the two talking,
or rather shouting.
.bn 058.png
// 058.png
.pn +1
He stood waiting respectfully for orders,
crouching in the lee of the weather-cloth for
protection against the screaming gale.
As soon as he saw that the captain had finished
his conference with the officer, Jack came from
the shelter and clawed his way to the skipper’s
side.
Captain Braceworth placed his hands funnel-wise
to his mouth and shouted into Jack’s ear:
“Try to get Cape Race or Siasconset, and
tell the office in New York that we are in a
bad gale and running under reduced speed. From
the look of the glass it may last two days and
delay our arrival at Antwerp.”
Jack saluted and was off like a flash, while
the captain resumed his silent scrutiny of the
racing billows. Five minutes later, the young
wireless boy sat at his post, sending his message
through the shouting, howling turmoil of wind
and wave.
.bn 059.png
// 059.png
.pn +1
Experienced as he was at the key, it was,
nevertheless, a novel sensation to be sitting, snug
and warm in his cabin, flashing into storm-racked
space, the calls for Siasconset or “the Cape.”
Occasionally he groped with his key for another
vessel, through which his message to the New
York office might be “relayed.”
He knew that some of the big liners had a
more powerful apparatus than he possessed, and
if he did not succeed in raising a shore station,
his message could be transmitted to one of the
steamers and thence to the land.
The spark whined and crackled and flashed
for fifteen minutes or more before there came,
pattering on his ears through the “watch-case”
receivers, a welcome reply.
It was from Cape Race. Jack delivered his
message and had a short conversation with the
operator. He had hardly finished, before, into
his wireless sphere, other voices came calling
through the storm. Back and forth through the
witches’ dance of the winds, the questions, answers
and bits of stray chat and deep sea gossip
came flitting and crackling.
.bn 060.png
// 060.png
.pn +1
But Jack had scant time to listen to the voice-filled
air. He soon shut off his key and prepared
to go forward again, with the news that the
message had been sent. In less than an hour
some official at the office of the line in New
York would be reading it, seated at his desk,
while miles out on the Atlantic the ship that
had sent it was tossing in the grip of the storm.
Jack thought of these things as he buttoned
himself into his oil-skins, secured the flaps of his
sou’wester under his chin and once more fought
his way forward along that dancing, swaying
bridge, below which the water swirled and
swayed like myriads of storm-racked rapids.
The captain, grim as ever, was still on the
bridge, but now Jack saw that both he and the
officer who shared his vigil were eying the seas
through the glasses. They appeared to be scanning
the tumbling ranges of water-mountains in
.bn 061.png
// 061.png
.pn +1
search of some object. What, Jack did not know.
But their attention appeared to be fully engrossed
as they handed the glasses from one to
another, holding on to the rail with their free
hands to keep their balance.
Presently the chief officer shook his head and
shrugged his shoulders as if he had negatived
some proposition of the captain’s.
The latter replaced the glasses in their box
by the engine room telegraph, and Jack, deeming
this a favorable opportunity, came forward
with his report.
He had almost to scream it into the captain’s
ear. But the great man heard and nodded
gravely. Then he turned away and drew out
the glasses once more and went back to scanning
the heaving seas.
Jack, from the shelter of the wheel-house,
within which an imperturbable quartermaster
gripped the spokes of the wheel, followed the
direction of the skipper’s gaze.
.bn 062.png
// 062.png
.pn +1
All at once, as the Ajax rose on the summit of
a huge comber, he made out something that made
his heart give a big jump.
It was a black patch that suddenly projected
itself into view for an instant, and then rushed
from sight as if it would never come up again.
.bn 063.png
// 063.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 08 VIII. "SIGHTING THE WRECK."
The captain wheeled suddenly. His eyes focused
on Jack.
“Operator!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Have you had any calls from a ship in distress?”
“No, sir. I should have reported any message
to you at once.”
“Of course. I’m not used to this wireless
business, although it seems to be useful.”
“There—there’s a ship in distress yonder, sir?”
Jack ventured to ask.
“Yes, they’re badly off.”
The captain tugged at his brown beard which
glistened with spray.
“Call the third officer. He is in his cabin.”
.bn 064.png
// 064.png
.pn +1
Jack hastened aft and soon returned with Mr.
Brown, the third officer of the Ajax, an alert,
active little man. Jack ventured to linger on the
bridge while they talked. His heart was filled
with pity for whoever might be on board the
storm-tossed derelict. He wanted to know what
the captain proposed to do.
Fragments of speech were blown to the young
operator’s ears as the three officers talked.
“Hopeless—Boat wouldn’t live a minute in
this sea—she’ll go before eight bells—Yes, bound
for Davy Jones’ locker, poor devils.”
Jack’s pulses beat fast as he heard. Could it
be that the Ajax was to make no effort to rescue
the crew of the wreck? His heart throbbed as
if it would choke him. He felt suddenly angry,
furiously angry with the three men on the bridge,
who stood so calmly talking over the situation
while, less than a mile away, there was a wrecked
ship wallowing in the mighty seas without a
chance for her life.
.bn 065.png
// 065.png
.pn +1
Had he dared, he would have stepped forward
and volunteered to form part of a boat’s crew,
no matter what the risk. His father’s seafaring
blood ran in his veins, and he could recall hearing
both Captain Amos Ready and his Uncle
Toby recounting to each other, over their pipes,
tales of sea-rescues.
“Uncle Toby is right,” thought the boy, with
a white-hot flush of indignation; “seamanship
is dead nowadays. The men who go to sea in
these steel tanks are without hearts.”
They rose on the top of another mountainous
wave and Jack had his first good view of the
forlorn wreck. She was evidently a sailing vessel,
although of what rig could not be made out,
for her masts were gone. A more hopeless,
melancholy sight than this storm-riven, sea-racked
derelict could not be imagined. Her bowsprit
still remained, and as she rose upward on
a wave with the star pointed to the scurrying
gray clouds, Jack’s excited fancy saw in it a
mute appeal for aid.
.bn 066.png
// 066.png
.pn +1
And still the three officers stood talking, as the
Ajax ploughed on. No attempt had been made
to veer from her course.
“They’re going to leave her without trying to
help her,” choked Jack, clenching his hands.
“Oh! the cowards! the cowards!”
The boy made an impulsive step forward. In
his excitement he was reckless of what he did.
But, luckily, he came to his senses in time. Checking
himself, he gloweringly watched the captain
step to the wheel-house. As he did so, the commanding
officer beckoned to Jack.
“I suppose he’s going to haul me over the
coals for standing about here,” muttered the boy
to himself; and then, impulsively, “but I don’t
care. I’ll tell him what I think of him if he
does!”
.bn 067.png
// 067.png
.pn +1
With defiance in his heart, Jack, nevertheless,
hastened forward to obey Captain Braceworth’s
motioned order.
Within the wheel-house the hub-bub of the
storm was shut out. It was possible to speak
without shouting. The captain’s face bore a
puzzled frown as if he were thinking over some
difficult problem. As Jack entered the wheel-house,
he swung round on the boy:
“Oh, Ready! Stand by there a moment. I
may have an order to give you.”
He stepped over to the speaking tube and
hailed the engine-room.
“He’s going to give some order about saving
that ship,” said the boy to himself.
But no. Captain Braceworth’s orders appeared
to have nothing to do with any such plan.
Jack felt his indignation surging up again as
the commander, in a steady, measured voice,
gave a lot of orders which, so far as Jack could
.bn 068.png
// 068.png
.pn +1
hear, had to deal with pipes, pumps and something
about the cargo. At all events, the boy
caught the word “oil.”
“Well, if that isn’t the limit for hard-heartedness!”
thought the lad to himself as he heard
the calm, even tones. “What have a lot of monkey-wrench
sailors like those fellows in the engineers’
department to do with saving lives, I’d
like to know! If this was my dad’s ship, I’ll bet
that he’d have a boat on the way to that wreck
now.”
He gazed out of a port-hole. The wreck was
still visible as the Ajax rode the high seas. From
one of the stumps of the broken masts fluttered
some sort of a signal. Jack fancied it might
be the ensign reversed, a universal sign of distress
on the high seas. But what ensign it was,
he could not, of course, make out.
It seemed to him, too, that he could distinguish
some figures on the decks, but of this he could
not be certain.
.bn 069.png
// 069.png
.pn +1
“They may all be dead while this cowardly
skipper is chatting with the engine-room,” he
thought angrily.
“Ready!”
“Yes, sir.” It was with difficulty that Jack
spoke even respectfully. He felt desperate, disgusted
with all on board the “tanker.”
“I want you to stand by your wireless. Try
to pick up some other steamer. Tell them there
is a ship in distress out there. Wait a minute,—here’s
the latitude and longitude. Send that, if
you chance to pick anybody up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fairly bursting with anger, Jack hurried off.
He did not dare to let the captain see his face.
He was naturally a frank, honest youth and his
emotions showed plainly on his countenance
when his feelings were strong.
So, after all, this miserable skipper was going
to run off and desert that poor battered wreck!
He was going to leave the work for somebody
else, for some other ship, for some captain braver
than himself to undertake.
.bn 070.png
// 070.png
.pn +1
As he was entering his wireless room, he encountered
Raynor.
“What’s up? You look as black as a thunderstorm,”
said the young engineer.
“No wonder,” burst out Jack, his indignation
overflowing; “we’re deserting a wreck off yonder.
The old man’s lost his nerve, that’s what. I’d
volunteer in a moment. He ought to have
launched a boat an hour ago.”
“Hold on, hold on,” said Raynor, laying a
hand on the excited lad’s shoulder; “we couldn’t
do anything in this sea, anyhow. The old man’s
all right.—Ah! Look! What did I tell you!”
From the signal halliards above the bridge
deck, a signal had just been broken out. The
bits of bunting flared out brightly against the
leaden sky.
“We will stand by you,” was the message
young Raynor, who knew something of the International
Code, spelled out.
.bn 071.png
// 071.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 09 IX. "A TALK ON WIRELESS."
“Good for him!” cried Jack, surprised into
what was almost a cheer. “But,” he added
grudgingly, “he took long enough about it.”
“Suppose you go ahead and attend to your end
of the job and let the skipper manage his,” rejoined
Raynor, in a quiet voice; and Jack, with a
very red pair of ears, set himself down to the
key.
The young third engineer was off watch, so
he took a seat on the edge of Jack’s bunk and
watched the lad manipulating the key with deft,
certain fingers.
Crack-ger-ack-ack-ack! Crack-ger-ack-ack-ack!
whined the spark as the boy alternately depressed
and released the sending key. Then he
switched over to “listen in.”
.bn 072.png
// 072.png
.pn +1
But no answering sounds beat against his ears.
The signal had, apparently, fallen still-born on
the wings of the storm. This went on for some
fifteen minutes and then Jack gave up for a
time.
“Nothing in our field or else my waves are
too weak,” he explained to young Raynor, who
listened with interest.
“I don’t understand what your wireless gibberish
means,” he laughed, “but if you’ll teach
me, I’ll learn some day.”
“Sure you will,” said Jack cheerfully; “it’s as
easy as rolling off a log.”
“Yes, when you know how,” rejoined Raynor.
They sat silently for a time, while Jack again
tried to raise some other ship, but without success.
“Looks as if the ocean must be empty just
about here,” he commented.
“Would you be bound to get in touch with
another ship if there was one within range of
your instrument?” asked young Raynor presently.
.bn 073.png
// 073.png
.pn +1
“Not necessarily. There might be a dozen
things that would interfere.”
“The storm, for instance?”
“Not that cause any more than another.
There’s a lot that is mysterious about the wireless
waves. Even to-day, nobody knows all about
them. Sometimes, for no apparent cause, they
will work better than at other times.”
“On a fine day I suppose they work best.”
Jack shook his head.
“On the contrary, at night and on foggy days,
the Hertzian waves are sometimes most powerful.
All things being equal, though, they work
better over the sea than the land.”
“What is the longest distance a message has
ever been sent by wireless?” was young Raynor’s
next question.
.bn 074.png
// 074.png
.pn +1
“The last one I heard of was seven thousand
miles. At that distance a ship off the coast of
Brazil heard a call from Caltano, Italy. Think
of that! That message had traveled across Italy,
over the Mediterranean, slap across the northwestern
part of Africa, and then went whanging
across the Atlantic to a spot south of the
Equator!”
“Going some,” was young Raynor’s comment.
“But that isn’t the most wonderful part of it.
If that message went seven thousand miles in
one direction, it must have gone an equal distance
in an opposite one. That would make it
encircle almost half the world.”
“Curves and all?” asked Raynor.
“Curves and all,” smiled Jack.
“And how fast does this stuff—the electric
waves, I mean—travel?” asked the young engineer.
“Well,” said Jack, “it is estimated that a message
from this side of the Atlantic would reach
the Irish coast in about one-nineteenth of a
second.”
.bn 075.png
// 075.png
.pn +1
“Oh, get out! I’m not going to swallow that.”
“It is true, just the same,” said Jack. “I know
it is hard to believe; lots of things about wireless
are.”
“Well, I mean to learn all about it I can.”
“You’ll find it well worth your while.”
“I believe that it is the most fascinating thing
I’ve ever tackled.”
“In the meantime, I wish I could raise a ship,”
grumbled Jack, again sending out his call.
“If we were sinking or in urgent difficulties
right now, would you stick on the job till we
raised some rescue ship?”
“I hope so. I’d try to,” said Jack modestly.
“The history of wireless shows that every operator
who has been called upon to face the music
has done so without a whimper.”
While he worked at the key and the spark sent
out its crepitant bark, young Raynor peered out
at the tumbling sea through the port of the wireless
cabin.
.bn 076.png
// 076.png
.pn +1
“Hullo!” he exclaimed presently, “we’re swinging
round.”
“I can feel it,” said Jack, as the Ajax, instead
of breasting the seas, began to roll about in the
trough of them.
The heavy steel hull rolled until it seemed that
the funnel and the masts must be torn out by
the roots. Both boys hung on for dear life.
After a while the motion became easier.
“Good thing I’m not inclined to be sea-sick,”
said Jack, “or this would finish me.”
He gave up his key for a while and groped his
way to Raynor’s side. The Ajax was creeping
along and was now not more than half a mile
from the wreck. But the meaning of her maneuvers
was not very apparent. Jack could not understand
what Captain Braceworth meant to do.
Even the inexperienced eye of the young operator
told him that it would be suicide to launch a boat
in those mountainous seas.
.bn 077.png
// 077.png
.pn +1
The two boys opened the door and went to
the rail. The Ajax had beaten her way up to
windward of the doomed wreck. Suddenly Jack
gave a shout.
“Hurray! Bully for Captain Braceworth! I
see his plan now!”
.bn 078.png
// 078.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 10 X. "OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS."
At intervals along the bridge we have mentioned
as running between bow and stern superstructures,
were tall standpipes connected with
pumps in the engine-room. These were used in
discharging the cargo at Antwerp.
The valves of these pipes had been opened
while the boys were in the wireless room, and
now, as the pumps were started, jets of thick,
dark-colored oil spouted from them.
As the oil spread on the sea, the wind drove
it down in a great band of filmy smoothness
toward the tossing wreck. As the oil spread, the
big combers ceased to break dangerously, and a
shimmering, smooth skin of oil spread over them
till they merely rolled beneath it.
It was like magic to see the way in which the
oil calmed the troubled sea.
.bn 079.png
// 079.png
.pn +1
“Well, I’ve heard my father tell of skinning
a sea with oil-bags,” said Jack, “but I never expected
to see it done.”
“You’ll see stranger things than that if you
stay long enough in this business,” said Raynor
sententiously.
The Ajax slowly cruised around the floundering
wreck under reduced speed, with oil spouting
constantly from the standpipes. At last all about
the hulk there was spread a sort of magic circle
of smooth, oily water.
Jack looked on in an agony of impatience.
“Surely he’ll send a boat now,” he said to
Raynor.
But the young engineer shook his head.
“Braceworth isn’t a skipper who holds with
doing things in a hurry,” he said; “wait a while.”
“Surely it is smooth enough to launch a boat
now,” pursued Jack.
“If the skipper thought so, he’d do it,” rejoined
Raynor.
.bn 080.png
// 080.png
.pn +1
The call to dinner came without Jack having
secured communication with any other ship. He
could only account for this by the supposition
that the atmospheric conditions were bad. The
wireless was evidently suffering from an attack
of “atmospherics,” as the professional operators
call it.
Before going down to his meal, Jack went
forward to report to the captain. He found the
burly commander with a sandwich in one hand
and a cup of coffee in the other. He was having
a snack on the bridge in the shelter of the
weather-cloth.
Jack, despite himself, felt a quick flash of admiration
for a man who could face such discomforts
so dauntlessly for the sake of his duty.
The boy would have liked to ask some questions,
but he did not have the courage. So he
stood in silence while the skipper pondered a
full minute.
.bn 081.png
// 081.png
.pn +1
“Don’t bother about it any more,” he said at
length. “I think we will be able to do without
help.”
Jack could contain himself no longer.
“Oh, sir, do you think we’ll be able to get those
poor fellows off?”
The captain looked at him sharply.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said.
“Don’t pester me with foolish questions. It is
eight bells. Be off to your dinner.”
Jack, abashed, red-faced and angry at what
he felt was an undeserved snub, obeyed. At dinner
he told Raynor all about it.
“Well, if you had been on the bridge all night,
maybe you would feel none too amiable, either,”
said his companion.
“On the bridge all night!” exclaimed Jack,
who had no idea that while he was snug in his
bunk the captain had been facing the storm.
“Of course. Captain Braceworth never leaves
the bridge in bad weather, even if this is only a
freighter and not a dandy passenger boat with
pretty ladies and big swells on board,” retorted
Raynor.
.bn 082.png
// 082.png
.pn +1
“I—I didn’t know that,” said Jack, rather
shamefacedly. “If I had, I wouldn’t have spoken
as I did.”
“I know that, youngster,” said Raynor. “And
now let’s hurry through grub and get up on deck
again and see what’s doing. I’ve a notion we’ll
see something interesting before very long.”
When the lads returned on deck, they found
that the Ajax had made another complete circle
of the wreck, this time covering the first film of
oil with a thicker one. They were much closer
to the wreck now. Jack could count two figures
in the bow and three astern.
But even as they looked, both boys gave a cry
of horror. A huge wave had swept clear over
the floundering hulk, and when it vanished one
of the men in the stern had vanished, too.
“Oh! That’s terrible!” exclaimed Jack. “Why
don’t we launch a boat?”
.bn 083.png
// 083.png
.pn +1
“No use sacrificing more lives,” said Raynor,
with forced calmness, although he was white
about the lips. “Braceworth knows what he’s
doing, I reckon.”
“Yes, but to watch those poor fellows—it’s—it’s
awful!”
Jack put his hands over his eyes to shut out,
for an instant, the frantically waving arms of
the men on the wreck. They were making desperate
appeals. Plainly they could not understand
why the liner kept circling them.
“Brace up, youngster,” said Raynor kindly.
“I guess the skipper feels as bad about it as you
do, but he won’t act till he can do so safely.”
The afternoon began to close in. The stormy
twilight deepened into dusk and found the nerve-wracking
waiting still going on. On the great
gray seas the black steamer, with a wind-blown
plume of smoke pouring from her salt-encrusted
funnel, still solemnly circled the foundering hulk,
while the storm clouds raced past overheard.
.bn 084.png
// 084.png
.pn +1
But the wind had dropped slightly and the
coat of oil that now covered the waves prevented
their breaking. The Ajax, already crawling up
on the weather side of the wreck, appeared to
reduce speed.
“There’s going to be something doing now,”
prophesied Raynor.
On the bridge the captain had summoned Mr.
Brown, the third officer.
“Brown,” he said, “I’m going to make a try
to get those fellows off. That craft won’t last
till daylight and we could never tackle the job
in the dark.”
“Just what I think, sir,” rejoined the third
mate.
“Very well; take one of the stern boats. Be
very careful. If you hit the side, she’ll smash
like an egg-shell and we could never pick you up
in this. I’ll come in as close as I dare, to give
you the lee water. Now be off with you and—good-luck.”
.bn 085.png
// 085.png
.pn +1
Mr. Brown hurried aft. He collected his boat
crew as he went. The boat he selected was the
one hung on patent davits above the wireless
room. Young Raynor had been summoned to
the engine-room and Jack stood there alone
watching the preparations. The blood of his seafaring
ancestors stirred in his veins. Mustering
his courage he stepped forward.
“Mr. Brown, can I go, sir? I can row. Let
me go, won’t you?”
The mate, angry at being disturbed, spun on
his heel and glowered at the young wireless boy.
“What do you know about a boat?” he demanded.
“You’re only a sea-going telegraph
operator——”
At that instant the doughty little mate’s eye
fell on a hulking big seaman who was hanging
back. Plainly enough the man was afraid. He
was muttering to himself as if he did not like
the prospect of breasting those giant seas in the
small boat.
.bn 086.png
// 086.png
.pn +1
The man was a Norwegian seaman, and Mr.
Brown, who was an American, made a quick,
angry spring for him as if to grip him bodily
and compel him to go. Then he suddenly recollected
Jack.
“Well, lad, since that hulking coward is afraid,
I’ll give you a chance. Get in and look slippy.
We’ve no time to lose.”
Jack shoved the big sailor aside while the fellow
scowled and swore.
“Get forward, you!” roared little Mr. Brown.
“I’ll attend to you when we get back. Now,
youngster.”
But Jack was already in the boat. There was
a shouted order and the falls began to creak in
the quadrant davits. For an instant they hung
between wind and water. Mr. Brown watched
with the eye of a cat the proper moment to let go.
Suddenly the Ajax gave a roll far out to leeward.
The boat dropped like a stone. The patent
tackle set her free.
.bn 087.png
// 087.png
.pn +1
“Give way, men!” shouted the officer; and in
the nick of time to avoid being shattered against
the steel side of the tank by a big sea, the boat
put forth on its errand of mercy.
.bn 088.png
// 088.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 11 XI. "TO THE RESCUE."
Had the seas been breaking, the boat could
not have lived a minute. The moment that she
struck the water would have been her last.
But, thanks to Captain Braceworth’s up-to-date
seamanship, the oil-skimmed swells, although
high, were smooth, without dangerous
spray and breakers.
The five seamen and the young wireless man
who had volunteered at the last instant, tugged
frantically at the big sweeps. Jack had been
guilty of no exaggeration when he had said he
could row. It had been his favorite amusement
about the bay, and he was as strong as a young
colt, anyhow.
In the stern at the steering oar stood Mr.
Brown. His eyes were riveted on the wreck
ahead.
.bn 089.png
// 089.png
.pn +1
As a monstrous green swell rushed under the
boat he gave a shout:
“Lay into it, bullies! Pull for the girls, boys!
That’s the stuff! Break your backs! All together
now! We’ll pay Paddy Doyle for his
boots!”
Mr. Brown, in his youth, had been before the
mast on a whaler, and in moments of excitement
he went back to the language of whalemen when
out in the boats.
“H-e-a-v-e a-l-l!” he bellowed, with a strength
of lung that appeared wonderful in such a diminutive
man.
As the tanker’s boat was pulled by its stalwarts
across the heaving seas, the men at the oars, by
turning their heads, could see in what desperate
straits were the handful of survivors.
“There’s a woman on board!” yelled Mr.
Brown suddenly. “Pull for all you’re worth, my
lads! It’s a little girl, by the Polar Star!”
.bn 090.png
// 090.png
.pn +1
As if this information had given them new
strength, the men gave way with renewed energy.
Jack, by twisting his head, could see, as
the boat topped a wave, the sight that had excited
Mr. Brown. Astern, lashed to the stump
of the mizzen-mast, was the figure of a tall, spare,
gray-haired man. His arms were clasped tightly
around a young girl, whose hair was whipped
out wildly by the wind.
Near by, another form was lashed to the wheel,
while forward were two figures, apparently those
of sailors. They also were tied, in this case to
the windlass. This fact alone betrayed the desperate
conditions through which the unfortunate
craft had fought her way.
“She’s a down-easter, from Nova Scotia or
Maine. Lumber, I guess,” opined Mr. Brown.
“Good thing for them they had a lumber cargo,
or she’d have been keeping company with Davy
Jones by this time. Give way, men!”
.bn 091.png
// 091.png
.pn +1
But all Mr. Brown’s urgings to “hit it up”
were unneeded. The crew of the boat were all
Americans, and anyone who knows the merchant
navy of to-day, knows that it is by a rare chance
that such a thing happens. American ships are
largely manned by foreigners; but aboard the
Ajax,—Captain Braceworth was particular in
this respect,—the majority of the crew were
American. Consequently, they needed no driving
to do their duty when lives were at stake.
Jack, tugging at his oar, felt the strength of
ten men. His whole being thrilled to the glory
of the adventure. This was real seaman’s work.
This was no job for a monkey-wrench sailor, but
a man’s task, requiring strength, grit and nerve.
But as they drew alongside the wreck, it was
apparent that any attempt to get close enough
to take off the crew must infallibly end in disaster.
Mr. Brown turned to his crew.
.bn 092.png
// 092.png
.pn +1
“Men, which of you can swim? I’m like a lame
duck in the water or I’d do it myself.” (And
nobody doubted that he would.) “We’ve got to
get a line to that craft.”
Jack’s face flushed with excitement. He would
prove worthy of his line of sea-going forbears.
“I can swim like a fish, sir! Let me try it!”
At the same time that he spoke, four other
voices expressed their willingness to try. Mr.
Brown looked at Jack.
“This is no job for a wireless kid to tackle,”
he said grimly. “Dobson, you spoke next. I’ll
send you. Get ready and make fast a line around
your waist.”
But Dobson was already knotting a line about
his middle. He stripped to his underwear, and,
while Jack looked on with bitter disappointment
in his face, the man tossed one end of the line
to Mr. Brown and then, without a word, plunged
overboard.
Jack watched him with a thrill of admiration,
as with strong, confident strokes he cleft the sea.
Then he looked in another direction. Off to the
.bn 093.png
// 093.png
.pn +1
leeward was the Ajax, tossing on the seas for an
instant and then vanishing till only the tops of
her masts and a smudge of smoke were visible.
It was growing dusk. A wan, gray light filled
the air. The next time the steamer rose on a
swell, Jack saw that at her mast-head the riding
lights had been switched on. They glowed like
jewels in the monotonous sea-scape of lead and
dull green.
Dobson reached the wreck. With clever generalship
he had waited for a big sea, and then,
as it rose high, he had ridden on it straight for
the vessel. When the sea swept by, they saw him
clinging to the main chains and after an instant
begin clambering on board with the line trailing
from his waist.
Those in the boat broke into a wild cheer.
Jack’s voice rang out above the rest.
“There’s a real seaman,” he thought; “one of
the kind my father and Uncle Toby were.”
.bn 094.png
// 094.png
.pn +1
As the hoarse shouts of the men in the boat
rang over the waters, they saw the form of
Dobson creeping aft along the wreckage. They
watched through the thickening light as the
shadowy figure toiled along. He gained the side
of the old man and the little girl.
Taking the line from his waist, he made it fast
to the latter’s body.
“Give way, men,” ordered Mr. Brown, and the
boat was warily maneuvered under the stern of
the wreck. It was dangerous, risky work, but
while the small craft tossed almost under the
derelict’s counter, the forms of the old man and
the child were lowered into her. Although both
were badly exhausted, there were stimulants in
the boat, and Mr. Brown pronounced both to be
safe and sound and not in any danger.
But the seaman who had made the rescues
was, himself, in no condition after his long, hard
swim to do any more. When the girl and the
old man were safe in the boat, he, too, made a
wild leap and boarded it. Immediately it was
sheered off.
.bn 095.png
// 095.png
.pn +1
Jack’s heart gave a wild leap. There were
still two men in the bow. What about them?
There was a second line in the boat and the
young wireless man had already made it fast
around his middle.
“It’s my turn now, Mr. Brown,” he urged.
“Let me go now, won’t you, and get those two
poor fellows in the bow?”
“Shut your mouth and sit still,” came hotly
from Mr. Brown; and then a sudden exclamation,
“Great guns! He’s as brave a young idiot
as I ever saw!”
For Jack had taken the law into his own hands,
leaped overboard into the boiling sea and was
now swimming with bold, confident strokes toward
the dim outlines of the derelict’s bow.
.pb
.bn 096.png
// 096.png
.pm illust 03 p096.jpg 432 "Jack leaped overboard into the boiling sea.—Page 94"
//[Illustration: Jack leaped overboard into the boiling sea.—Page 94]
.bn 097.png
// 097.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 12 XII. "JACK DISOBEYS ORDERS."
Outlined dimly in the distant gloom was the
hulk of the steamer. Her whistle was shrieking
hoarsely, now sounding, as the mate guessed,
a recall to the rescue boat before darkness
closed in.
Jack was a strong, able swimmer, but never
had he received such a breath-taking buffeting
as fell to his lot in that wild commotion of waters.
But with grim determination he fought his way
to the ship’s side. Those in the boat saw him
gain a foothold on the anchor chains and scramble
upward; but they could not guess what a
supreme effort of nerve and muscle those last
few moments cost him.
.bn 098.png
// 098.png
.pn +1
As he gained the deck he was compelled, perforce,
to cast himself gasping on his face, and
so he lay for a space. Then, from the gloom,
came a feeble call for help. It nerved him with
fresh vim. Among the tangled wreckage he
scrambled till he reached the place where the two
men were lashed to the bitts.
Thanks to the oil-spread waters, the seas were
no longer breaking over the wreck, but the two
men who had lashed themselves there to avoid
being swept over the side, were too feeble to
sever their ties. Jack cut them loose and signaled
to the boat. It was brought as close alongside
as Mr. Brown dared, and one after the other
the two seamen were hauled on board. Last of
all came Jack. He secured the rope to his waist
as it came snaking toward him from the boat
like a lasso, and then jumped outward. As he
sprang, he felt the hulk drop from under his
feet in a wild yaw.
At the same instant the boy felt himself being
drawn under water as if in the grasp of a giant
hand that he was powerless to resist. Then his
senses left him in a rocketing blaze of light and
a roar like that of a hundred water-falls.
.bn 099.png
// 099.png
.pn +1
When he came to, he was lying on the bottom
boards of the boat. From a bottle some stimulant
was being administered to him. He sat up
and stared about him wildly for a moment, and
then saw that they were almost alongside the
heaving hull of the tanker.
But of the wreck there was no sign.
“Went to Davy Jones like a plummet,” said
Mr. Brown cheerfully, “and almost took you
along with her, my lad. We had a fine job hauling
you aboard, I can tell you.”
Now came the dangerous task of hauling up
the boat of rescuers and survivors. But it was
accomplished at last by dint of cool-headed work
and seamanship. The two sailors were sent forward
to get dry clothing and hot coffee, while
the elderly man, who was Captain Ralph Dennis
of the wrecked vessel, and his daughter Helen,
were cared for in the officers’ quarters aft.
.bn 100.png
// 100.png
.pn +1
Feeling rather shaky and dripping like a
water-rat, Jack hastened to make a change of
clothing. By the time this was accomplished,
the Ajax was once more on her course. Hardly
had he drawn on dry socks before the old bos’n
was at the door.
“The skipper wants to see you forward. I
rather suspect there’s a storm brewing for you,
younker,” was his greeting.
“I’ll be there right away,” said Jack, and having
pulled on his boots, he hastened forward.
As he went, his heart beat a little faster than
usual. What fault had he committed now, he
wondered. Jack was a modest youth, but he
had suspected praise rather than censure for the
part he had taken in the rescue.
The skipper was in the chart-house giving a
few directions before he turned in, after an almost
continuous twenty-four hours of duty.
He greeted Jack with a frown.
.bn 101.png
// 101.png
.pn +1
“Ready, who gave you orders to go away in
that boat?” he demanded sternly.
“No one, sir, but I thought——”
“You had no business to think. This is not
a man-of-war or a passenger boat, but if everyone
on board did as they thought best, where
would discipline be?”
Jack stood dumbly miserable. He had performed
what he thought a meritorious act and
this was his reward!
“I did the best I could to help when one of the
men hung back, sir,” he said.
The captain’s face softened a bit, but his voice
was still stern as he said:
“Mr. Brown was in charge of the boat. He
should not have let you go. I blame him more
than you. But remember another time that you
must do nothing without orders so long as you
sail under me. That is all,—and Ready.”
“Sir?”
.bn 102.png
// 102.png
.pn +1
“I understand you conducted yourself according
to the best traditions of American seamanship.
I was glad to hear that. Now get along
with you and try to relay a message to our owners,
telling them of the rescue. If there is another
vessel within our range, inform me, as I
wish to transfer the shipwrecked men if possible.
The craft was bound from Portland, Maine, to
the West Indies with lumber, and there is no
sense in taking the rescued company all the way
across the Atlantic.”
Jack saluted and hastened off on his task. He
felt considerably lighter of heart when he left
the chart-room than when he had entered it.
There had been a gleam of real human sympathy
in the captain’s eye. That man of iron actually
had a heart after all, and Jack had read, under
his gruff manner, a kindly interest in his welfare
and esteem for his act in saving the two seamen.
.bn 103.png
// 103.png
.pn +1
“I’m glad I did disobey orders, anyway,” he
said to himself; “if it did nothing else, it has
shown the skipper to me in another light than
that of a cruel task-master and slave-driver.”
That night Jack succeeded in relaying, through
the Arizonian, of the Red B Line, a message to
the ship’s owners, telling of what had been done.
He also discovered that by noon of the next day
they would pass on the Atlantic track,—which
is as definitely marked as a well-beaten road,—the
Trojan, of the Atlas Line of freighters. He
made arrangements with the captain of that craft
to transfer the castaways of the Ajax. This
done, he informed the second officer, for the tired
captain was taking a well-deserved rest, and then
turned in himself.
Next morning the gale had blown itself out
and the Ajax was pushing ahead at top speed to
make up for lost time. Black smoke crowding
out of her funnel showed that coal was not being
spared in the furnace room. Everyone appeared
to be in good spirits, and the late autumn sun
shone down on a sparkling, dancing sea. It
seemed impossible to believe that only twelve
hours before that same ocean had claimed its toll
of human lives and property.
.bn 104.png
// 104.png
.pn +1
Not long before eight bells, the look-out forward
reported smoke on the horizon. Jack, who
had been in communication with the craft all
the morning, knew that the vapor must herald
the approach of the Trojan. He sent word forward
to the captain by a passing steward, and
the castaways were told to prepare for a transfer
to the other ship. Before the two crafts
came alongside, Captain Dennis had made his
way to Jack’s wireless room.
He looked forlorn and miserable, as well he
might, for he had lost a fine ship in which he
owned an interest.
“How is your daughter coming along?” asked
Jack, deeming it best not to dwell on the stricken
mariner’s misfortunes.
“Fairly well. We were two days in that gale.
It’s a wonder any of us lived. But I want to
thank you all from the bottom of my heart. That
was a fine bit of work, and I can’t begin to express
my gratitude.”
.bn 105.png
// 105.png
.pn +1
“We were glad to have happened along in
time,” said Jack; but at this moment the conversation
was interrupted by the appearance of
the captain’s daughter. Jack saw with surprise
that the bedraggled, white-faced maiden of the
day before had, by some magic peculiar to
womankind, transformed herself into a remarkably
pretty girl of about his own age. She
thanked him in a gentle way for his part in the
work of rescue, and Jack found himself stammering
and blushing like a school-boy.
“The Trojan is almost up to us now,” he said,
“and it will be time for us to say good-bye. But
I—I wish I could hear some time how you get
along after you get ashore.”
“We live in New York,” said the captain, coming
out of a sad reverie, “or we did. We’ll have
to find new quarters now. But this address will
always find me.”
.bn 106.png
// 106.png
.pn +1
“And here is mine,” said Jack, writing hastily
on a bit of message paper. The captain glanced
at it and then started.
“Are you any relative of Captain Amos
Ready?” he demanded eagerly.
“I’m his son,” said Jack. “I live with my
Uncle Toby and——”
But Captain Dennis was wringing his hand as
if he would shake it off.
“This is a great day for me, boy, even if my
poor old ship does lie at the bottom of the Atlantic
and Helen and I will have to start life all
over again. Why, Captain Ready and I sailed
together many a year, but I lost track of him
and he of me. Where is he now?”
Jack sadly told him of his father’s death. Then
there was only time for quick farewells and
hand-shakings, for an officer came hurrying up
to say that the boat was ready to transport the
castaways to the Trojan. The two big freighters
lay idly on the ocean, bowing and nodding at
.bn 107.png
// 107.png
.pn +1
each other, while the transfer was made. Then
the boat returned and was hauled up and the
vessels began to move off in opposite directions.
Jack stood at the rail gazing after the Trojan.
He waved frantically as the freighter got under
way, and thought he caught a glimpse of a white
handkerchief being wafted in return. He felt a
hand on his shoulder. It was Raynor. There
was an amused smile on the young engineer’s
face.
“Pretty girl that, eh, Ready? Pity she couldn’t
have made the trip with us.”
“Oh, you shut up!” exclaimed Jack, crimsoning
and aiming a blow at his friend’s head.
.bn 108.png
// 108.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 13 XIII. "OLD ANTWERP."
Through varying winds and seas, the Ajax
plowed steadily on her way, and in due course
arrived at Antwerp and discharged her cargo.
Of course, while in port, Jack was at liberty,
and he spent his time roaming about the quaint
old harbor and city.
Raynor joined him sometimes on these expeditions,
but the young engineer was kept busy
making minor repairs on the engines and directing
the machinists. Since he was the junior
member of the engine-room crew, this work fell
to his lot.
On the voyage across, and in port, too, whenever
it was possible, he had been steadily perfecting
himself in the wireless craft till he was
quite proficient at it for a beginner. Jack proved
.bn 109.png
// 109.png
.pn +1
an apt teacher and the young engineer, himself
unusually quick and intelligent, was a willing
scholar.
So the days passed pleasantly among the foreign
scenes of the town and harbor. All this time
Jack had been noticing surprising vigilance concerning
the firemen and the crew of the big
tanker.
One evening while they were roaming about
the town, making purchases of post-cards and
other small articles, Jack asked Raynor about
this.
“They’re on the look-out for the tobacco smuggling
gang,” explained his friend.
“The tobacco smuggling gang? What is
that?” asked Jack.
“Do you mean to say that you have never
heard of them or of their activities?” asked
Raynor.
Jack shook his head.
“Not till this minute, anyway,” he said.
.bn 110.png
// 110.png
.pn +1
“Well, then, you must know that most of the
Sumatra tobacco used for cigars and so on comes
to this port, and it can be bought here very
cheaply. In New York there is a well-organized
gang, as is known to every seaman, that makes
a practice of buying all that can be smuggled
into the country by the crews and firemen of
ships trading out of this port. Their activities
have been reported in the papers many times,
and all sorts of means have been employed to
check them, but somehow the trade still seems
to go on. So now you know why we keep such
a careful look-out while in this port.”
Jack was satisfied with the explanation and
thought no more of the matter, but a time was
to come, and that before very long, when it was
to be brought vividly before him again.
Jack liked Antwerp, with its fine buildings and
picture galleries. But he found that along the
docks were all manner of tough resorts where
the worst class of sailors spent their time while
in port.
.bn 111.png
// 111.png
.pn +1
He was passing one of these places one day
when a man, whom he recognized as one of the
engineers of the Ajax, approached him.
“Hullo, youngster,” he said, “come inside and
have something. I want to talk to you.”
Jack shook his head.
“I don’t go into places of that sort and I don’t
smoke or drink.”
The man looked at him and then burst into
a roar of laughter. “You’ll not get very far at
sea then,” he said.
“That’s just where I differ with you,” said
Jack, and was passing on when the man seized
his arm.
“Well, forget it,” he said. “See here, you’re
a pretty smart sort of lad and I can put you in
the way of making some money.”
“What sort of money?” asked Jack.
.bn 112.png
// 112.png
.pn +1
“Well, about the hardest part of your job will
be to keep your mouth shut.”
“You mean that there is something dishonest
involved?” inquired the boy.
“That all depends on what you call dishonest.
Some folks are pretty finicky. This something
doesn’t come within the law exactly, but there’s
good money in it.”
“I don’t want any of it,” said Jack, and moved
off.
The man called after him.
“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it,
but just forget anything I said.”
Jack did not reply, but hurried on. He was
bound for the Boulevard des Arts, one of the
most beautiful thoroughfares in Europe. As
he walked along, he wondered what the man who
had intercepted him could have been driving at.
He finally gave it up as too tough a problem.
But later on he was to recollect the conversation
vividly.
.bn 113.png
// 113.png
.pn +1
Jack’s pay was not very large, nor was that
of his chum, Raynor, but the two planned a trip
one day on one of the canals. They boarded an
odd-looking boat and for a very small sum they
voyaged across the frontier into Holland with
its quaintly dressed peasants, low, flat fields and
general air of neatness.
It was drowsy work gliding along the canal
at a rate of not more than six knots an hour.
Jack declared that he would have gone to sleep
for the voyage, had it not been for the captain
of the canal craft, who was a most willing performer
with his whistle, and tooted at everything
and everybody he saw.
From time to time they slowed up at a dock
and the passenger, if a man, jumped off without
the boat stopping. When a woman traveler
wished to alight, the boat was brought to a standstill.
“Look over there!” called Raynor suddenly, as
they passed a pretty cottage on the canal banks.
.bn 114.png
// 114.png
.pn +1
There, on the roof, was a stork family, father,
mother and two young ones.
“Well, we sure are abroad,” declared Jack,
gazing with pleasure at the pretty picture.
“Low bridge,” or its equivalent in Dutch, was
frequently called, and then all hands ducked
their heads till the bridge was passed. Clouds
began to gather, and one of the sudden rain
storms which sweep over Holland descended in
a pelting downpour. The passengers were driven
to the cabin, which they shared with a cargo of
cheese, traveling in state. But the storm soon
passed over and the sun shone out brightly once
more.
Windmills were in sight everywhere, their
great sails turning slowly. In some places the
roofs of the farm houses were on a level with
the banks of the canal.
Occasionally a broad-beamed canal craft, with
a patched brown sail, drifted lazily by, with a
leisurely Dutchman standing at the stern placidly
smoking a big China-bowled pipe, his family,
perhaps, or at least a dog, voyaging with him.
.bn 115.png
// 115.png
.pn +1
“Nobody seems to be in a hurry over here,”
said Raynor.
“No, it’s like that country where it is always
afternoon, that we used to read about in school,”
said Jack.
“Hullo,” he added suddenly, “what’s coming
off now?”
The little vessel was making for a sort of garden
with tables set about in it.
“Going to stop for dinner, I guess,” suggested
Raynor.
This proved to be the case. A true Hollander
cannot go long without eating, and the amount
of food the voyagers consumed astonished the
boys.
“They’ll sink the ship when they get back on
board,” prophesied Jack, looking about him with
apprehension.
.bn 116.png
// 116.png
.pn +1
The boys did not see Antwerp again till late,
as the returning boat was delayed. They found
everything closed up, although it was only eleven,
and the streets deserted. Antwerp believes in
going to bed early, and the hotels are all locked
by midnight. But that didn’t trouble the boys,
for they had their floating hotel in which to stay
and which they reached without incident.
.bn 117.png
// 117.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 14 XIV. "SIGHT-SEEING."
The boys found Antwerp a straggly town full
of fine buildings and galleries, but almost like a
maze without a plan. Jutting right off even the
finest thoroughfares were slums, and they were
advised to follow the tram lines and keep off the
more squalid of the streets.
Jack, who was quite a student, struck up a
friendship with a bookish old man whom the
boys met while exploring the great Cathedral.
From this mentor, who, fortunately, could speak
English,—French being the tongue most heard
in the capital of Belgium,—the boys learned much
of the history of the town.
Of course, as they already knew, he told them
that Antwerp was the sea-port of the Schelde
estuary, and one of the youngest of the Belgian
great cities.
.bn 118.png
// 118.png
.pn +1
The name originally meant “At the Wharf,”
their old friend told them, and even in antiquity
there was a small sea-port here, of which no
traces, however, remain. During the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, as Europe quieted down,
the city began to rise in importance. The large,
deep, open port floated the keels of vessels from
all over Europe. Under Charles the Fifth, Antwerp
was probably even more prosperous and
wealthy than Venice, Queen of medieval sea-ports.
The center of traffic was shifting from
the Mediterranean to the North Sea. In 1568
more than a hundred craft arrived at, and sailed
from, Antwerp daily.
It is to this period, so the old gentleman told
the boys, that Antwerp owes the cathedrals and
other fine buildings, containing pictures and objects
of art, which still adorn it.
.bn 119.png
// 119.png
.pn +1
But the Cathedral itself is a mixture of different
periods. Begun in the middle of the fourteenth
century, various parts were added till the
seventeenth.
The finest examples of the art of the two great
painters, Quentin Matsys and Rubens, are to be
found in Antwerp. The works of many other
painters of minor importance, too, adorn the
galleries and churches of the city in great numbers.
The decline of Antwerp, if it can be so called,
began in 1576, during the attempt of the southern
provinces of Flanders to throw off the yoke of
Spain. In that year a thousand fine buildings
were burned, the town hall razed and eight thousand
persons massacred by fire and sword. In
1585 the famous Duke of Parma completed the
destruction, and Antwerp seemed to be completely
crushed.
Then came the unhappy separation between
Holland and Belgium. The Dutch erected forts
on their own territory at the mouth of the Schelde
and refused to allow ships to proceed up the estuary.
Finally, in 1648, it was agreed by a treaty
.bn 120.png
// 120.png
.pn +1
that all ships should unload their goods for Antwerp
at a Dutch port, the freight being then
transshipped to the Belgian city by small river
craft.
Naturally, this action proved a severe blow
to Antwerp. Rotterdam and Amsterdam took
her place as commercial cities. In 1794, however,
the French, then in occupation, reopened
navigation on the Schelde and destroyed the commerce-killing
forts at the mouth of the river.
The great Napoleon caused new quays and a
harbor to be constructed, and it began to look
as though Antwerp were once more to enjoy
some of her pristine importance. But after Napoleon’s
overthrow, the city underwent another
change in her fortunes. She was made over to
Holland and thus became, by a twist of fate, a
Dutch sea-port.
.bn 121.png
// 121.png
.pn +1
Even when Antwerp became independent again
in 1830, the Dutch still maintained their heavy
tolls on shipping. This was a constant drain on
the city which had already suffered much during
the War of Independence when it was subjected
to a heavy siege.
In 1863, however, a large money payment
bought off the Dutch extortioners and Antwerp’s
prosperity began to rise. As the boys’ friend
pointed out, the city was the natural outlet of
the Schelde, and to some extent of all the German
Empire.
Since that time, so far as history is concerned,
the rise of Antwerp to her old place as one of
the world’s great commercial centers has been
rapid. It was on this account, as the old man
explained, that Antwerp was such a strange jumble
of the ancient and modern, for, until the shipping
embargo was lifted, she practically stood
still in her development.
The old man appeared to be very proud that
Antwerp, unlike Brussels, had retained her old
Flemish ideas in spite of the march of her trade.
.bn 122.png
// 122.png
.pn +1
He told the boys that it would require at least
four days to get a clear idea of Antwerp, and
after another day of exploration they began to
believe him.
But they made up their minds that they were
going to be able to give the folks at home a good
account of the city, so they stuck to the task even
though Raynor did yawn over pictures of the
Old Masters in dull colors and frames. The
young engineer was extremely practical, and
loudly declared in one of the galleries:—
“Well, that picture may be all right, but give
me something with a little ginger and color in
it.”
“My, but you’re a vandal!” laughed Jack, consulting
a catalogue. “That’s one of the most
famous pictures in Europe. It is by Rubens.”
“Guess I’m too much of a Rube-n to appreciate
it, then,” was Raynor’s comment.
.bn 123.png
// 123.png
.pn +1
But he was a methodical lad, as are most persons
who have a mechanical bent. He purchased
and loyally used a small red note book, in which
he jotted down everything they saw, good, bad
or indifferent. He soon had one book full, when
he promptly began on another, noting down whatever
was supposed to be of interest, whether he
understood it or not.
The boys enjoyed sitting under the shady trees
in the Place Verte, surveying the scene. It is
one of the few places in Antwerp from which a
clear view of the Cathedral can be obtained,
mean-looking houses shouldering up to the great
structure and spoiling it from other points of
vision.
“Say, Jack,” exclaimed Raynor one evening as
they walked rapidly shipward, “I’m getting tired
of moldy old cathedrals and rusty old galleries
full of Rubes,—beg pardon, I mean Rubens; can’t
we do something more lively?”
“What would you suggest?” asked Jack.
.bn 124.png
// 124.png
.pn +1
“Oh, let’s take a few trips around. Another
canal boat ride, for instance, or something like
that.”
“That would be fine but for one consideration,”
said Jack.
“And what is that?”
“Funds, old boy, dollars and cents. I don’t
know about you, but I’m pretty well down to
my limit.”
“Same here. Say, you’ve got to be rich to
enjoy these places, Jack.”
“I begin to think so, too,” declared his chum.
.bn 125.png
// 125.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 15 XV. "AN ADVENTURE—"
The boys were walking briskly down a tree-bordered,
rather badly lighted street in the residential
quarter as this conversation took place.
They had been to the home of a friend of Captain
Bracebridge with a confidential note. The
man to whom they had taken the message had
been absent at the theater. As they had a verbal
message to deliver, too, and supposed that it, like
the note, was confidential, they had not wished to
confide it to a servant but had decided to wait.
It was, therefore, late when, their errand completed,
they started back on a lonely walk through
the residential section to the ship.
The good folk of Antwerp go to bed early.
No one else was on the street as the boys hurried
along. Tree shadows lay across the road in black
patches, where there were lights brilliant enough
to effect such results.
.bn 126.png
// 126.png
.pn +1
“Well, I suppose we ought to be glad to have
the chance to get abroad at all,” muttered Raynor,
continuing the conversation whose record
began in the last chapter.
“Yes, indeed, we’re lucky fellows,” said Jack
cheerfully.
“Yes, it’s a fine old city and all that,” admitted
Raynor rather grudgingly, “and I’ve certainly
enjoyed my stay here; but I’d have liked to look
about a little more. I wonder if there isn’t some
place where they have machinery to show?”
“Gracious! I must say you’re a barbarian.
Can’t you see all the machinery you wish in that
greasy, fire-spitting old engine room of yours,
without wanting a sight of more?”
“Well,” retorted Raynor, “would you trade
one of those ‘old masters,’ as they call them, for
a dandy set of modern instruments to put in your
wireless room at home?”
.bn 127.png
// 127.png
.pn +1
Jack was fairly stumped. He broke into a
laugh.
“That’s not a fair way of putting it,” he said
after a minute. “I like monkeying with wireless
as much as you do with machinery, but I can
enjoy other things.”
“So can I. An ice-cream soda, for instance.”
“I’m with you there,” agreed Jack, “but we’ll
have to wait for that.”
“Yes, till we get back to the U.S.A. The stuff
they sell you for soda here wouldn’t be offered
you by a bankrupt druggist in Skeedunk with
bats in his belfry.”
Jack broke into a laugh, which suddenly
changed into a quick exclamation of astonishment.
“Hark!” he cried.
“What’s the matter?” breathlessly from Raynor.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“You didn’t? You must be—there it is again.”
This time it was Raynor’s turn to start.
.bn 128.png
// 128.png
.pn +1
“I heard it all right then,” he exclaimed. “It
was——”
“A woman screaming.”
“That’s what. Gracious, what’s the matter?”
“It’s off down that street there,” decided Jack,
pointing a little distance ahead where a small
street branched off the main thoroughfare and
skirted a small, unlighted park. “Come on,” he
shouted to Raynor, and was off.
“What are you going to do?” called Raynor.
“Find out what’s the trouble. There’s something
serious the matter.”
Suddenly the cries stopped as abruptly as if a
hand had been clapped over the mouth of the person
uttering them.
“There’s no time to lose,” panted Jack, sprinting.
“I’m with you,” gasped Raynor, running at
his companion’s side.
.bn 129.png
// 129.png
.pn +1
The two lads dashed around the corner. Before
them lay a narrow, gloomy street, edged by
the dark trees of the little park, which, at that
time of night, was, of course, deserted.
At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary
appeared. Then they suddenly saw the headlights
of an automobile. As suddenly, the lights
vanished. They had been switched off by somebody.
“There’s where the trouble is,” cried Jack, and
was conscious of a wish that he had some sort
of weapon with him. They were rushing into
they knew not what danger; but Jack was no
quitter. Some woman was in trouble, and that
was enough for him.
The same was the case with Raynor. Both
lads, typical Americans, lithe-limbed, stout of
heart and muscle, and with grit to spare, didn’t
give a thought to the danger they might be incurring
by their daring dash to the rescue. The
mere idea that they were needed urgently was
enough.
.bn 130.png
// 130.png
.pn +1
“Some ruffians are attacking the auto!” came
from Jack as they drew closer.
“Yes. Look! There’s a woman in the car.
Two of them,” added Raynor.
“They’ve been held up.”
“Looks that way.”
As the two boys neared the car, the whole
scene became clear to them. It was a limousine
and three men, two on one side and one on the
other, were poking revolvers into the windows of
the enclosed part. As the boys came up, the
chauffeur, who till then had been paralyzed by
fear, leaped from his seat and dashed off, taking
the low stone wall, surrounding the park, at one
bound.
“The great coward! He might have been a
big help to us, too,” exclaimed Jack with indignation
as he saw this.
“Yes, it’s three to two, and they are armed,”
cried Raynor.
.bn 131.png
// 131.png
.pn +1
The next moment, with a startling yell they
attacked two of the men simultaneously. One
of them went down with a crash under Jack’s
powerful right swing before he could do anything
to defend himself, for none of them had
noticed the approach of the two American lads.
The fellow’s revolver went spinning over the
wall and fell with a ring of metal out of his
reach. In the meantime, Raynor was not having
such an easy time with the man he had tackled.
This fellow was a heavily-built specimen of dock
lounger, or worse, with a Belgian cap on his head
and a handkerchief tied over the lower part of
his face.
As Raynor rushed him, he seized the young
engineer in an iron grip and pressed a weapon
to his side.
“Fool, to interfere! This is your last moment
on earth!” he snarled.
From the interior of the limousine, two women,
one elderly and the other young, looked out, paralyzed
with alarm. Too frightened to scream,
they sat stock still as they saw what was about
to happen.
.bn 132.png
// 132.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 16 XVI. "AND ITS CONSEQUENCES."
Jack saved the day.
With muscles of steel, tensed like tightly coiled
springs, he leaped on the back of the fellow
whose revolver was pressing against Raynor’s
side, and threw his arms about his neck. Choked
and dazed, the man toppled over backward and
fell with a crash to the concrete walk.
“Quick, old fellow, get his revolver before he
can get up,” choked out Jack.
Raynor, recovering from his struggle, bent
over and picked up the weapon and stood with it
ready for action. Just as he did so, the third
man, who up to now had been deprived of action
from surprise at the quickness of the whole
thing, came to himself and made a rush for Jack.
.bn 133.png
// 133.png
.pn +1
Before Jack could turn, the fellow had seized
him and knocked him over. At the same instant,
in the distance, they heard the shrill screaming
of whistles.
“Les gendarmes!” shouted the man who had
knocked Jack over.
The two recumbent men, aroused from their
stupor by their fright at the approach of the
police, gathered themselves up, and the three
sped away, running at top speed across the little
park where all was dark and shadowy.
In the meantime, the cowardly chauffeur, who
had been watching from behind a tree, saw that
the day was saved, and began to consider what
he should do to save himself and his reputation.
He had plainly deserted his employer’s wife and
daughter, frightened out of his wits when the
three ruffians demanded the women’s diamonds
as they were on their way home from the
opera. But now he leaped the wall again and
shouted to the women that he had merely gone
to summon the police, seeing that the boys had
.bn 134.png
// 134.png
.pn +1
the case well in hand. Then he jumped to the
seat, and, not wishing to face a police examination
himself or involve his employer in one, he
turned on full power and sped away.
Hardly was he out of sight, than there appeared
a detachment of Antwerp policemen, led
by an officer running at full speed toward the
boys. Some timid householder had heard the
screams and shouts, but, too timorous to venture
out himself, had telephoned the nearest station;
and the sudden appearance of the officers was the
result.
“Bother it all,” exclaimed Jack, “here come the
police. Although they’d have been welcome a
while back, we don’t want them now.”
“Why not?” asked Raynor, not unnaturally.
“Well, we have a very important letter to the
captain with us. If the police get hold of us,
they’ll want to do a whole lot of questioning, and
goodness knows what time we’ll get back.”
“What shall we do?”
.bn 135.png
// 135.png
.pn +1
“Take to our heels, I guess. It doesn’t look
very honest, but we must get that letter to the
captain to-night.”
“That’s so; he said he’d sit up and wait for
us,” responded Raynor.
“That is why I’m so anxious not to be detained.
Come on.”
The two boys set off, running at top speed.
“Keep in the shadow of the wall,” said Jack;
“we don’t want them to see us.”
But that is just what the police did do. Their
leader happened to be keen of eye and almost
instantly he detected the two fleeing forms. He
shouted something in French.
The boys kept right on. They ran like greyhounds.
But the police were fleet of foot, too.
Then the boys heard behind them a series of
sharp, yapping barks.
“What in the world are those dogs for?”
asked Raynor pantingly.
.bn 136.png
// 136.png
.pn +1
They had passed the park now and were running
through a street bordered with dark houses.
Jack’s reply was startling.
“They’re police dogs!”
“Police dogs?”
“That’s right. They have them in New York,
too, and I remember reading in the paper that
they were imported from Belgium.”
Shouts came from behind them.
They were in French, but the boys readily
guessed their import. As if to emphasize their
cries, the police, who believed not unnaturally
that they were in pursuit of the miscreants who
had disturbed the midnight peace, drew their revolvers.
Bullets spattered at the heels of the boys.
“We’ve got to stop,” panted Raynor.
“If we do, we may get shot,” gasped Jack.
“Quick, in here.”
.bn 137.png
// 137.png
.pn +1
He seized Raynor’s arm and pulled him inside
an iron gate in a high wall that surrounded a
garden, in which stood a pretty, old-fashioned
house. It appeared to be unoccupied.
“We’re in a fine pickle now,” muttered Raynor.
“Yes, I’m sorry we ran. If they catch us now,
we’ll have an awful time explaining.”
Raynor shuddered.
“You don’t mean they’ll send us to jail?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot about these
foreign police. They’re likely to do anything.”
“And we can’t speak their language,” added
Raynor. “That makes it worse.”
“I’m afraid that it does,” agreed Jack. “But
hush! here they come.”
Headed by the nosing, sniffing, rough-coated
police dogs, held in leashes, the police came running
down the street. The boys had outrun
them and hoped that by crouching in the shelter
of the wall within the iron gate, they could
throw them off the track.
But in this, they had calculated without the
dogs!
.bn 138.png
// 138.png
.pn +1
As the dogs came level with the gate, they
stopped and sniffed suspiciously. The police behind
them began to talk excitedly, waving their
arms and talking with their hands as well as
their tongues.
“It’s all off now,” whispered Jack.
“Couldn’t we run up that gravel walk and get
back of the house?” breathed Raynor.
Jack shook his head. He didn’t dare to talk.
Suddenly the leader of the police squad pointed
to the iron gate.
“Open it and search the house and grounds
thoroughly,” he said in French. “These are desperate
criminals, it is clear. Great credit will
come to us, mon braves, can we catch them.”
The iron gate was pushed open.
The next moment the two American boys with
beating hearts stepped forward and faced this
body of men, who, it was plain, believed Jack
and his chum to be miscreants of the blackest
sort.
.bn 139.png
// 139.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 17 XVII. "RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET."
It was the most unpleasant predicament of
his life in which Jack now found himself. Naturally,
his chum felt the same way about it.
The irony of the situation was irritating.
Having chased away, at the risk of their own
lives, some desperate crooks, the lads who had
done all this found themselves accused of being
nefarious characters.
“They are Anglise,” exclaimed one of the men
as he turned a bull’s-eye lantern on them.
“No, sir, we are not. We are Americans,”
exclaimed Jack proudly.
The leader of the gendarmes laughed in an
amused way.
“Your country should be proud of you,” he
said in good English with a provoking sarcasm.
.bn 140.png
// 140.png
.pn +1
In fact, neither Jack nor Raynor looked at
his best just then. Their caps were gone, lost
in the struggle with the would-be robbers, their
hair was tousled, perspiration streamed down
their faces and their garments were torn and
dusty.
Jack felt all this, and the knowledge of it did
not tend to cheer him. Had he been a policeman
and known no more of the facts than did the
gendarmes, he felt that he would have been justified
in acting in the same way. But he determined
to try to explain the case.
“We are off the American tank steamer Ajax,”
he said. “To-night we had an important errand
in this section of the city. On our way back to
the ship we heard screams, and investigated. We
found three men trying to rob an old lady and
a younger one who were seated in the closed
part of a blue limousine.
.bn 141.png
// 141.png
.pn +1
“After a struggle we disarmed them and put
them to flight. Just as you people came up, the
chauffeur, who ran away during the fight, reappeared,
jumped into his seat and drove off.
We were in a hurry to get back to our ship and
so, foolishly, as I can see now, we ran off, thinking
that if we stayed we might be detained and
questioned.”
“Is that all?” asked the officer calmly.
“That is all,” responded Jack.
“It is enough.”
“Enough for what?” The man’s tone nettled
Jack in spite of himself.
“Enough to secure you both a lodging in the
prison of the city to-night.”
The boys looked aghast.
“What! Do you mean to make us prisoners
and lock us up?” asked Jack, who had hoped
that at the worst nothing more would be done
than to question them and, having ascertained
the truth of their stories, set them free.
.bn 142.png
// 142.png
.pn +1
The officer nodded and then gave a brisk command.
At his words, a policeman took hold of
both boys by the right and left arms, twisting
them back so that if they made any great struggle
to escape, their arms would be broken.
It was not till then that the full seriousness
of their positions broke over the boys. Raynor
gave a wrench to free himself of the grip of the
police, but an excruciating pain that followed
made him quickly desist.
“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this
will all be straightened out.”
Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.
“Of course we can send a message to the ship,
and then you can speedily ascertain that we are
telling the truth and set us free,” he said bravely,
but with a sinking heart.
To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.
“You will be allowed to tell your story to the
examining magistrate in the morning,” he said
coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to inform
you that if it isn’t any more probable than
the one you told me,—well——”
.bn 143.png
// 143.png
.pn +1
He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his
sharp-pointed, little black mustache.
“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst
out Jack.
“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us
that,” was the reply.
Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s
coat. It bulged conspicuously in one of the
pockets. He stepped quickly to the American
lad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out
a revolver.
It was the one Raynor had taken from the
foot-pad; but its discovery made things look
black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed.
He looked at them with a sneer.
“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two
honest, law-abiding lads carry pistols abroad at
night! This discovery alone, messieurs, proves
that your story is a concoction from beginning
.bn 144.png
// 144.png
.pn +1
to end. If you really come off a ship, you are
samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want
here.”
Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of
the hand enjoining silence and a crisp command
to the subordinate police silenced him.
The next moment, held as if they had been
desperate characters, the two boys found themselves,
under armed guard, being marched
through the sleeping city of Antwerp to prison
cells.
Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure.
But protests, they knew, would be
worse than silence, and so they submitted to
being ignominiously marched along without uttering
a word. Beside them strutted the little
officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,”
word of which he took care reached the newspapers
that night.
.bn 145.png
// 145.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 18 XVIII. "IN DURANCE VILE."
The boys passed a sleepless night in a none
too clean cell. A sentry paced up and down in
front of the bars, as if they stood committed
for some heinous offense. To keep their spirits
up, they tried to make light of the affair. But
in that dreary place, with the stone-flagged floor
and the steel grating, it was pretty hard to be
lively.
“Never mind; it won’t last long, and think
what a laugh we’ll have on these fool police once
we are out,” said Jack with a dismal attempt at
a chuckle.
“Yes; but in the meantime, they have the
laugh on us,” objected Raynor with grim humor.
“Anyhow, I’m not sorry. Those ruffians would
certainly have robbed those two women if we
hadn’t done something,” he added.
.bn 146.png
// 146.png
.pn +1
“We made our mistake in not standing our
ground and facing the police,” decided Jack.
“I guess they’d have gathered us in on general
principles, we being the only people in sight.
Their motto seems to be, ‘We’ve got to collar
someone and it might as well be you.’”
“That’s the way it appears to be,” agreed Jack
with a sigh.
It seemed as if that night would never pass.
But, like everything else, it came to an end at
last. With a great clanking and parade of police,
the boys were marched forth and ordered into
a covered wagon. Then they were jolted off over
the cobbled streets and finally ordered to alight
in front of a building that looked as if the old
burgomasters of the place might have transacted
business there.
It was, in fact, one of the ancient guild-houses
of the city, and bore a coat of arms on its ornate,
time-stained front. Inside, it was cool and dark,
with scrupulously clean floors and furnishings.
.bn 147.png
// 147.png
.pn +1
Had the boys been in any more pleasant situation,
they would have admired the quaint old carved
beams and the stone-work enriched by clever,
bygone masons’ tools. But just then they had
no eye for architecture.
They were ushered into a large room whose
groined ceiling and dark oak panels made it appear
that only twilight ever filtered through the
stained-glass windows, set in frames of carved
stone. At one end, behind a high desk of dark,
shiny wood, which looked as if it were as old
as the building, sat a dried-up dignitary with a
skin like parchment, peering through a great pair
of heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles.
In front of him was a huge pewter ink-stand
with pens sticking up in it like quills upon a
porcupine. Before this personage, whom they
guessed to be the officiating magistrate, the boys
were marched with much pomp and ceremony.
Then the little mustached official who had
played the leading part in their arrest stepped
forward.
.bn 148.png
// 148.png
.pn +1
With a bow and a flourish he explained the
case. To the boys’ astonishment, too, they saw
their caps handed up. Evidently the police had
found them and taken them up as evidence. This
was a hopeful sign, for in each cap the owner’s
name was inscribed.
“They’ll know that we told the truth about
our names, anyway,” said Jack, nudging Raynor.
At this juncture there was a sudden disturbance
in the back of the court room, and in broke
a burly, sun-bronzed man. It was Captain
Bracebridge, the last man in the world the boys
wanted to have see them in such a position. They
crimsoned with mortification and felt ready to
sink through the floor.
The captain burst through a line of small Antwerp
police, who tried to restrain him, like a
runaway horse through a crowded street. He
came straight up to the boys and gasped out
breathlessly:
.bn 149.png
// 149.png
.pn +1
“Read about it in the papers and rushed
straight here. What’s the truth of it all?”
“Then you don’t believe that police story?”
asked Jack gratefully.
“Of course not. Tell me all about it.” He
turned to a short, sallow man, carrying a big
bag, who had followed him in, like the dust in
the trail of the whirlwind. “This is a lawyer.
He’ll straighten this thing out in a brace of
shakes.”
The lawyer made a long harangue to the court,
of which none of the Americans understood a
word; but apparently he had asked leave to take
his clients into a consulting room, for presently
they were ushered into a chamber which might
have been, and probably was, used for the purpose
in medieval times. They were in the midst
of their story, when another disturbance occurred
outside. A handsome automobile had
.bn 150.png
// 150.png
.pn +1
driven up, out of which stepped a portly personage
with dignified, white whiskers, gold-rimmed
eye-glasses, top-hat and frock-coat.
“Monsieur La Farge, the head of the government
railways,” whispered the loungers in the
court room as he hastened down the aisle and
whispered to the magistrate, who received him
with great deference.
The next moment he, too, was escorted into
the consulting room. To the boys’ amazement,
he rushed up to them and, with continental demonstrativeness,
began wringing their hands up
and down and uttering a tirade against the police,
the methods they employed and the force in
general.
“You are interested in this case, sir?” inquired
Captain Bracebridge.
“Interested!” M. La Farge appeared to be
about to explode. “The police! Bah! Dunderheads!
Idiots! Assassins! These boys saved
my wife and daughter from ruffians who would
rob them, and——”
.bn 151.png
// 151.png
.pn +1
“Your wife and daughter?” exclaimed the
boys in one breath. Their case was certainly
taking a startling turn, for already their attorney
had whispered who the newcomer was and his
high rank.
“Yes, they told me about it on their arrival
home last night, and also about the cowardly,
foolish actions of Alphonse, the chauffeur, whom
I have discharged. When I read in the papers
of the arrest of two American lads and the story
that they told, despite which the police had arrested
them, I was angry, furious. I knew then
that the deliverers of my dear ones had been
arrested like felons,” exploded M. La Farge. “I
hastened here at once to make what reparation
I could for such an act of the idiots, the police!
Bah!”
.bn 152.png
// 152.png
.pn +1
“Perhaps the police were not altogether to
blame,” said Jack as the peppery M. La Farge
concluded his angry harangue. “We should not
have run away, and then perhaps we should not
have been arrested.”
“It was all the fault of that foolish chauffeur
in driving away as he did,” exclaimed M. La
Farge. “But in one sense I am glad all this has
happened, although I am deeply mortified at the
same time. Had it not been for this occurrence,
I should never have known whom to thank for
the brave act you performed. I could not have
rewarded you——”
He drew out a check book. But both boys
held up expostulating hands.
“None of that, if you please, sir,” said Jack.
“He speaks for me, too,” said Raynor. “We’d
do the same thing over again, if it had to be
done.”
“Police and all?” smiled Captain Bracebridge.
“I beg your pardon,” said M. La Farge, re-pocketing
the check book. “I should have known
better than to offer money for such a service; no
.bn 153.png
// 153.png
.pn +1
money could repay it. But I must think of some
other way. However, the first thing to be done
is to extricate you from this unpleasant position
and obtain the apologies of the police.”
For a man of M. La Farge’s influence, this
was easy to do; and the boys certainly felt that
the humble apology that the little mustached
officer tendered them almost on his knees was
due them.
That evening they were the rather embarrassed
guests of M. La Farge at dinner at his
home. In order not to make them feel uneasy,
there were no guests outside the immediate family;
but both boys had to endure what was for
them quite an ordeal when the pretty Miss La
Farge and her handsome, gray-haired mother
thanked them again and again, and almost wept
in apologizing for the action of the police. Then,
seeing that the boys were really troubled by their
thanks, they tactfully turned the subject, and the
boys, whose bashfulness soon wore off, enjoyed a
.bn 154.png
// 154.png
.pn +1
jolly evening. After dinner Miss La Farge, who
was an accomplished musician, played and sang
for them, including in her program a medley of
American airs.
As they were leaving, receiving many cordial
and pressing invitations to come again, their host
presented each of them with a small flat package.
“A slight remembrance,” he said. “It is inadequate
to express the gratitude of my wife, my
daughter and myself, but perhaps it will help
you in recollecting that you always have three
warm friends in Belgium. Do not open them
till you reach the ship.”
The boys stammered their thanks and then,
after more warm good-nights, they parted from
their kind and grateful hosts. That they walked
briskly to the ship may be imagined. They were
on fire with eagerness to see what the packages
contained. They hastened to Jack’s cabin and
.bn 155.png
// 155.png
.pn +1
opened them, and then gasped with delight. Inside
each was a gold watch and chain; but, more
wonderful than this, was the inscription under
each lad’s name, “In grateful and unfading remembrance
of the night of —— from their steadfast
friends, the family of M. La Farge.”
“Phew!” exclaimed Jack, mopping his forehead,
not altogether on account of the warmth
of the night, “what do you know about that?”
“Nothing,” exclaimed Raynor, “nothing at all!
Aren’t they bully! But let’s see what is in these
two flat pocket-books.” In the excitement of
finding the watches, they had not paid much attention
to two flat cases of dark leather enclosed
in each package. The books were opened and
found to contain, under isinglass, like a commuter’s
ticket in America, two passes on the government
railways, signed by M. La Farge and good
all over the Netherlands.
The boys’ cup of happiness was pressed down
and running over.
.bn 156.png
// 156.png
.pn +1
“Just to think that only a few minutes before
we ran into our big adventure, we were kicking
because we had no money to travel,” cried Jack,
as he eyed his engraved pass lovingly. “Now
for a few trips!”
.bn 157.png
// 157.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 19 XIX. "THE FIELD OF WATERLOO."
The Ajax was to remain two days or so longer
in Antwerp, and the boys readily obtained permission
from the captain to make all the use they
could of their passes. They had already exhausted
what they wished to see of Antwerp,
including the famous fort on the Tête de Flandre
on the opposite bank of the river, the great cathedral,
the home of Rubens’ parents, and the magnificent
picture gallery.
Now they could enlarge their opportunities,
and they decided to take a trip to Brussels and
from there to the field of Waterloo. Accordingly,
they started in high spirits on their tour
as soon as they could get a train. Their passes
were marked “first-class,” so they soon ensconced
themselves in a leather-lined compartment, while
their less fortunate fellow passengers had to be
content with “second” and “third.”
.bn 158.png
// 158.png
.pn +1
“I wonder how this arrangement would go in
America?” asked Jack as they sank back in the
soft-padded cushions.
“I guess everybody would go first-class,”
laughed Raynor. “We haven’t anyone at home
willing to brand himself ‘second’ or ‘third’ in the
race.”
“Now who on earth is this?” wondered Jack
presently, as a brightly uniformed official entered
the compartment which they had to themselves.
“Conductor, I guess,” hazarded Raynor.
The official removed his cap and bowed low.
“Bonjours, messieurs,” said he; “les billets, si
vous plait.”
“I guess he wants our tickets,” said Jack, fishing
for his. This surmise proved to be correct.
.bn 159.png
// 159.png
.pn +1
The politeness of the official was more marked,
if it could be possible, when he saw, from the
signature on the passes, that the boys were traveling
under “royal auspices.” He raised his cap
and bowed again. Not to be outdone, the boys
bowed back with equal suavity.
“Merci bien,” he said.
“Merci bien,” responded Jack, who had acquired
some French at high school.
“Mercy beans, too,” sputtered young Raynor,
thinking that Jack was giving an order for a
Boston lunch. The conductor bowed again and
vanished, a bell rang and they were off. The
ride lay through a farming region and the road
was cool, clean and smooth.
On their arrival in Brussels, they found accommodation
at a hotel overlooking the public
square. The windows, although the maître de
hotel had assured them that it was one of the
best rooms in the house, were only four feet high.
“Gee, we have to lie down to look out!” exclaimed
Raynor.
“On the square?” asked Jack with a grin.
.bn 160.png
// 160.png
.pn +1
“No; on the level; that’s the way I lie,”
chuckled Raynor. Both lads were in high spirits.
Their unexpected stroke of luck had surely
proved a windfall.
In the center of the Place Royale, the first
place the boys explored, stands an equestrian
figure of Godfrey of Bouillon.
“It was on that spot that he first assembled
his crusaders who won back Jerusalem to the
Christians,” said Jack, wise with guide-book
knowledge.
“And to think that up to now I always thought
Bouillon was a soup,” remarked Raynor dryly.
Before the train left for Waterloo, they had
time to visit the Royal Museum, walking down
the Rue de La Régence. The Royal Museum
was filled with fine pictures and statuary, but, to
tell the truth, the boys had become a little bit
cloyed with art at Antwerp. It takes some experience
and training to be interested in, and
gauge properly, such things, although both felt
that what they had seen had done them permanent
good.
.bn 161.png
// 161.png
.pn +1
Several times during their walk to the railroad
station where they were to take a train for
Waterloo, the boys were much amused and interested
by the working dogs hitched to small carts.
Sometimes the working dogs got into a fight with
the leisure-class canines, and then there was a
fine racket among the owners and the dogs, till
things were straightened out and humans and
canines, both growling, went on their way.
“Almost all the shops say they cater to the
King or the Court of Flanders,” commented Raynor
as they strolled along.
“I guess they get most of their real money
from Americans, at that,” was Jack’s comment.
The Gare du Midi, or Central Station, they
found surrounded by a crowd of shouting, noisy,
officious guides, and also several individuals who
looked none too honest. They buttonholed every
arrival, volunteering all sorts of information in
bad English. This, despite the fact that there
were plenty of signs in plain view.
.bn 162.png
// 162.png
.pn +1
It was half an hour’s ride to Braine-l’Alleud,
for the most famous battle of modern history
was fought several miles from the village whose
name it bears. This is because Wellington sent
his victorious despatches from Waterloo, which
has ever since claimed the honor of naming the
place of Napoleon’s downfall.
They took a small, rickety carriage at the station,
and before long Raynor was pointing to a
mound with an ugly, clumsy-looking lion on it.
“Zat is zee Lion of Belgium,” volunteered the
driver. “Eet ees model from French cannon
and mark zee spot where zee Prance of Orange
was wounded.”
“Is that so?” muttered Raynor. “Well, it looks
more like a Newfoundland dog than a lion to
me.”
.bn 163.png
// 163.png
.pn +1
“Eet weigh twenty-eight ton,” volunteered the
driver again, pointing with his whip to the lion,
close access to which was gained by a steep flight
of steps. There are two hundred and twenty-six
of these steps, and the boys, on climbing them,
were considerably out of breath when they
reached the summit and saw the historic plain
spread out under their feet.
“I’m disappointed,” confessed Jack frankly.
“I thought it was much larger. Why, it doesn’t
look like much more than a parade ground!”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a ‘parade’ at the
time of the battle, with three hundred thousand
men tearing at each other’s throats for five or
six hours and leaving fifty thousand dead and
wounded on the field,” commented Raynor, who
was well up in history.
Then they drove over the road built by Napoleon
fifteen years before the battle.
“Might have been a good cavalry road, but
it sure is a bone-shaker in this rig,” remarked
Jack, and his companion agreed with him. They
were much interested in the farm house of
.bn 164.png
// 164.png
.pn +1
Hougomont, or rather its shell-battered ruins.
This was the hottest point of the battle. The
French assaulted it for hours, but did not succeed
in taking it.
The family, who own the house, make a good
living selling souvenirs to visitors.
“I’ve been told,” said Jack, with a smile, “that
every fall they plant little bullets and souvenirs.
The winter snow and spring rains make the crop
ready to be plowed up.”
“Profitable farming,” laughed Raynor. However,
the boys bought a grape shot and what purported
to be an insignia from an artilleryman’s
cap.
“It must have been a great battle,” said Raynor
as they paid off their hack bill, the size of
which made them raise their eyebrows.
“Yes, and the Belgians are still able to charge,”
remarked Jack dryly.
.bn 165.png
// 165.png
.pn +1
In the railroad carriage on the way back a
self-assertive Englishman was holding forth on
what a great victory Wellington had achieved.
“Which,” he added, turning to the boys, “was
all the more creditable because he fought with
raw recruits. Most of our seasoned soldiers were
in your country at the time.”
“And most of them are planted there yet,”
remarked Raynor.
The Englishman glared at him; but Jack
smoothed things over and everything was amiable
till Raynor again disrupted international peace.
“Deuced funny clothes those beggars wear,”
remarked the son of Britain, gazing out at a
wooden-shoed, baggy-breeched peasant.
“Oh, I don’t know. Not so much funnier than
an Englishman’s,” said the American lad; after
which there ensued a silence lasting till the train
rolled into Brussels.
.bn 166.png
// 166.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 20 XX. "HOMEWARD BOUND."
The boys thought they had never seen so many
vari-colored uniforms as were on parade in Brussels.
They passed a fresh one every minute.
“I guess every soldier designs his own,” said
Raynor.
“Well, some of them certainly look it,” agreed
Jack as a dapper little man with a bottle green
uniform with yellow stripes and facings and a
cap without a peak swung by.
They went to the Church of St. Gudule, an
old Gothic structure on the top of a hill, which
Jack wished to see. Raynor came along for company.
“I’ve seen enough ruins,” he declared.
“Well, this will be the last one,” promised Jack.
.bn 167.png
// 167.png
.pn +1
In the church they found many people at
prayer, especially in front of an altar on which
were hung models of arms, legs and every portion
of the human anatomy, as a reminder to
the saint of what part of the body needs help.
“There’s Adam and Eve,” exclaimed Raynor
in low tones, motioning to the figures of the
father and mother of the race carved under a
fine pulpit. Some American tourists were admiring
these figures at the same time as the boys.
“Oh, look!” cried one of the lady tourists.
“Wasn’t that sculptor a mean thing?”
“Why?” asked her companion innocently.
“Just look! He’s put all the lions and tigers
around Adam and given poor Eve nothing but
peacocks, monkeys and parrots. It’s a shame!”
The boys had dinner at a side-walk café. They
found it very amusing to watch the various types
of Belgians who went strolling by, enjoying the
evening air. More uniforms than ever seemed
to be out. To their surprise the bill for their
meal was moderate, although the café declared
that it “Catered to the King.”
.bn 168.png
// 168.png
.pn +1
“Well, if this is all he pays for his meals I
wonder what he does with the rest of his money,”
was Raynor’s comment.
After dinner the boys went out to the “Kirmess,”
which lasts six weeks each summer.
“Like a cheap Coney Island,” was their verdict
as, not much impressed, they sought a theater.
Here they found that they might as well
have saved their money—almost their last—for
nearly every act they saw was American.
Early the next day they had to return to Antwerp,
tired out but happy from sight-seeing and
conscious of exceedingly light pockets.
“Anyhow, we’ve had our money’s worth,” declared
Jack.
“Yes; both in adventure and sight-seeing,”
added Raynor, as they returned to the ship.
.bn 169.png
// 169.png
.pn +1
They found a warm invitation from the La
Farge family awaiting them; but had to decline
it, with sincere regrets, for there were minor repairs
to be made on the wireless and, besides,
Raynor was on duty in the fire room.
The next day the Ajax was ready for sea.
She was to sail “in ballast,” that is, without
cargo. Jack thought her uglier than ever as she
lay at the dock with steam up, as a white plume
from her scape pipe testified, and with big
patches of rust on her black sides; for the work
of repairing these ugly patches would not be done
till a few days before she arrived in New York.
Now that she was so high out of the water, the
“tanker” looked like a big black cigar with a
miniature turret on either end.
“She’ll roll like a bottle going over,” the crew
prophesied; a prophesy, by the way, which was
to be fulfilled.
But Jack forgot all this when at last the orders
to sail came from the agent’s office and, with a
roaring of the whistle, the “tanker” started on
the voyage home.
.bn 170.png
// 170.png
.pn +1
Raynor came up to Jack as he stood gazing
down at the puffing tugs which were helping the
marine monster clear.
“Glad to be going home, Jack?” he asked.
“What a question! Glad? I should say so!
Of course I love my work and all that, but after
all there’s no place like home, you know.”
“That’s so,” assented Raynor, “although I
haven’t much of a home. Both my parents died
when I was a kid, and except for a sister who
lives way up New York state, I haven’t a relative
in the world that I know of.”
“I am almost as badly off,” confessed Jack,
and he went on to tell Raynor about his home
life.
“What a jolly way to live,” cried the young
engineer, “on a flower-garden schooner! That’s
the greatest ever!”
.bn 171.png
// 171.png
.pn +1
“I didn’t think so all the time, I can assure
you,” said Jack with a laugh, “but I guess the
wireless I rigged up there made me think of this
way of life.”
The ship was in the stream by this time and it
was Raynor’s turn on watch. As he dived below,
he took occasion to turn and grin at Jack.
“We ought to make a good run home,” said he.
“How is that?” asked Jack innocently.
“Oh, maybe a certain young lady has hold of
the tow rope,” and, before Jack could reply, he
had dived below.
The Ajax made the run through the Channel
and out on to the broad Atlantic without incident.
Coming through the Channel, they encountered
fog and some bad weather, but on the whole
the skipper was pleased with the conditions and
the ship’s behavior.
They had been two days on the ocean and a
fairly high sea was running one night, when
Jack, who was seated in the wireless room, where
he had been exchanging information and wireless
small-talk with half a dozen other operators,
noticed a sudden bustle on the deck outside.
.bn 172.png
// 172.png
.pn +1
A grimy fireman had run forward from the
fire-room companionway and then the captain
had hastened aft. He went to the door and
looked out. He was just in time to see several
men carrying up a limp form from the engine-room
and taking it into the captain’s cabin.
“An accident!” exclaimed the boy. “Somebody
hurt! I wonder who it can be?”
He hailed a passing fireman who was coming
off watch and going forward.
“What has happened below?” he asked.
“An accident. Someone hurt.”
“Do you know who it is?”
The fireman shook his head.
“I was just coming off watch and didn’t stop
to inquire.”
He made off and then Jack saw the captain
hasten past and come hurrying back with his
surgical case. Jack would have asked him, if
.bn 173.png
// 173.png
.pn +1
he had dared. As it was, he buttonholed another
grimy stoker on his way to the forecastle and
put his question again.
“Sure I know,” was the reply, “one of the
engineers hurt.”
“Badly?”
“I dunno.”
“Who was it?”
“The third. Name’s Raynor, I guess.” And
the man hurried on, leaving Jack standing there
aghast.
.bn 174.png
// 174.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 21 XXI. "SURGERY BY WIRELESS."
While he still stood there, the captain emerged
from his cabin and, to Jack’s surprise, came up
to him.
“Know anything about surgery, Ready?” he
asked.
“Why, no, sir. I heard there had been an
accident. My friend Raynor. Is he badly injured,
sir?”
The question was put with painful eagerness.
“Not necessarily, my lad. His arm was
crushed in a shaft while he was oiling it. The
deuce of it is, we’ve no doctor on board and I
don’t know how to care for it. I may have to
amputate it. I did that once on a sailing ship;
and in that case, I’ll need assistants. That is
why I asked you if you knew anything of surgery.”
.bn 175.png
// 175.png
.pn +1
“You’ll have to amputate it? Oh, sir! Poor
Raynor!”
“I don’t want to do it if I can help it, but I
don’t want to run the risk of blood poisoning. If
only we had a doctor! It would go to my heart
to deprive the boy of an arm, but what am I
to do?”
Never had the captain seemed so human, so
sympathetic to the young wireless man. He
looked genuinely distressed.
“They ought to compel every ship to carry a
doctor,” he said. “Accidents are always happening,
and—strike my topsails! What’s the
matter with the boy?”
For Jack’s eyes had suddenly begun to dance.
He gave a sudden caper and snapped his fingers.
“I’ve got it, sir! I’ve got it!” he cried.
“What, in the name of Neptune? St. Vitus’s
dance?”
“No, sir. A doctor. I can get you a doctor,
sir.”
.bn 176.png
// 176.png
.pn +1
“Have you suddenly gone mad?” demanded
the captain. “We’re a thousand miles out at
sea.”
“I can get one by wireless, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the big liners carry doctors, sir. I was in
communication with one only a few minutes ago.
The Parisian of the Ocean Line.”
“Where is she?”
“About three hundred miles to the west of us
on the Atlantic track, sir.”
“Three hundred miles away! Then how can
we get a doctor from her?”
“Very simply, sir, I think, as you say it may
not be necessary to amputate. Have Raynor
brought in here and laid on my cot. I’ll raise
the Parisian and get her doctor on the wire.
Then I can flash a full description of the case
and the doctor can flash back to us, through the
Parisian’s operator, full directions how to proceed!”
.bn 177.png
// 177.png
.pn +1
“Jove, boy! You have got a head on your
shoulders, after all. It sounds extraordinary,
but why shouldn’t it be done?”
“It is worth trying, anyhow, sir,” said Jack,
his face radiant at the idea that he might be the
means of saving his poor chum’s arm. The
captain hastened off to give the necessary orders,
while Jack raised the Parisian once more.
In crisp, flashing sentences he sent, volleying
through the air, an explanation of the case. By
the time poor Raynor, white and unconscious,
was carried to the bunk and laid out there, while
the open-eyed sailors looked on, the Parisian’s
doctor was standing by the side of the liner’s
operator listening gravely to the symptoms of
the case as they came pulsing through space.
The captain, with bandages, instruments, antiseptics
and so forth, sat by Raynor’s side, anxiously
awaiting Jack’s first bulletin.
.bn 178.png
// 178.png
.pn +1
“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than
once as Jack sat alert, waiting for the first word
from the doctor who was to treat a surgical case
across three hundred miles of ocean.
The silence was tense and taut, and broken
only by the heavy breathing of the injured engineer.
“What is the man doing?” said the captain
impatiently at length.
“It takes even shore doctors time to give a
correct diagnosis in some cases, sir,” ventured
Jack gravely. “I suppose he is considering the
conditions.”
“Absent treatment at three hundred miles,”
muttered the captain. “Ready, I begin to believe
that this is a crack-brained bit of business,
after all.”
“Wait a minute,” warned Jack, holding up his
hand to command attention, “here is something
coming now!”
His pencil flew over the pad and then stopped
while he flashed back:
.bn 179.png
// 179.png
.pn +1
“Thanks, that’s all for now. I’ll cut in again
when we are ready for the next step.”
He turned to the captain and read slowly from
his pad the doctor’s directions for treating the
injury.
“He says that, from your description, there are
no bones broken. The arm is merely crushed,”
said the boy; and then, bit by bit, he read off the
far-distant surgeon’s directions for treating the
injured member. As he read, the captain and
his assistant amateur surgeons plied dressings
and antiseptics with diligent care.
At last the doctor of the Parisian said that he
had no more advice to give that night, but flashed
a prescription for a soothing draught to be compounded
from the ship’s medicine chest.
By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully
without any symptoms of fever, and Jack
cut off communication with the distant liner after
promising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”
.bn 180.png
// 180.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 22 XXII. "“YOU SAVED MY ARM.”"
It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured
arm in a sling, sat on the edge of Jack’s
bunk. They had passed out of range of the
Parisian, but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the
crushed arm was getting along well, and the
“wireless doctor” had left instructions for the
treatment of the case as it progressed.
“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for
me, all right, with those Hertzian waves of
yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I
feel about it. But how in the world did you ever
come to think of such a stunt?”
“I can’t claim that it was very original,” was
Jack’s rejoinder; “in fact, it has been done two
or three times before on freight ships that carry
no doctors.”
.bn 181.png
// 181.png
.pn +1
“Tell us about it,” urged the invalid.
“Well,” was the answer, “one case I heard
about occurred on board the S. S. Parismina,
while she was crossing the Gulf of Mexico. A
sudden call came to her from a small island out
of the path of regular ships called Suma. A
small colony lived there like so many Robinson
Crusoes, mining phosphates.
“A tramp steamer happened along once in a
while, and they could sail to the mainland, but
those were their only links with civilization. To
carry the phosphates from the mines to the coast,
they had a narrow gauge railway. One day this
railway cut up didoes; a train ran away and
crushed a workman’s foot.
“Luckily, the island had a wireless station
with a powerful equipment. There was no doctor
and the man was so badly injured that it was
feared he would die before they could get one.
Well, what did the bright young wireless man
do but get busy and start sending out calls broadcast
for a doctor.
.bn 182.png
// 182.png
.pn +1
“At last the Parismina picked up his message,
and Dr. C. S. Carter of the ship volunteered his
services. The Parismina was then just two hundred
miles away from the island. The doctor
transferred his office to the liner’s wireless room
and took the patient’s pulse and temperature,
via the air line. Then he told them just how to
prepare a strong antiseptic and how to fix up the
broken ligaments.
“The wireless treatment was kept up till the
Parismina was four hundred and twenty miles
away, when the doctor was able to dismiss the
case.”
“Some class to that,” said Raynor admiringly.
“Do you know any more like that?”
“Yes, there is one other I can recall, so you
see that I can’t claim the credit for any originality
in the idea.”
“Tell us about that other one,” urged Raynor.
.bn 183.png
// 183.png
.pn +1
Jack paused a moment to adjust his instruments
and send a message to another ship, giving
their position and the weather. Then he shut
off the connection and turned to his chum.
“This other one, as you call it, occurred on
the freighter Herman Frasch, while she was well
out at sea. Captain McGray of the ship was
seized with a bad attack of ptomaine poisoning.
He grew worse, although they did all they could
for him with the help of the ship’s medicine chest
and the book of directions that goes with it.
“The ship was out in the Atlantic off the Florida
coast. The captain suddenly thought of a
plan by which his case might be treated intelligently.
He knew there was a government station
at Dry Tortugas, Florida, one hundred miles
off. He ordered a despatch sent there.
“As it so chanced, the despatch was not picked
up by the government station, but by the operator
of the Ward Liner Merida, which was just leaving
Progresso, Yucatan.
.bn 184.png
// 184.png
.pn +1
“‘Doc!’ he exclaimed, rushing into the cabin
of the Merida’s doctor, ‘there’s a man awful sick
with ptomaine poisoning.’
“The doctor lost no time in grabbing up his
medicine case.
“‘Where is he, my man? What stateroom?’
he asked. ‘I don’t want to lose any time on such
a case.’
“‘Well, he’s about eight hundred miles to the
west of us, Doc,’ said the operator dryly, ‘but
here is the diagnosis,’ and he handed the doctor
a long aerogram.
“The doctor whistled.
“‘Pretty bad,’ said he, ‘temperature 104,
nausea, rash on face and neck.’ Then he added
quickly, ‘Give me an aerogram blank quickly.’
“He wrote out a prescription and a few minutes
later it was being flashed across the sea to
the Frasch. The medicine was prepared, and not
long after the wireless reported that the captain
was ‘Resting easily.’
.bn 185.png
// 185.png
.pn +1
“The following morning the captain’s temperature
was sent and he was reported ‘a little better.’
The prescription was changed and the captain
improved rapidly. By this time a number of
other ships had picked up the messages, and the
stricken skipper might have had a consultation
of physicians if his case had demanded it.
“So you see I did nothing very wonderful,”
concluded Jack with a smile, turning once more
to his key.
“You saved my arm,” insisted Raynor stoutly,
and then he left Jack to his work and hastened
off to the chief engineer’s cabin to ascertain how
soon he could be taken off the sick list.
.bn 186.png
// 186.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 23 XXIII. "A RIOT ON THE DOCKS."
In due time the voyage ended at the port of
New York. The Ajax would not be ready for
sea again for two weeks to come, and in the
meantime her crew was paid off, Jack among
them.
Raynor, after promising to call on the young
wireless man on board the Venus as soon as he
returned from a flying visit to his sister, shook
hands warmly with his young chum. He proffered
his left hand, though, for his injured arm
was not entirely mended even then.
Uncle Toby received his young nephew with
characteristic demonstrations of delight. He inquired
if he had had occasion to use anything
from the voluminous chest of medicines that the
drug-compounding uncle had given to the boy.
.bn 187.png
// 187.png
.pn +1
Jack had not the heart to tell the anxious old man
that the contents of most of the bottles had gone
overboard, although he had given some of them
to a stout old quartermaster, who was as fond of
dosing himself as are most sailors. The patient
had drunk off the embrocations and rubbed in the
internal remedies and declared himself much
benefited; so that Jack could, without stretching
the truth, tell his uncle that his remedies had accomplished
a lot of good on the Ajax.
“I knew it! I knew it!” declared the old man,
rubbing his hands delightedly. “They were never
known to fail. I’ll give you another boxful when
you are ready for sea again.”
“I’ve plenty left of the old lot, uncle,” declared
Jack.
“Nothing like being well provided, though, my
hearty,” said his uncle. “I’d hate to think of you
being sick, away out at sea, without some of the
‘Universal Tonic and Pain Eradicator’ handy.”
.bn 188.png
// 188.png
.pn +1
The night after his return Jack bethought himself
of some bits of apparatus he had left in his
cabin on the Ajax. He decided to go over to her
dock and get them. It would not take long and
he was anxious to conduct some experiments
with a view to the betterment of his “wireless
alarm,” which had not worked quite satisfactorily.
The Ajax was not berthed in the Erie Basin,
there being temporarily no room for her there,
but lay at one of the Titan Line’s wharves in
New York City.
The dock was on West Street, and it was not
a long trip across the Brooklyn Bridge to where
she lay.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he told his uncle
as he left.
“All right, my hearty,” said the old salt, engrossed
in the composition of an invaluable malarial
remedy for a captain bound for the South
American coast.
.bn 189.png
// 189.png
.pn +1
When Jack reached the ship the evening had
turned from a cloudy, dull twilight into a damp,
disagreeable drizzle. A heavy Scotch mist filled
the air and the big electric lights on the pier
shone through the haze like blobs of pale yellow.
At the head of the gangplank was an old ship’s
watchman who readily passed him on board on
his explaining his business. Jack was surprised
to see that there were several vague figures flitting
about the elevated after-structure of the
“tanker.”
“I thought all hands were ashore,” he said.
“No; there’s the fireman and an engineer left
on board,” said the watchman. “They mean to
keep up steam till it’s time to berth her over in
the Basin, I guess.”
Jack’s mission took him longer than he had
thought it would. He decided not to go home
to supper, but to take it at any nearby restaurant
and then come back to search for what he wanted
later.
.bn 190.png
// 190.png
.pn +1
He found a quiet, respectable place and ate a
hearty meal. When he had paid his check he
returned to the ship and to his cabin. Some
little time longer was spent in getting together
the odd effects he wanted.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a sound
of shouting and yelling and brawling somewhere,
as near as he could make out at the river end of
the dock.
“Wonder what’s up?” thought the boy; and
then the next minute, “Sounds to me like a lot
of firemen cutting up in a riot.”
There was a lull and then the clamor burst out
afresh. Loud, angry voices rose, and fierce
shouts, as if the men on the dock were in deadly
strife.
Jack ran out of his cabin.
As he did so the old watchman came pattering
along the steel decks and clambered up the ladder
to the superstructure, where Jack was standing.
“What is the matter?” demanded the boy.
.bn 191.png
// 191.png
.pn +1
“The firemen!” panted the watchman, pointing
to the dock.
“Well, what’s the reason of all this racket?
Are they fighting?”
“Fighting! They are trying to kill each
other!” puffed the old watchman in a scared
voice.
The lad knew that the firemen of big steamers
are about as hard a crowd as can be found anywhere;
but it was unusual for them to be making
such a racket so close to the ship. He surmised
correctly that some of the men had been
ashore on a carouse while the others kept up
steam.
“You’d better run for the police,” he told the
scared watchman, and while the old fellow pattered
off on his errand Jack’s ears were suddenly
assailed by another sound.
Splash!
.bn 192.png
// 192.png
.pn +1
Something had struck the water right alongside
the ship. Jack was just about to shout, “Man
overboard!” when he peered over and saw in the
fog-wreathed space between the ship and the
dock a dark object drop from some port in the
fire-room below him and strike the water with
a second splash.
For a flash he thought it might be some fireman
taking French leave of the ship. But a second’s
thought convinced him that what had
dropped was no human being but a big bundle
of some sort.
“Now what in the world is going on?” he
thought undecidedly.
On the dock the din of the fighting firemen
still kept up. But right then Jack was more concerned
with the mysterious happenings on board
the ship itself. Something very out of the ordinary
was going forward, that was plain enough.
But what could it be? What was being thrown
out of the fire-room port?
He was still struggling with the mystery when
there came another sudden sound.
.bn 193.png
// 193.png
.pn +1
Jack recognized it instantly as the noise of an
oar moving in a rowlock.
A boat was moving about in the dark obscurity
between the ship and the dock. Peering over,
Jack could see the dim outlines of the little craft
moving slowly about far below where he stood.
Then of a sudden another of those mysterious
bundles dropped from the fire-room.
He saw the boat impelled toward it as it lay
floating, and then it was hoisted on board.
“What black work is going on here?” thought
the young wireless man as he watched.
.bn 194.png
// 194.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 24 XXIV. "A CALL FOR THE POLICE."
Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the true
meaning of the scene going on below him dawned
on the lad.
The tobacco smugglers! The men who worked
with the gang of customs cheaters, with their
headquarters across the dark river in New Jersey!
Yes; that was undoubtedly the explanation of
it. What was he to do? Go below and alarm
the engineer in charge of the fire-room crowd?
No; the man was only an apprentice engineer, as
young Ready knew, and more than probably he
was in with the gang himself.
Back and forth moved the boat, dodging in and
out of the black shadows cast by the dock. It
was an ideal night for such work. The fog lay
thick, like a blanket laid over river and city.
.bn 195.png
// 195.png
.pn +1
Through the curtain of mist boomed the hoarse
voices of tugs and ferryboats as they played a
marine game of blind man’s buff in the fog. Jack
felt terribly alone. He might have summoned
help from the dock, but the rising and falling
noise of the riot, which was evidently still in
progress, told him that the men in charge of the
wharf already had their hands full.
All at once the boy had one of those swift
flashes of inspiration that come sometimes like
a bolt from the blue in moments of great emergency.
He would summon the police by wireless!
The police boats, as he knew, lay at Pier A, the
Battery, with steam constantly up, so as to be
able to dart off on the instant after wharf thieves
and smugglers. They all carried wireless and he
would be certain to catch an operator on duty.
At any rate, there was a wireless attached to the
marine police station itself, which was situated
in a big building adjacent to the Aquarium.
.bn 196.png
// 196.png
.pn +1
With Jack to think was to act. He was swift,
to spring to his key and begin sending out a call.
He looked the code word up in his book and almost
instantly the heavy spark began crackling
and snapping out a summons:
.ce 2
“H.-P.-----H.-P.-----H.-P.”
“Harbor Police! Harbor Police! Harbor Police!”
Cracking like the lash of a giant whip, writhing
like a tortured serpent of flame, the lithe,
green spark leaped between its points. Never
had Jack’s fingers worked so fast. Before he
could summon the guardians of the harbor it
might be too late. The boat might have gathered
up its cargo of contraband and sneaked off like
a thief in the night into the impenetrable fog.
At last, after an interminable wait, came an
answer from out of space.
“This is H. P. What is it?”
“This is the tank steamer Ajax, lying at Pier
29, North River.”
.bn 197.png
// 197.png
.pn +1
“Yes, yes, yes.”
The answer came mapping back from amid a
mystifying maze of other flying dots and dashes.
“There is a gang of tobacco smugglers at work
here!”
“The dickens, you say! Hold on a minute.”
“All right. But you must hurry men up here
if you want to nail them.”
“Who are you?”
“The wireless man of the Ajax. I was here
late and saw the work going on.”
“Bully for you! We’ll rush Launch B up there
on the jump.”
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” chattered back
Jack’s key; and then silence fell once more.
Jack jumped up from his sending table.
“At any rate, I’ve done my duty,” he thought.
He went to the door. He wanted to look down
into the black fog-filled pit overside once more
and see what was going on. Glancing cautiously
over, he almost gave a gasp of delight.
.bn 198.png
// 198.png
.pn +1
A second boat was at work!
“My gracious, if they get here in time they’ll
make a fine haul of doubtful fish!” he said to
himself in a low voice.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when
he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He was
spun round like a top and found himself in the
clasp of a giant fireman. The hairy-chested fellow
was naked from the waist up, and his coal-smeared
face and blood-shot eyes did not add to
the beauty of his appearance.
Suddenly the man’s grip transferred itself to
Jack’s neck. The fingers, hard as iron, closed
on his windpipe. He felt his breath shut off and
his eyes starting out of his head. The man threw
him roughly to the deck, and as he did so Jack
recognized in him the sailor who had hung back
when the boat was to be launched to the rescue
of the derelict, and whose place he had taken.
The fellow had been transferred to the fire-room
force as a punishment.
.bn 199.png
// 199.png
.pn +1
The boy could feel the giant’s hot breath fanning
his face as the man knelt over him, one knee
crushingly on his chest.
“So, my young gamecock, you bane play the
spy, hey?” he snarled. “You bane forgat everything
you seen, or overboard you go with your
figurehead stove in!”
.bn 200.png
// 200.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 25 XXV. "IN THE NICK OF TIME."
The blood sang loudly in Jack’s ears. He
fought for breath against the remorseless pressure
on his throat. But the two great, gnarled
hands of the fireman held him as if in a steel
vise.
“You bane forgat what you see! You bane
forgat it!”
The Norwegian emphasized what he said with
a bump of Jack’s head against the deck at every
word.
Twisting in what he felt was his death struggle,
Jack managed to loosen the man’s hold ever so
little. It was no time to consider fair tactics.
Seizing the advantage he had gained, the boy
sank his teeth deep into the man’s arm.
.bn 201.png
// 201.png
.pn +1
With a yell of pain, the fellow relaxed his grip,
and in a flash Jack was on his feet, while the
Norwegian, disconcerted at this sudden attack,
lay sprawling on the deck. As he arose, staggeringly,
Jack dealt him a smashing blow in the
face, but it only staggered the fellow for an instant.
It could have been little more than a mosquito
prick to his bull hide.
Roaring with rage, the fellow tore at Jack,
who, feeling that his life was at stake, tried to
make a dart for the door of the wireless cabin.
But the man was too quick for him. He caught
the boy in the embrace of a maddened wild beast.
“I bane keel you for that, you young demon!”
he cried, and bore Jack toward the rail.
“Don’t! Don’t!” implored the boy, who felt
that his last moment had come. But the brute
showed no mercy. Deliberately he raised the boy,
who was no more than a featherweight, in his
arms, and was about to cast him into the water
when suddenly something unexpected occurred.
.bn 202.png
// 202.png
.pn +1
A bulky form rushed upon the scene, and the
next instant the sailor went staggering back under
a crashing blow. Simultaneously a revolver
flashed and a harsh, stern voice exclaimed:
“Don’t move a step or I’ll shoot you down like
the mongrel cur you are!”
“Captain Braceworth!” gasped out Jack, who
could hardly keep his feet.
“That’s who it is, youngster, and just in time
to save your life, I imagine. I happened to be
not far off and they summoned me to the dock to
quell that riot. When that was done I came on
board, and I’m glad I did. Don’t move, you despicable
dog!” This to the fireman, who was trying
to sneak off.
At almost the same instant there came from
below the sound of a pistol shot.
“What in Neptune’s name does that mean?”
demanded the captain. “What’s happening to
this ship?”
.bn 203.png
// 203.png
.pn +1
“I think I can explain, sir,” said Jack, while
the captain still kept the cowering fireman
covered.
“Then do so by all means, and then I’ll trouble
you to get me a pair of handcuffs from my cabin
for this fellow.”
“It’s this way, sir. To-night I came on board
to get some bits of apparatus and a book or two
that I had left in my cabin. I happened to see
a big bundle dropped into the water and then
I saw a boat cruising about. I summoned the
harbor police by wireless.”
“Jove! You’re not called ‘Ready’ for nothing!”
exclaimed the captain, eyeing the boy with
unconcealed admiration.
“And then, sir, this man saw what I had been
up to and threatened to kill me if I told.”
“A threat, I believe, he is perfectly capable of
carrying out. Don’t move there, you,” to the
fireman. “I see it all now. That struggle on the
dock was a blind to keep the watchman’s attention
attracted while the smugglers got that stuff
out of the bunkers. Ready, you’ve foiled a clever
plot.”
.bn 204.png
// 204.png
.pn +1
More shots came from below.
“It’s the police, sir!” exclaimed Jack, “and I
guess they’ve come in time.”
Just then a police sergeant appeared on the
upper deck. He had come on board from the
dock, having been summoned with a file of men
by the old watchman. He looked astonished, as
well he might, at the picture before him: a white-faced,
shaking boy, a sullen, whipped cur of a
fireman and a stalwart seaman covering the man
with a revolver. From below, where the police
were rounding up the smugglers, who put up a
desperate resistance, also came sounds of conflict.
“Sergeant, if you’ll handcuff this man, I’ll explain
all this in a brace of shakes,” said the captain.
He speedily did so to the officer’s satisfaction,
and the malefactor was led off, after
Jack had promised to appear against him in the
morning when the case came up in court.
.bn 205.png
// 205.png
.pn +1
As for the gang in the boats, they, too, were
rounded up after several shots had been exchanged
without bloodshed. Jack was warmly
congratulated by the police, and it was late before
he was able to slip off home to the schooner.
He found his uncle anxiously waiting up for
him, and Jack told his story with as little melodrama
in it as he could. But his throat was
rapidly turning black and blue where his assailant
had grasped him, and his uncle would not
hear of the lad’s turning in till it had been anointed
with Captain Ready’s “Bruise Balm and Sore
Soother.”
.bn 206.png
// 206.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 26 XXVI. "A FRIENDLY WARNING."
The next day in court the fireman, whose name,
by the way, was Lars Anderson, and all the other
smugglers were held for the higher tribunals of
the federal government, under whose jurisdiction
their cases, with the exception of Anderson’s,
came.
Heavy sentences were prophesied for all of
them. Many were the black glances cast at Jack
by the gang as they were led away. But these
malicious looks did not come alone from the malefactors.
Out in the courtroom was gathered a
hard-looking crowd.
Coal passers and firemen of the Ajax against
whom nothing could be proved, although it was
morally certain that they were connected with
the gang, had gathered there to see how it fared
.bn 207.png
// 207.png
.pn +1
with their companions. When Jack was giving
his testimony he saw many malevolent glances
fixed on him, and one man went so far as to shake
his fist covertly at the lad.
But Jack did not falter, and gave his story in
a manly, straightforward fashion that won him
the approval of the court and the respect of the
attorneys. He left the courtroom with Mr.
Brown, the captain having gone uptown with
some friends.
As they passed out of the door the firemen who
had witnessed the scene within were gathered
about the doorway. They eyed Jack scowlingly
and more than one muttered threat was heard.
As soon as they had passed out of earshot,
Mr. Brown spoke seriously to Jack.
“I’d be very careful how I went about New
York at night after this, if I were you,” he said.
“Why?” asked Jack innocently.
“Simply because those fellows have it in for
you.”
.bn 208.png
// 208.png
.pn +1
“But this is New York City. Surely they
wouldn’t dare——”
“They’d dare anything fast enough if they
could get you up a dark street,” said the mate
sententiously.
“But they’ll be sailing with us again, anyhow,”
said Jack.
“They will not!” said Mr. Brown with emphasis.
“But recollect that some of them are
desperate characters. Firemen, some of them at
least, are as bad as they make ’em. You’ve sent
their pals to jail. Very well then, their code of
justice requires them to avenge themselves on
you. So look out for squalls!”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” laughed Jack as they
shook hands and parted.
At the Brooklyn Bridge he paused to buy a
paper. The first thing that caught his eye made
him flush and then laugh.
.bn 209.png
// 209.png
.pn +1
There at the top of the page and spread out
over two columns was a portrait of himself,
drawn by an artist possessed of a vivid imagination,
inasmuch as he had never seen Jack.
Then there was a half-tone of the Ajax,
labeled “Scene of the Thrilling Battle for Life.”
Underneath came headlines:
.nf c
WIRELESS HERO BATTLES FOR
HIS LIFE WITH TOBACCO
SMUGGLING GANG.
JACK READY HERO OF NIGHT FIGHT
ON THE FREIGHTER “AJAX.”
.nf-
.nf b
Message to Police Wings the Air and
\ \ Results in Capture of Daring, Desperate
\ \ Band.
.nf-
“Well, that’s going some, as Raynor would
say,” laughed Jack, hardly knowing whether to
be amused or indignant.
“There’s one satisfaction,” he thought as he
rode over the bridge on a surface car and digested
the long interview with himself that he
had never given, “nobody would ever recognize
me from that picture.”
.bn 210.png
// 210.png
.pn +1
A few days later Jack received a letter from
the company. It enclosed a handsome check “for
valuable and appreciated services.” This time
Jack did not return the check.
“Still,” he mused, “if it had not been for Captain
Braceworth, there might have been a different
story to tell.”
The letter, however, delighted him more than
he showed. It demonstrated for one thing that
the company appreciated what he had done, and
that, if all continued to go well, he was in the
line of promotion. He dreamed night and day
of his next step upward, and longed for a berth
on one of the Titan Steamship Company’s coasting
vessels that ran to Galveston and Central
American and West Indian ports. They carried
passengers, and they paid their operators much
more than the Ajax class of wireless men received.
“If I can only get some more opportunities to
show what I can do,” thought the boy, “I’m bound
to get on. ‘Keep plugging,’ my dad used to say,
.bn 211.png
// 211.png
.pn +1
and that is just what I am going to do, no matter
how many discouragements or hardships I
meet. And then, perhaps, some day——”
Jack went off into a day dream, and it was an
odd thing that his reverie led him into a sudden
determination to seek out Captain Dennis at the
address that had been given him, and to call on
the captain. Perhaps there was another member
of the captain’s household that Jack was anxious
to see, too!
.bn 212.png
// 212.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 27 XXVII. "AN UNEXPECTED MEETING."
He found Captain Dennis installed in a pleasant,
though small, flat in that section of New
York known as Greenwich Village. It is a queer
old quarter, full of once fashionable houses with
dormer windows and white doorsteps, and some
of them with shutters. Captain Dennis had been
unable to find another ship, and was working for
a ship chandler. But he bore up bravely under
his misfortunes, and as for his daughter Jack
thought that she was the most charming, enslaving
bit of budding womanhood he had ever seen.
Under the circumstances it is not surprising
that the young wireless man did not need to be
pressed to stay to supper. How the time flew!
Captain Dennis dozed and only took part at times
in the lively chatter of young Ready and his
“little gal,” but Jack did not find anything to
object to about this, you may be sure.
.bn 213.png
// 213.png
.pn +1
When at last he left with the promise to come
soon again and his head full of plans for a “regular
party” on the old Venus, he found a raw,
foggy night outside, and at that late hour the
streets of the old-fashioned quarter almost deserted.
Now the streets of Greenwich Village twist
and turn, as somebody has said, “like a giant
pretzel.” Tenth Street crosses Eleventh Street,
and Eighth Street runs through both of them in
this topsy-turvy old quarter.
Jack’s course lay for the elevated station at
Eighth Street, but, what with the fog and his
unfamiliarity with the section, he found himself
utterly lost after a short time, wandering about
with no idea where he was.
.bn 214.png
// 214.png
.pn +1
But to his nostrils came a whiff of the sea, and
he suddenly bethought himself of the fact that,
although there were no late passers-by or policemen
to be seen in “the village,” he might be able
to find somebody on the waterfront who would
direct him.
“I’m a fine sailor to lose my bearings like this,”
he scolded himself as he bent his steps in that
direction.
If the village had been deserted, there was
plenty of life—and life of a very doubtful sort—on
the waterfront. Saloons blazed with light,
and from within came discordant sounds of disorderly
choruses and songs. These places were
the haunt of ’longshoremen, stevedores and the
lower class of sailors from the big liners, whose
docks ranged northward in a majestic line.
Jack had no desire to go into one of these resorts,
but he looked about in vain for some more
respectable place in which to inquire. As is not
uncommon in New York, not a policeman was in
sight, and the few passers-by were too ruffianly-looking
to make the boy feel inclined to accost
them.
.bn 215.png
// 215.png
.pn +1
At last he found himself opposite a small eating
place—the Welcome Home—that appeared
to be fairly respectable. A full-rigged ship painted
in red and blue on its front window and the
legends displayed in the same place told him it
was an eating house for sailors.
And so he decided to go in. In the front of
the place was a glass showcase filled with cheap
cigars. Behind it were gaudily colored posters
of steamship lines.
There was no one behind the counter, and Jack
started toward the rear, where three men sat at
a table talking rather boisterously.
One of them, a big, hulking fellow with the
build of a bull, brought his fist down on the table
with a crash that made the plates and glasses
jump, just as Jack came in.
“The kid’s on the Ajax,” the lad heard him
say in a rough voice, “and if ever I catch him,
I——”
.bn 216.png
// 216.png
.pn +1
He stopped short as he heard Jack’s footfall
behind him. The next instant he turned a
bloated, brutal countenance, suffused with blood,
upon the boy.
Up to that instant, Jack had not connected himself
with the subject of conversation. But he did
now. With a quick heart-leap he had recognized
the hulking brute at the table as one of the
cronies of Anderson the fireman.
The recognition was mutual. With a roar like
that of a stricken bull the man leaped to his feet.
“Mates!” he bellowed, “it’s the kid himself!
After him! Keep the door there, someone!”
A bottle came whizzing through the air at
Jack’s head. He dodged it and it burst in a crimson
spatter of ketchup against the wall, spattering
the boy with its contents.
Like an arrow he darted out of the door. The
proprietor, who was just coming into the place
from an errand next door, spread his arms to
stop him. Down went Jack’s head, and like a
battering ram he butted the fat landlord, gasping,
out of his path.
.bn 217.png
// 217.png
.pn +1
After him came a shower of plates, glasses and
bottles and loud, excited shouts.
Jack ran as he had never run in his life before.
Behind him came the heavy beat of the firemen’s
feet. How much mercy he could expect from
them if they laid hands on him, he knew.
Nobody was in sight. Jack’s safety lay in his
own heels, a fact he recognized with a quick gasp
of dismay.
.bn 218.png
// 218.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 28 XXVIII. "IN THE HOSPITAL."
As he doubled the nearest corner, like a hare
with the hounds close upon it, Jack uttered a wild
shout for help. He hoped that somebody might
hear it.
But there was no result from his appeal for
aid. Were there no policemen in New York?
The street he had blindly doubled into was
lined on each side by tall, dark, silent warehouses.
The blank walls echoed back the sound of his flying
feet and the heavy footfalls of those in pursuit.
Jack realized, with a thrill of dismay, that they
were gaining on him. He heard the heavy exhalation
and intake of the runners’ breaths.
Suddenly one of his pursuers whipped out a
revolver and fired.
.bn 219.png
// 219.png
.pn +1
The audacity of the deed sent Jack’s heart racing
faster than before. A man who would dare
to fire a revolver on a New York street, dark and
deserted though it was, would hardly stick at any
act of violence.
“If I can’t throw them off, it’s all up with me,”
thought the boy.
Bang!
Another report echoed back from the shadowy
walls on either side. This time the bullet came
close, but it was only a random shot, for at the
pace they were running nobody could take careful
aim.
The effect of the closely singing bullet was to
make Jack lose his nerve utterly. Blindly he
plunged forward, not hearing the distant screaming
of police whistles and the thunder of nightsticks
as they were rapped on the pavements.
The sound of the revolver shots had aroused
the police at last. From every direction they
came running; but Jack, in a perfect frenzy of
.bn 220.png
// 220.png
.pn +1
fear, knew nothing of all this. He did see,
though, that he was coming into a better lighted
quarter. A few stores and residences blossomed
with lights, and help lay ahead if he could only
make it in time.
Behind him he could hear only one set of footfalls
now. Two of his pursuers had dropped out
of the chase. The boy put forth a supreme effort,
but in the very act he met with disaster. He had
been running with his head down, and suddenly,
just as he gave a last desperate sprint to gain the
lighted quarter, he collided, crashingly, with an
iron lamp-post. The boy went down as if he had
been struck with a club. Fire blazed before his
eyes; his senses swam, and then all became black.
It was just at this moment that a big black
auto came whirling through the street. In the
tonneau sat a stout, prosperous-looking man who,
as he saw the sudden accident, started up and
ordered his chauffeur to stop. Master and man
got out and went over to the recumbent figure,
and, as they did so, a hulking form glided off in
the shadowy region toward the waterfront.
.bn 221.png
// 221.png
.pn +1
“The kid’s broke his head without botherin’
me to do it for him,” the man muttered as he
slunk off.
“Now then, Marshall,” said the prosperous-looking
man, “give me a hand to pick this boy up.
Lucky for him that we were coming this way
home from Staten Island or he might have lain
here all night.”
They stooped over the lad and picked him up.
As they did so, the light of a street lamp fell on
the pale face. The owner of the car gave a sudden
sharp exclamation:
“Gracious goodness! It’s young Ready! How
in the world did he come here?”
“He’s got a precious bad crack on his head, sir,
and by the looks of him won’t be able to answer
that question for some time to come. My advice,
Mr. Jukes, is to take him to the hospital.”
.bn 222.png
// 222.png
.pn +1
“You are right, Marshall. I’m afraid the poor
lad has a bad injury. Help me put him in the
tonneau and then make a quick run for the nearest
hospital.”
By a strange fate it was Mr. Jukes’ car that
had approached Jack as he fell senseless to the
street. The shipping magnate was returning
home, as he had said, from a dinner party on
Staten Island. Finding the streets by the South
Ferry torn up, he had ordered his chauffeur to
proceed along West Street and then cut through
the village to Fifth Avenue. Thus it came about
that his employer it was who had picked up poor
Jack.
Straight to the Greenwich Hospital drove the
chauffeur, and in less than half an hour Jack lay
tucked in a private bed, with orders that he was
to be given every care; and Mr. Jukes was speeding
uptown, wondering greatly how the young
wireless operator happened to be in that part of
the city at that hour of the night.
.bn 223.png
// 223.png
.pn +1
The next morning Jack awakened in his bed at
the hospital with the impression that a boiler shop
had taken up a temporary abode in his head. For
a few minutes he thought he was in his bunk on
the Ajax, then he shifted to the Venus and at
last, as he blinkingly regarded the ceiling, memory
came rushing back in a full flood.
The dark, deserted streets, the rough, brutal
men, the mad run for life, and then a sudden
crash and darkness. What had happened? Had
they struck him down? Jack put his hand to his
throbbing head. It was bandaged. So they had
struck him. But he was uninjured otherwise
seemingly, so something must have happened to
stop the savage fury of the firemen before they
had time to wreck their full vengeance on his defenseless
body.
He turned his head and saw a young woman
smilingly regarding him. She wore a blue dress
and a neat white apron and cap.
“A nurse,” thought Jack, and then aloud, “is
this the hospital?”
.bn 224.png
// 224.png
.pn +1
“Yes,” was the reply, “but you must not talk
till the doctor has seen you.”
“But what has happened? How did I come
here?” persisted Jack.
“If you will promise not to ask any more questions
till after the doctor has been here, I will tell
you.”
“Very well. I’ll promise.”
“You were brought here in Mr. Jukes’ automobile.”
Jack tried to sit up in bed. What sort of a
wild dream was this? His last recollection was
of a dark street, revolver shots and a stunning
blow, and now, suddenly, Mr. Jukes, his employer,
was brought into the matter.
“Mr. Jukes!” he exclaimed. “Why, how——”
“Hush! Remember your promise.”
Jack, perforce, lay back to wait, with what
patience he could, the visit of the doctor, after
which he hoped he might be allowed to talk. It
was all too perplexing. Then, too, he recollected,
.bn 225.png
// 225.png
.pn +1
with a pang of dismay, that the Ajax sailed the
next day. What if she sailed without him? He
would lose his berth. The lad fairly ground his
teeth.
“Just one question, ma’am,” he begged; “when
can I get out of here?”
“Not for two or three days, at any rate,” was
the reply.
Poor Jack groaned aloud and buried his face
in his hands.
.bn 226.png
// 226.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 29 XXIX. "JACK HAS VISITORS."
The doctor had come and gone, confirming the
verdict that Jack had dreaded to hear. In the
meantime, by the kind offices of the hospital authorities,
a message had been despatched to his
uncle informing him of the lad’s plight.
The nurse had told the boy all she knew of the
matter and added an admiring eulogy on Mr.
Jukes, who, she said, had promised to call that
day and had ordered that no expense was to be
spared in caring for Jack in the meantime.
But all this fell on ears that were deaf. The
one bitter fact that the boy’s brain drummed over
and over to the exclusion of all else was that his
ship would sail without him and his accident
might cost him his berth.
“Isn’t there any way I can be patched up so as
to get out to-morrow?” he begged.
.bn 227.png
// 227.png
.pn +1
The nurse shook her head.
“The doctor wouldn’t hear of it. You must lie
here two days, at least.”
“You might as well make it a year,” moaned
Jack.
After a while he dozed off, but was awakened
by the nurse, who, in tones of suppressed excitement,
informed him that Mr. Jukes had arrived
to see him. Jack, who had been expecting his
uncle, felt disappointed, but still, he reasoned,
Mr. Jukes might be able to throw some light on
the dark hours through which Jack had passed.
With Mr. Jukes, when he entered, was a tall,
delicate-looking lad of about Jack’s age. He
shrank rather shyly behind his father as he gazed
at the sunbrowned, bandaged lad on the bed.
“Well, my lad, how do you feel this morning?”
asked Mr. Jukes in his brisk, close-lipped way as
he took the chair offered him by the nurse.
“Much better, sir, thank you,” rejoined Jack.
“I—I want to rejoin the ship, sir.”
.bn 228.png
// 228.png
.pn +1
“Impossible. They tell me you cannot get out
for two days, at least,” was the decisive reply.
“But I must say you are a hard lad to kill. When
you struck that lamp-post——”
“That lamp-post!” exclaimed Jack.
“Yes, down in Greenwich Village. You were
running along like one possessed. All of a sudden
I saw you strike the post like a runaway locomotive,
and then down you came. Now, my boy,
it’s up to you to explain what you were doing in
that part of town at that time of night.”
Mr. Jukes compressed his lips and looked
rather severe, but as Jack launched into his story,
the magnate’s brow grew black.
“The rascals! The infernal rascals! I’ll offer
a big reward this very day for their apprehension.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much chance of getting
them, sir,” said Jack. “But it was fortunate indeed
for me that you arrived on the scene, although
I cannot understand how it happened.”
.bn 229.png
// 229.png
.pn +1
This was soon explained, and then Mr. Jukes,
turning to the frail-looking youth, said:
“This is my son, Tom. Tom, this, as you
know, is the lad who saved your sister from
drowning.”
“How d’ye do!” said Jack, gripping the other’s
slim white fingers in a grasp that made the lad
wince, for, sick as he was, Jack’s grip had lost
none of its strength.
“Tom’s not very strong, but he’s crazy about
wireless and the sea. Now I’ve got to be off.
Big meeting downtown. Tom, I’ll be back and
get you for lunch. In the meantime, stay here
and get young Ready to tell you all he knows
about wireless.”
“That won’t take very long,” laughed Jack,
which remark brought from Mr. Jukes a repetition
of the observation that it would be “hard to
kill” the young wireless man.
Mr. Jukes rushed out of the room as if there
was not an instant to be lost.
.bn 230.png
// 230.png
.pn +1
“That’s his way,” laughed Tom Jukes, as his
father vanished, “always in a rush. But he’s got
the best heart in the world. Tell me all about
your trouble with those firemen and your life on
the Ajax. I wish dad would let me follow the
sea. I’d soon get strong again.”
Jack, in the interest of having someone to talk
to, forgot about his damaged head. He gave a
lively, sketchy account of life on the big tanker,
not forgetting the surgical operation performed
by wireless, and wound up with the story of the
night raid on the tobacco smugglers and his encounter
of the night before with the revengeful
firemen.
When he finished, Tom Jukes sighed.
“Gracious! That’s interesting, though! I wish
I had adventures like that. But they are doing
their best to make a regular molly-coddle out of
me. The yacht and Bar Harbor in the summer,
Florida in the winter and a private tutor and a
man-servant! It makes me sick!”
.bn 231.png
// 231.png
.pn +1
The lad shot out these last words with surprising
vehemence. “I know a lot of fellows
who’d change with you,” said Jack.
“You do! They must be sap-heads,” said the
rich man’s son; and then suddenly, “How would
you like to try the life for a time?”
“Me? Oh, I’ve never thought about it,” said
Jack.
“Because if you would—but I forgot. I’m not
to say anything about that. That’s dad’s plan,
and he’ll have to talk to you about it.”
.bn 232.png
// 232.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 30 XXX. "THE REJECTED OFFER."
Jack was much mystified, but Tom adroitly
dodged further questioning by turning the subject.
He told the young wireless man of his
trips to Florida and California in search of
health, and all about his father’s fine yacht, the
Halcyon, on which he had made many trips.
“But it’s all rot,” he concluded. “If they’d let
me live the life any ordinary kid does, I’ll bet I’d
be as sound—as sound as you are before very
long.”
About noon Mr. Jukes came back. He burst
into the room with his customary bustle and
hurry, and it was plain that he had something on
his mind to deliver in his usual blunt way.
Without any preliminaries he broke out:
“Ready, I’ve decided that you will make an excellent
companion for Tom. He needs the companionship
of an active, cheery lad of his own
age.
.bn 233.png
// 233.png
.pn +1
“I like you and I know he will. It’s a great
chance for you. Stay here till you feel all right,
and then I’ll send you and Tom on a cruise to
Florida on the yacht. Life at sea is a dog’s life
at the best. I’ll pick out a different career for
you and give you a desk in my office when Tom
is on his feet again. Come now, what do you
say?”
While the magnate had been volleying out
these rapid-fire orders,—for that is what they
amounted to,—Jack’s tired brain had been performing
an eccentric whirl. At first he had
hardly understood, but now the full meaning of
it burst upon him.
Mr. Jukes wanted him to leave the sea, to drop
his beloved wireless work and take a desk in his
office! He was also to act, it seemed, as a sort
of companion for Tom. It was a life of ease
and offered a future which few boys would have
had the courage to decline.
.bn 234.png
// 234.png
.pn +1
Jack knew that every round of the ladder he
had elected to climb could only be won by stern
fighting and keeping the faith like a man. On
the other hand, if he chose to give in to Mr.
Jukes’ wishes or commands, he was on the road
to a life of ease and luxury and one that was as
far from the hardships and adventures of the sea
as could be imagined.
Mr. Jukes eyed the boy as he hesitated with
rising impatience. He was not at all used to
having his wishes disobeyed. Men jumped to
carry out his commands; and yet it appeared that
this stubborn young sailor lad of the ocean wireless
wavered.
“What are you hesitating about, Ready?” he
asked impatiently.
“I’m not hesitating, sir,” was the astonishing
reply, “I’m trying to find the best way to tell you
that I can’t accept your offer.”
.bn 235.png
// 235.png
.pn +1
Mr. Jukes was as astonished as on the night
when Jack had refused his check. He flushed red
and his cheeks swelled.
“Don’t talk like an idiot, lad,” he exclaimed,
choking down his wrathful amazement. “Of
course you can do as I wish. It will be the making
of Tom and of you.”
“I’d like to do it if I could, Mr. Jukes,” said
Jack, wondering why he seemed to be doomed
always to run afoul of this man who appeared
bent on doing him a kindness. “It’s a great offer.
Please don’t think I do not appreciate it.”
“Then why in the name of heaven don’t you
accept it?” thundered Mr. Jukes with rising
wrath.
“Because I cannot, sir,” rejoined Jack bravely;
while he thought to himself, “This means I’ll
have to look for another job.”
“Cannot! Why, of all the crass idiocy! What
ails you, boy! Cannot, indeed! Why?”
.bn 236.png
// 236.png
.pn +1
“Because I have chosen my own way of life,
sir, and I must follow it out,” replied Jack, as
firmly as he could in spite of the bitter feeling
that filled him that he was killing his own chances
with the Titan Line.
Tom Jukes tried to interpose, but his father
angrily choked him off.
“Not a word!” he exclaimed. And then, to
Jack, with an air of finality:
“I’ve no more time to dally words with an
ungrateful boy. Is it yes or no?”
“It must be no, sir,” said Jack, setting his
teeth, “but, if you would let me explain, I——”
“Say no more! say no more!” exclaimed Mr.
Jukes, jamming on his hat. “Come, Tom. As
for you, Ready, I wash my hands of you. I’ve
no desire to interfere with your prospects on the
line. You retain your job, but expect no favors
from me. You must work out your own salvation.”
.bn 237.png
// 237.png
.pn +1
“That is just what I want to do, sir,” was
Jack’s quiet rejoinder, as Mr. Jukes bounced out
of the room, dragging Tom, who looked wistfully
back.
“The boy is mad! Stark, staring mad, by
Jove!” exclaimed the angry magnate as he
stamped his way out of the hospital.
“I suppose anyone would think me a fool for
what I’ve done,” thought Jack, as he lay back
on the pillows after the frantic Mr. Jukes’ departure,
“but I couldn’t help it. I’m not going
to be a rich man’s pawn if I know it. What was
it he said? Work out my own salvation? Well,
I’ll do it, and maybe I’ll astonish some folks before
long. Too bad, though I’m not such a
chump as not to know what powerful friends
and influence can do in the world, and now,
through no fault of my own, I’ve had to chuck
away both. But if grit and determination will
help any, I’ll get up the ladder yet.”
Not long after that Uncle Toby arrived with
cheering news. The Ajax was docked in the
Erie Basin and would not sail for three days
more, owing to a defective boiler which would
have to be repaired.
.bn 238.png
// 238.png
.pn +1
“So I can join her, after all,” thought Jack,
cheered vastly by the news. “Well, that’s a
streak of fat to put alongside the lean!”
.bn 239.png
// 239.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 31 XXXI. "A WHISPER OF DANGER."
Jack made his second eastward trip on the
Ajax under smiling skies and seas almost as
smooth as glass. Nothing out of the routine
happened, and in due course the Ajax, once more
in ballast, cleared from Antwerp for the home
run. Jack had heard nothing more from Mr.
Jukes and deemed that the magnate had utterly
cast him off.
Before he left the hospital, he had had visits
from Captain Dennis and his daughter and from
Tom Jukes, who came secretly and brought the
information that, although his father was furious
with the young wireless man for rejecting what
he deemed a magnificent offer, he would yet pay
Jack’s hospital bill.
.bn 240.png
// 240.png
.pn +1
“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Jack had flared
up, and when he left the institution, it was the
lad himself who footed the bill.
It ate quite a hole in the check that was his
reward for his share in the detection of the tobacco
smugglers, but it would have choked him
to think of accepting Mr. Jukes’ charity after
the scene at his bedside the morning after he had
received his injury.
But the disfavor with which he was regarded
by Mr. Jukes was the only cloud on Jack’s
horizon. Since that night in New York, Captain
Braceworth’s manner toward the young wireless
boy had changed. He was still austere and silent,
but now and then, as he swung past the
wireless room on his way forward or to his cabin,
he would exchange a word or two with the lad.
Perhaps he never guessed how much this encouraged
the boy who, on his first voyage, had set
down the skipper of the Ajax as a cruel, harsh
despot.
.bn 241.png
// 241.png
.pn +1
Knot after knot the steadily revolving engines
of the Ajax brought her closer to home. The
weather continued fine until one day, when Jack
was half wishing something would happen, the
curtain began to draw up on what was to prove
a drama of the deep, destined to test every man
on board the big tanker.
A fog, dense, swirling and moist as a wet
sponge, shut down all about the Ajax that morning
soon after breakfast. The captain donned
his oil-skins and took up his position on the
bridge, to stay there, as was his custom, till the
fog should lift and everything be secure again.
The chief engineer was sent for and instructed
to keep his force in the grimy regions below,
keyed up for instant obedience to orders from
the bridge, for the Ajax was on the Atlantic
lane, a well-traveled, crowded ocean track.
Like a blind man, the big tanker felt her way
along, now starting forward and now almost
stopping with an air of fright, as some fancied
obstruction loomed in her path.
.bn 242.png
// 242.png
.pn +1
Through the weary day and the long night
that followed, the Ajax groped her way through
the fog blanket that hung like a dense mist-shroud
over the sullenly heaving sea. It was a
marine game of touch and go, with possibly
death and disaster for the stakes.
The engine-room telegraph spun in a weary
succession of “Come ahead”—“Slow”—“Ahead”—“Slow”—“Stop
her”—and “Come ahead, slow”
again.
When daylight came, it shone on the fog walls
that bound the Ajax prisoner. The wan light
showed Jack the figures of the captain and his
first officer on the bridge. He knew that through
the long night they had kept their weary vigil.
But so dense was the fog that it was not always
possible to see the bridge from the after superstructure.
.bn 243.png
// 243.png
.pn +1
Only when light and vagrant breezes sent the
fog-wreaths fluttering and writhing, like ghosts,
could a blurred view of the forward part of the
ship be obtained.
Jack, too, had been on duty all night and he
felt dull and wretched. Through the fog had
come calls from other ships, and vague whisperings
and chatterings, all fraught with fear and
caution.
So far as those on the Ajax knew, there was
no ship closer to them than the Plutonia of the
Smithson Lines. Jack had been busy through
the night, running back and forth with messages.
Now, as he came to the door of his cabin for a
breath of the fog-laden air, he was musing to
himself on the anxious look on the captain’s furrowed
face.
It was not the fog. Jack had seen the captain
guide his ship through even denser smothers than
the present one. He had always been his calm,
collected, even cold, self.
.bn 244.png
// 244.png
.pn +1
But now the very air appeared to be vibrant
with some vague apprehension which the boy
could not name or even guess at. But it was
something that lay outside the fog. Some overshadowing
peril of more than ordinary imminence.
As the steamer crawled forward, the mournful
hooting of her siren sounding like the very
spirit of the mist, Jack revolved all these things
in his mind. He felt vaguely troubled.
It was no small thing that could worry the
stalwart skipper of the Ajax, as he palpably was
worried. Fog was dangerous, yes, but what
with the wireless and the extraordinary caution
observed, the peril was reduced to a minimum.
The watches forward had been doubled and
in the crow’s nest two men had been stationed.
But that was customary in a fog. Suddenly, as
Jack stood there, his wireless alarm,—he had
perfected the device and had made application
for a patent on the same,—began to clamor
loudly.
.bn 245.png
// 245.png
.pn +1
Jack hurried to his post. It was the Westerland,
a hundred and fifty miles east and considerably
to the south, calling.
“Dense fog clearing here,” so the message ran,
“but many large icebergs in vicinity. If in fog,
use great caution. Please repeat warning.
.rj
“Krause, Master.”
Jack’s heart gave a bound.
“Icebergs!”
So it was fear of the white terrors of the north
that kept the captain chained to the bridge with
that anxious look on his weather-beaten face.
.bn 246.png
// 246.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 32 XXXII. "ICEBERGS!"
When he reached the bridge with this all-important
despatch, Jack found the captain in
consultation with his officers. Tests of the temperature
of the water were being made, and the
skipper was listening attentively to the roaring
of the siren.
If there was ice in the vicinity, the echo of the
great whistle would be flung back and serve as a
warning.
“Well, boy?” the captain turned impatiently on
Jack.
“A message, sir. I think it’s important,” said
the boy deferentially.
The captain glanced through it and whistled.
“Important! I should think it is. Just what
I thought. Confound this ocean!”
.bn 247.png
// 247.png
.pn +1
He hastened over to his officers and showed
them the despatch. A lively consultation followed,
which Jack wished he could have overheard.
He would have liked to know what further
steps could be taken to avert the dangers
amid which they were crawling forward.
As a matter of fact, all that could be done had
been done. Humanly speaking, the Ajax was
as safe as she could be rendered in the midst of
the invisible dangers that, like white specters,
might be swarming about her even now.
Jack was ordered back to the wireless room
and told to stand by for any further information.
The captain evidently placed great reliance
on getting further word of the location of the
ice-fields and bergs.
But, although Jack worked ceaselessly, sending
out his crackling, sparkling calls, no reply
came back out of the blinding fog. Clearly the
ship that had sent the wireless that was so all-important
had passed out of his zone, or else the
“atmospherics” were arrayed against communication.
.bn 248.png
// 248.png
.pn +1
It was a thrilling and not altogether a comfortable
thought to consider that at any moment
there might loom above them, out of the choking
mist, a mountainous white form that might well
spell annihilation for the sturdy tanker.
Raynor, whose hand was now quite well, poked
his head in at the door. He was grimy and soot-covered
but cheerful, and was going off watch.
“Hello, Jack,” he cried, “what do you think of
this? Burning soft coal in heaven, I guess!
Isn’t it a smother, for fair?”
“It sure is,” rejoined Jack, “but the fog isn’t
the worst of it.”
Raynor looked surprised.
“What are you driving at? They’ve had us
on double watches since it started, stopping and
starting up the engines till they must think
they’re being run by a gang of crazy engineers.”
.bn 249.png
// 249.png
.pn +1
“It’s icebergs, old fellow,” said Jack in an awed
tone.
“Icebergs! At this time of year, that’s unusual,”
said Raynor.
“I don’t know about that, but I got a message
from the Westerland telling about them.”
“The dickens, you say! No wonder the old
man is worried out of his socks. Say, Jack,”
went on the young engineer.
“Well?”
“What a fine chance we’d stand down below
there, if we ever hit anything, eh?”
And young Raynor, whistling cheerily, passed
on to his room to wash up and change.
Jack gave a shudder. “If they hit anything.”
Well did he know what a small chance the men
in the grimy, sooty regions of the fire-room and
engine-space would stand in such a contingency.
It would be their duty to keep up the fires till
the rising water put them out, and then—every
man for himself!
.bn 250.png
// 250.png
.pn +1
Woo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo! boomed the siren.
“Ugh! You sound as cheerful as a funeral,”
shuddered Jack; and, to divert his mind into a
more cheerful channel, he fell to running the
wireless scale, in the hope that he might find
himself in tune with some other ship with fresh
news of the white monsters of the northern polar
cap.
But the white silences were broken by no
winged messages; and so the afternoon waned
to twilight, and night descended once more about
the fog-bound ship.
The strain of it all began to tell on the young
wireless man. He made hourly reports to the
shrouded figures on the bridge that looked like
exaggerated ghosts in the smother of fog. The
lights on the ship shone through the obscurity
like big, dim eyes, and the constant booming and
shrieking of the siren grew nerve-racking.
.bn 251.png
// 251.png
.pn +1
Vigilance was the order of the night. Bridge,
deck and engine-room were all alike keyed up to
the highest pitch of watchfulness. At any moment
a message of terror might come clanging
from the bridge to the engineers’ region.
The suspense made Jack, strong-nerved as he
was, feel like crying out. If only something
would happen, he felt that he would not care so
much, but this silent creeping through the ghostly
fog was telling on him.
Half dozing at times, Jack sat nodding at his
key. All at once, without the slightest warning
what all hands had been waiting for with keyed-up
nerves happened.
From somewhere dead ahead the shriek of the
siren was hurled back through the fog in a volley
of echoes.
It was Captain Braceworth himself who
jumped to the engine-room telegraph and signaled:
“Full speed astern!”
.bn 252.png
// 252.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 33 XXXIII. "THE COLLISION."
At the same instant a voice boomed out from
the fore-peak:
“Something dead ahead, sir!”
And then the next moment a heart-chilling hail
from the crow’s nest:
“Ice ahead! A big berg right under our bow!”
Jack leaped from his instruments, a nameless
dread clutching at his heart. There had been
no impact as yet, but he did not know at what
instant there might come a crashing blow that
would tear the stout steel plates of the tanker
open as if they had been so much cardboard.
For a moment wild panic had him in its cold
grasp. Then, heartily ashamed of the cold sweat
that had broken out on him and the wild impulse
he had had to cry out, he clenched his hands
and regained control of himself.
.bn 253.png
// 253.png
.pn +1
The whole fabric of the ship quivered as the
mighty engines flew round in the opposite direction
to that in which they had been rotating.
At the instant Captain Braceworth’s order had
been given it had been obeyed.
For a breath there was killing suspense; and
then suddenly there came the shock of an impact.
It was not a violent one, but just a grating,
jarring shock.
“Great Scott! We’ve struck!” exclaimed Jack,
as the next instant there came a second and more
violent contact.
He was thrown bodily from his feet. Forward
there came a babel of cries.
The ship listed heavily to port and then slowly,
like a wounded creature, she righted. Then came
a sound of thunder as the masses of ice, dislodged
from the berg by the collision, toppled
and slid from her fore-decks.
.bn 254.png
// 254.png
.pn +1
Jack knew that what the skipper had dreaded
had come to pass. In spite of ceaseless, sleepless
vigilance and the exercise of every caution
a man could use, the Ajax had rammed an iceberg.
Above the yells and shouts of the seamen
came the captain’s calm, authoritative voice.
His orders rang out like pistol shots. Accustomed
to obey, the seamen stopped their panic
and fell to their work. The mates were down
among them, silencing the more obstreperous in
no very gentle manner.
A squad of men came running aft to the boats.
For an instant Jack thought that, in their panic,
they were about to lower away and make off.
But he speedily saw, to his immense relief, that
they were in charge of cool-headed little Mr.
Brown; they had been sent aft merely to stand
by the boats and tackle in case it became necessary
to abandon the ship.
Jack jumped to his key. If the ship was sinking,
he would show them that he could live up
to best wireless traditions.
.bn 255.png
// 255.png
.pn +1
Out into the black, fog-bound night went thundering
and volleying the stricken ship’s appeal
for aid. But the boy did not send out the S.O.S.;
that could only be done by the captain’s orders.
His intent was to inform any ship within his
zone of their plight, so that they might stand by
to render assistance if it should be necessary.
But no answer came to the wireless appeal
that the boy flung broadcast through space. Time
and again he tried to summon help, but none
answered his call.
The captain himself came aft, leaving things
forward to the first officer. The second officer
and the carpenters were sounding the ship to
discover if her wound were mortal or if she could
make port somehow.
Somewhere off in the fog Jack could hear the
swells breaking as if on a rocky coast. He knew
they were beating against the iceberg that the
ship had crashed against!
.bn 256.png
// 256.png
.pn +1
Jack looked up as the captain entered the wireless
room. Never had he admired the man as
he did in that instant. Pale, but stern and resolute,
Captain Braceworth looked the man of the
minute, a fit person to cope with the dire emergency
that had befallen them.
“Any ships in our zone, Ready?” he asked
calmly.
“No, sir, I’ve been trying to raise some and——”
“Very well. Keep on. If you get into communication,
report to me at once.”
“Yes, sir. Are—are we badly hurt, sir?”
“It is impossible to say. We are trying to
find out now. I need not tell you it is your duty
to stay at that key till the last boat leaves the
ship.”
“You need not tell me that, sir,” said Jack,
flushing proudly. “I’d go down with her if it
would do any good.”
The captain looked oddly at the boy a moment
and then slapped him hard upon the back.
.bn 257.png
// 257.png
.pn +1
“You’ve the right stuff in you, Ready,” he
said and hurried off again.
The ship was still slowly backing. Presently
Jack heard the mate’s big voice booming out
from forward.
“She’s flooded to the bow bulkhead, sir, but so
far as I can see, there’s no immediate danger.
When daylight comes, we may be able to patch
her up.”
This was hopeful news, and a cheer arose
from the men as they heard it. But mingled
with the cheer came another sound—a muffled
roar like that of wild animals or of an enraged
mob.
What it meant flashed across Jack in a jiffy.
The firemen, The Black Squad, as they were
called! They had mutinied against being penned
in the fire-room on a sinking ship and were rushing
to the deck.
.bn 258.png
// 258.png
.pn +1
Without knowing just what he was doing, the
boy took his revolver out of the drawer where
he kept it and rushed outside. The first thing
he saw under the glow of the lights was the
figure of Raynor.
The young engineer’s head was bleeding from
a cut and in his hand he had a big spanner.
Pressing upward behind him as he backed out
of the fire-room companionway were the Black
Squad, wild with panic. In their hands they
carried slice-bars, shovels, any weapon that came
handy.
“Stand back, I tell you,” commanded Raynor,
as Jack approached him.
“Stand back nothing,” bellowed a giant of a
stoker. “Think we’re going to the bottom on
this rotten hooker? Stand back, yourself. Come
on, boys! The boats! We’ll get away while
there’s time.”
“You’ll stay plumb where you are or be drilled
as full of holes as porous plasters!”
.bn 259.png
// 259.png
.pn +1
It was little Mr. Brown who spoke. Almost
before he knew it, Jack was at the doughty little
officer’s side and stood with Raynor and Mr.
Brown facing that howling mob from the black
regions below.
.bn 260.png
// 260.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 34 XXXIV. "QUELLING THE MUTINY."
“So you will have it, eh?”
The leader of the Black Squad, a huge hulk
of a fellow, stripped to the waist and smeared
hideously with coal-dust, sprang forward. Above
his head he brandished a heavy slice-bar.
He came straight for Jack and was raising
his formidable weapon to strike the boy down
when something happened.
Crack!
There was the report of a pistol and the fellow
fell headlong. But it was not Jack’s pistol that
had exploded. The boy could not have brought
himself even in that moment to fire on a fellow
being.
It was Mr. Brown’s weapon that had spoken.
.pb
.bn 261.png
// 261.png
.pm illust 04 p261.jpg 437 "He came straight for Jack ... when something happened.—Page 258"
//[Illustration: He came straight for Jack ... when something happened.—Page 258]
.pb
.bn 262.png
// 262.png
.pn +1
“Any one else want the same medicine?” demanded
the fearless little man, indicating the
form of the wounded fireman.
The men murmured sullenly. Their leader
was gone, and without him they wavered and
hesitated. The captain came running aft.
“What in the mischief is going on here?” he
shouted.
“Fire-room crew. Mutiny, sir!” said Raynor.
“We held ’em as long as we could, but the scoundrels
overpowered us. The first is lying below
wounded, sir. That fellow Mr. Brown shot
felled him with a slice-bar.”
The captain’s brow grew black as night.
“Back to your posts, you mutinous dogs!” he
roared. “Back, I tell you, or some of you will
feel cold lead!”
He advanced toward them, driving them before
him by sheer force of character as if they
had been a flock of sheep.
.bn 263.png
// 263.png
.pn +1
“You cowards!” he went on. “There is no
danger, but at the first shock of a small collision
you leave your posts like the curs you are! Down
to the fire-room with you!”
Completely demoralized, the men shuffled below
again. Certain men were told off to attend
to the wounded chief engineer, whose injuries
were found to be slight. As for the man Mr.
Brown had shot, he turned out not to have been
injured at all. The chicken-hearted giant of a
fellow had simply dropped at the report of the
pistol and lain there till the trouble blew over.
He was placed in irons and confined in the forecastle
to await trial in port on charges of mutiny.
And thus, by prompt action, the mutiny was
quelled almost in its inception. The thoroughly
cowed firemen took up their work and nothing
more was heard of refusal to do duty. It had
been a good object lesson to Jack who, in ranging
himself by the side of Mr. Brown and the
young engineer, had acted more on instinct than
anything else.
.bn 264.png
// 264.png
.pn +1
Secretly he was glad it had ended as it had,
without bloodshed, for, as he knew, discipline on
a ship must be upheld at any cost. He realized
that neither the captain nor Mr. Brown would
have hesitated for an instant to hold the men
back with firearms, had they persisted in their
bull-headed rush.
“Well, we are all right for the time being,”
said the captain to Mr. Brown. “No need to
keep these men by the boats.”
“Then we are not hurt as badly as you thought,
sir?”
“No, the report is that the bow bulkhead is
holding, although our forward plates are stove
in. Thank goodness, we didn’t hit harder!”
“Yes, indeed, sir.”
“When daylight comes we’ll start to patch
up. I hope this witches’ broth of a fog will have
held up by then.”
“I’m glad that it was no worse, sir.”
.bn 265.png
// 265.png
.pn +1
“And so, indeed, am I, although, if it comes
on to blow, there may yet be a different yarn to
spin.”
The captain and the officer went forward, and
Jack was left alone.
He took the opportunity to snatch a nap, adjusting
the “wireless alarm” so that any ship
that came within the zone would awaken him
instantly.
Twice during the long night he tried to raise
some other craft, but each time failed.
“I guess they’ve called in all the ships on the
ocean,” said the boy to himself as, after the
second attempt, he desisted from his efforts for
the time being.
When daylight came, the big tanker presented
a forlorn picture. Of the berg that had almost
sent her to the bottom, there was no sign, although
the fog had lifted quite a little.
The stout steel bow was twisted and crumpled
like a bit of tin-foil. There was a yawning cavity
in it, too, through which the water washed and
.bn 266.png
// 266.png
.pn +1
gurgled with an ominous sound. When Jack
came on deck, huge canvas screens were being
rigged over it to keep out the water as much as
possible. The steamer was proceeding slowly
ahead through the fog wreaths, but, compared
with her usual speed, she appeared hardly to
have momentum.
Besides the protection of the crumpled bow
by the canvas screens, another portion of the
crew was sent below to strengthen the bulkhead
from within by heavy timbers. There was a
space between the front end of the tanks and
the bulkhead, and in this they labored, bracing
the steel partition as firmly as possible.
But Jack, when he made his report, heard Mr.
Brown, who had the watch, remarking cheerfully
to the second officer that the barometer
had risen and that the prospects were for good
weather.
“Well, we deserve a little luck,” was the response.
.bn 267.png
// 267.png
.pn +1
About noon the captain reappeared on the
bridge. He was as much refreshed by his brief
rest as most men would have been by a night’s
sleep.
He had not been there ten minutes, when Jack,
his face full of excitement, came hurrying up
with a message.
“Important, sir!” he said.
The captain glanced the message over and
then burst into an angry exclamation.
“They are asking for assistance, you say?”
“Yes, sir. But all I could catch is on that
message there.”
“Great guns! Mr. Brown, sir, disasters always
appear to come in bunches.”
“What’s the matter, sir?” asked the sympathetic
officer.
“Why, young Ready, here, has just caught a
message from the air. A ship is in distress
somewhere.”
“Any details, sir?”
.bn 268.png
// 268.png
.pn +1
The captain shook his head.
“None. This is all the wireless caught.
‘S.O.E.,’ and then a few seconds later, ‘No hope
of controlling it.’”
“Sounds like fire to me, sir,” said Mr. Brown.
“So it does to me. Hustle to your key, Ready,
and get what more you can. If we can help
them, we will, though Lord knows we’re in bad
enough shape ourselves!”
.bn 269.png
// 269.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 35 XXXV. "A CALL FOR HELP."
Jack’s fingers shook with excitement and suspense
as he took his seat again at the instrument
and began searching the air for a clue to
the mysterious sender of the frantic summons.
Every fiber of the adventurous strain in his
being responded to this call for succor from the
unknown. Impatiently he waited for more to
come beating at the drums of his receivers. But
for a long time he heard nothing.
Then, faintly and hesitatingly, there volleyed
through the air some figures. Latitude and longitude,
Jack guessed them to be, but they were
so feebly sent and so jumbled, that in themselves
they argued eloquently the stress of the sender.
Then came a frantic appeal that set Jack’s
pulses to throbbing:
.bn 270.png
// 270.png
.pn +1
“Help! S.O.S.!”
Then silence shut down again. The captain
appeared in the doorway.
“Well?” he said interrogatively. “Anything
more?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack, handing him the figures
he had jotted down; “he’s been trying to send
us his latitude and longitude, I think. Can you
make this out?”
The commander scanned the figures and then
gave an impatient snort.
“Confound that wireless lunatic!”
“What is it, sir? Are the figures no good?”
“Good! I should think not. This latitude and
longitude would put that ship somewhere up near
Albany!”
The captain was irritated. His long vigil on
the bridge had told upon him.
“Confound it all,” he broke out testily, “if that
fellow wants us to come after him, why the dickens
can’t he send some plain facts?”
.bn 271.png
// 271.png
.pn +1
“His current is very weak, sir. I can hardly
hear the messages,” volunteered Jack.
“Well, stand by, my boy, and report to me the
instant you get anything more,” said the captain.
“It’s just like the luck. Here we are stove
in like an old egg-shell, and there’s not another
ship they can pick on for help but us.”
Under the circumstances the captain’s irritation
was perhaps natural. The Ajax had already
been delayed by the fog, and she was owned by
a corporation that expected its ships to run on
time. Furthermore, her injuries would cause her
to limp along at a snail’s pace; and now, on the
top of all this, had come an appeal for help that
could not be disregarded, but which gave no facts
or figures whatever!
“Who are you?—Who are—you?—Who are
you?”
This was the message that went crashing out
from the sender of the Ajax.
.bn 272.png
// 272.png
.pn +1
The aerials took up the question and spread it
abroad to all the winds of heaven, but not the
faintest whisper came back from the ether to tell
that the words had been caught.
Then, with the suddenness of lightning, came
another startling appeal.
“Fire is spreading. Ship being abandoned.
Help!”
It was maddening to sit there and listen to
these futile prayers for succor without being able
to do a thing to reply to them.
“Why, oh why, won’t he send his position?”
sighed Jack; and again he sent a frantic query
volleying along the air waves.
But the receiver remained as silent as the void
itself. Not the faintest scratching of an invalid
fly’s footsteps came to reward Jack’s vigilance.
Before he could report his failure to the captain
that dignitary was back again. He was
fairly bubbling with impatience.
“It’s enough to drive a man mad,” he growled.
“They must be a crew of lunatics on that ship.
.bn 273.png
// 273.png
.pn +1
I never heard of anything like it. Oh, I’d like to
drum some sense into their fool heads!”
“Hullo! Wait a jiffy!” cried Jack, startled
out of his customary deference. “By the great
horn spoon, here comes something now!”
The captain’s burly form bent over the slim
body of the young operator as Jack’s nimble fingers
flew over the receiving pad. He was excited
and made no effort to hide it, although his long
years at sea had taught him that nothing was
too wildly improbable to occur on the great deep.
But that he should have collided with an iceberg
and another ship within his wireless zone
should be simultaneously on fire appeared to
be almost without the pale of possibilities.
“Ah! Figures at last!” he said, as Jack jotted
down a lot of numerals.
“Great Scott!” he shouted a moment later,
“those figures put her within forty miles of us
to the southwest!”
“Hold on, sir, here’s some more!” warned Jack.
.bn 274.png
// 274.png
.pn +1
The diaphragms crackled and tapped as a hail
of dots and dashes beat against them like surf
from the electric ocean. The sending was
stronger now from the doomed vessel, wherever
and whatever she was.
“This is the yacht Halcyon, New York for the
Azores. Owner and son on board. For Heaven’s
sake, send help! This may be good-bye.”
“Thunder and lightning!” roared the captain,
more excited than Jack had ever seen him. “This
is news! Why, the Halcyon is Mr. Jukes’ yacht!”
The pencil dropped from Jack’s nerveless fingers
and he sat back, gasping at this extraordinary
intelligence.
.bn 275.png
// 275.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 36 XXXVI. "LOOKING FOR THE BURNING YACHT."
“Mr. Jukes’ yacht!” repeated the young wireless
lad. “And his son is on board, too!”
“What, you know him?”
“Yes, I met him when I was in the hospital
after those firemen, or rather the lamp-post, gave
me that crack on the head.”
“Great Scott! It’s a case of have to go now
whether we want to or not,” exclaimed the captain.
“Of course,” he added, “we would have
gone anyhow, but still, under the present conditions,
if another steamer had been handy, I’d
have left the job to them. But Mr. Jukes’ yacht,
that’s another pair of shoes!”
“Clang-g-g-g-g-g-g!”
.bn 276.png
// 276.png
.pn +1
The wireless alarm “rang in” with its sharp,
insistent note. Jack bent again to his instruments.
In a trice he had turned into a business-like
young operator of the wireless waves.
“Maybe that’s some more from them,” exclaimed
the captain, as Jack picked up his pencil.
“Hurry!” was what Jack wrote. “Owner
states he will give a million to anyone who will
come to his help. Good-bye. I’ve got to make
a getaway.”
“Well, at any rate, that wireless chap on the
Halcyon is a cheerful sort of cuss,” observed
the captain. “I guess that will be all from him
now. I’ll go forward and see about proceeding
to their aid.”
But the captain’s plans were destined to be
changed. For a time they moved steadily but
slowly toward the location of the doomed yacht.
By noon the sun was out and the sea dancing
a vivid blue under a bright sun. There was a
smart breeze, too, and, after considering all the
conditions, Captain Braceworth summoned Mr.
Brown.
.bn 277.png
// 277.png
.pn +1
“Mr. Brown,” said he, “take a boat and go
about twenty miles to the sou’west. If that
yacht’s boats are scattered about there, you
should sight some of them. You should be back
not long after eight bells of the dog-watch. I’ll
have flares and rockets sent up so that you can
find the ship easily.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Brown, with sailor-like
directness, and hurried off to complete his
preparations.
In the meantime, Jack and young Raynor had
been having a consultation. The latter was by
this time quite an efficient wireless man, and this
just fitted in with Jack’s plan; for he was dying
to go in that boat which was about to set out
after the castaways!
“How would you like to take the wireless this
afternoon?” he inquired of his chum.
“I can’t think of anything that would suit me
better. Why?” was the rejoinder.
.bn 278.png
// 278.png
.pn +1
“Because I am going to apply for a chance to
go in that boat, if you will do relief duty for me.
You are not on watch this afternoon, and it will
be great experience for you.”
“Aren’t you the little wheedler, though?”
laughed Raynor. “All right, Jack, I’ll do it for
you. Cut along, now, and see the skipper. You
haven’t any time to waste.”
In five minutes Jack was back and radiant.
“He says he doesn’t know why I should go
hunting for trouble,” he reported, “but he says
I can go.”
“Well, that’s the main thing,” said Raynor
cheerily, “and you’d better see Mr. Brown right
away. There goes the boat.”
The craft was, in fact, being slung out on
the davits when Jack approached the mate and
told him that he was to form one of the party.
“Always digging up work for yourself,”
grinned the mate.
“That’s what the captain said,” rejoined Jack
demurely.
.bn 279.png
// 279.png
.pn +1
He took his place in the boat, and a few moments
later the small craft was being rowed
away from the big tanker’s side by six pairs of
stout arms.
“Cheerily, men!” admonished Mr. Brown.
“Remember it’s the owner we’re going after. It
may mean a dollar or two in every man’s pocket
if we hurry.”
This hint had the desired effect.
The men bent to the oars till the stout ash
curved and the boat hissed through the water.
They had not gone more than a mile before a
lively breeze caused Mr. Brown to order the sail
hoisted.
Naturally enough, nobody was averse to this,
and soon, under the canvas, they were speeding
over the dancing sea. In his pleasure at this
agreeable break in the monotony of sea-life, Jack
almost forgot the seriousness of the errand on
which they were bent.
.bn 280.png
// 280.png
.pn +1
But Mr. Brown reminded him of it by observing,
“I’m hoping we are not too late.”
This idea had not entered Jack’s head before.
Too late!
What if they were too late, after all! That
last message had broken off with suspicious
abruptness, although Mr. Jukes must have been
then aboard, because his offer of a million dollars
to the unknown ship—Jack had not sent the name
of the Ajax—was characteristic of him.
The bright afternoon seemed to cloud over as
he thought of this. Stern and capricious as the
magnate was, still, Jack, in his inner soul, admired
his forcefulness and driving power; and
as for Tom Jukes, he had formed a genuine
liking for the frail lad.
He looked out over the sparkling sea. It was
hard to believe that it might have witnessed a
marine tragedy within the last few hours.
.bn 281.png
// 281.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 37 XXXVII. "THE MATE’S YARN."
Mr. Brown was soliloquizing.
“Nothing so bad as fire at sea,” said he. “Take
any typical case. The old man thinks he can
fight it down and so do most of his crew. And
so they let it run on till it’s too late, and then
it’s all off.
“I was on a coal ship once, Frisco to Hong-kong.
Fire started in the bunkers in mid-Pacific.
We passed two or three ships while it was still
smoldering and you could smell the coal gas a
mile away.
“Think the old man would call for help? Not
much. If he did, his owners would have jumped
him for costing them salvage money! That’s another
reason so many ships sink and are burned,”
he added in parenthesis.
.bn 282.png
// 282.png
.pn +1
“Well, sir, that old fire went from bad to
worse. The crew had to berth aft and the decks,—she
was a steel ship,—began to get so hot that
you had to walk pussy-footed on ’em. But still
the old man wouldn’t quit.
“‘If we only get a wind,’ he says, ‘I’ll bring
her into port even if she busts up when we tie to
the dock.’
“‘If you get a wind,’ says I, ‘you won’t have
to wait fer that. She’ll go skyrocketing without
any by your leave or thank you.’
“‘Pshaw, Brown, you’re nervous!’ says he.
“‘Of course I am,’ says I; ‘who wouldn’t be,
going to sea with a bloomin’ stove full of red-hot
coals under their boots, instead of a good
wholesome ship? Keel-haul me if ever I sail
again with coal,’ says I.
“Things goes along this way for about two
weeks, and then comes the grand bust-up. We
couldn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep, we could hardly
breathe.
.bn 283.png
// 283.png
.pn +1
“‘Get out the boats,’ says the old man at last,
as if he’d made up his mind that it was really
time to get away.
“Well, sir, to see the way those bullies jumped
for the boats you’d have thought there was
pocket money in every one of ’em, or a prize put
up by the old man to see who’d be overboard
first.
“We got away, all right, the skipper last, of
course. But he had to go below to save his pet
parrot. He’d just about reached the deck, when—confusion!—up
she goes.
“The whole blows up sky high and the skipper
with it. One of the men said he had stopped
to light his pipe, and the flame of the match
touched off all that gas. But I dunno just how
that might be. Anyhow, for quite a while we
could see that old skipper sailing up to heaven,—’twas
the only way he’d ever get there, I heard
one of the men say. Then down he comes, kerplunk!
.bn 284.png
// 284.png
.pn +1
“It was a hard job for us in the boat to reckernize
him. You see, he’d had a fine, full beard
when he went up, but he come down clean
shaved! And the parrot,—well, sir, that parrot
looked like a ship without a rudder. Its gum-gasted
tail had followed the skipper’s whiskers
into oblivion,—as Shakespeare says. Well, we
got him into the boat, and two days after we
were picked up, but neither the skipper nor the
parrot were ever the same man or the same bird
again.”
At the conclusion of this touching narrative,
Jack saw fit to put a question.
“By the way, what was the name of that ship,
Mr. Brown?” he asked mischievously.
“The name?” asked Mr. Brown, with a twinkle
in his eyes.
“Yes, I’d like to look that craft up.”
“Well, sir, I’ll not deceive you,” said Mr.
Brown. “Her name was the Whatawhopper.
It’s an Injun name, they tell me, but gracious,
.bn 285.png
// 285.png
.pn +1
I don’t know anything about those matters! We
had on board, besides the coal, a cargo of beans,—took
’em on at Boston,—but they got wet and
swelled and we thought——”
But this was too much even for Jack.
“Mr. Brown, you’ve missed your vocation,” he
said.
“How’s that?” inquired the mate with a serious
face.
“You should have been a novelist,” laughed
Jack. “With your imagination, you’d have made
a fortune.”
“Well, I’ll never make one at sea, that’s one
sure thing,” said Mr. Brown, with a conviction
born of experience.
The crew managed the boat silently. They
were cheered by Mr. Brown’s extensive vocabulary
and picturesque speech, and stuck to their
duties like real seamen.
.bn 286.png
// 286.png
.pn +1
As time passed, however, and there was not a
sign of boats on the sea, and the sparkling water
danced emptily under the burning sun, some of
the crew become restive.
“Aw, you cawn’t moike me believe there’s a
bloomin’ thing in this bally wireless,” muttered
a British sailor. “It’s awl a bloomin’ bit of
spoof, that’s what it is, moites. We moight as
well go a choising the ghost of Admiral Nelson
as be chivvying arter this old crawft.”
His attitude toward wireless was typical of
that of most sailors, and it may be added—some
landsmen!
Their intelligence appears to balk at grasping
the idea of an electric wave being volleyed
through space, although they accept hearing and
eyesight,—dependent, both of them, on sound
and sight waves,—as an everyday fact.
Jack felt like giving a little lecture on wireless
right then and there. It nettled him to think
that the wonderful invention which has done so
much to render sea-travel safe, accounts of which
appear in the columns of the newspapers every
day, should be belittled by the very men who
owed so much to it.
.bn 287.png
// 287.png
.pn +1
“But what’s the use,” thought he. “It would
only be wasted breath. But if everyone could
know it as I do, the world would be full of wireless
enthusiasts; and then what a job we’d have
picking up messages!”
But as they sailed on and no sign of any boats
appeared, even Jack’s faith began to waver.
Could the message have been a hoax?
Such things, incredible as they may seem, have
been known. The sailors began to look at him
derisively.
“I guess that kid dreamed that stuff about the
bird cage aloft,” muttered one. “It stands to
reason there ain’t no way of sending messages
without wires. You might as well try to eat
food without a thing on yer plate!”
.bn 288.png
// 288.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 38 XXXVIII. "IN SIGHT OF SMOKE."
“I suppose I ought to take that view of the
situation, too,” said Mr. Brown to Jack, “but
somehow I don’t want to give this thing up yet.”
“But surely we should have seen some trace
of the ship by this time,” objected Jack, who
was beginning to get a little skeptical himself.
The blue line of the horizon was without a
speck to mar its empty spaciousness.
Mr. Brown had recourse to the glasses, which
he had used frequently since they had set out.
But the powerful binoculars failed to disclose
any object the naked eye might not have discovered.
“If there really has been a fire on that yacht
and the boats are drifting about, it may prove
an even more serious matter than we imagine,”
said the officer at length.
.bn 289.png
// 289.png
.pn +1
“You mean they may be lost?” asked Jack.
“Just that,” was the reply. “If the boats
should drift beyond the regular established
routes and steamer lanes, it might be weeks and
even months before they are found.”
“Then the ocean beyond the regular routes is
empty of life?” asked Jack.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but the Atlantic
is covered with regular sailing routes just as a
country is mapped out with railroads. The master
of a ship usually makes no deviation from
those routes; although, of course, in the case of
some ships, they are sometimes compelled to.”
They sailed on for some little time further and
the officer was on the point of giving up the
search, when he once more resorted to the binoculars.
He stood up and swept the sky line earnestly
for some sign of what they sought.
.bn 290.png
// 290.png
.pn +1
“There’s nothing visible,” he was beginning,
when suddenly he broke off and uttered a sharp
exclamation:
“Jove! There’s something on the horizon.
Looks like a tiny smudge on a white wall, but it
may be a steamer’s smoke!”
“If it is, it may be some other ship that has
come to their rescue,” suggested Jack.
Mr. Brown gave orders to the men to give way
with increased power. The breeze had dropped
and the use of the oars was once more necessary.
“Should it be a steamer’s smoke, she may have
rescued them,” observed the officer; “if not, it
may be the burning craft still floating.”
“Lay into it, bullies,” he added a moment later.
“Let her have it! That’s the stuff!”
Jack’s excitement ran high. Putting aside the
adventurous nature of their errand, the owner
of the Titan Line from whom he had parted
under such unpleasant circumstances in the
Greenwich Hospital, was aboard, and his friend,—for
so he called him, despite their brief acquaintance,—Tom
Jukes, might be there, too.
.bn 291.png
// 291.png
.pn +1
“My! Won’t they open their eyes when they
see who it is has come to their rescue!” he
thought to himself. “Come to think of it, I must
have been as rattled as the operator of the Halcyon
or I’d have given the name of the ship.”
The smudge of smoke grew as they rowed and
sailed toward it, till, from a mere discoloration
of the blue horizon, it grew to be a flaring pillar
of smoke.
“No ship ever burned coal at that rate,” decided
Mr. Brown. “Yonder’s the blaze, men,
and the old hooker is still on top, although it surprises
me that she hasn’t gone down long ago.”
While they all gazed, suspending their rowing
for a moment in the fascination of the spectacle,
Jack uttered a shout:
“Look!” he cried, “look!”
.bn 292.png
// 292.png
.pn +1
Something appeared to heave upward from
the surface of the sea. The smoke spread out
as if it had suddenly been converted into an immense
fan of vapor, and the air was filled with
black fragments.
Then the smoke slowly drifted away and the
ocean was empty once more.
“Well, that’s good-night for her,” said Mr.
Brown. “Ready, that operator certainly had a
right to have a case of rattles.”
Jack did not answer. He was thinking of the
wonder of the wireless, and how by its agency
the news of the disaster that had overtaken the
Halcyon had been flashed to the rescue party.
“She just blew up with one big puff and melted
away,” he said presently.
“Yes, I’ll bet there isn’t a stick or timber of
her left,” said Mr. Brown.
“Was she a fine boat?”
“A beauty.”
“Ever see her?”
.bn 293.png
// 293.png
.pn +1
“Yes, once in New York harbor. The old man
was coming back from a cruise to the Azores.
That’s a favorite stamping ground of his, by the
way. There’s nothing cheap about J. J. when
he comes to gratifying his own whimsies, and
the Halcyon was one of them. Mahogany, velvet,
mirrors, and I don’t know what all,—but
never mind that now. We ought to be sighting
some of the boats.”
The men rowed like furies now. Even the
most skeptical had become convinced that, after
all, there was something in wireless.
It was almost sunset when Mr. Brown tapped
Jack’s shoulder after he had taken a long look
through the binoculars.
“There’s something in sight off there,” said
he; “take a look, if you like.”
.bn 294.png
// 294.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 39 XXXIX. "ADRIFT ON A LIFE RAFT."
“I can’t quite make it out,” said Jack, as he
returned the glasses. “Is it a boat?”
“Looks like it. I’m sure I saw men on board
it.”
“Let’s take another look.”
Jack picked up the binoculars once more and
gazed through them long and earnestly.
“It looks like a white dot,” he said, “and—yes,
there are men on it! They’ve seen us!
They’re waving!”
“Give me the glasses, boy,” said Mr. Brown,
trying hard to repress his excitement.
The little officer stood up and focused the
powerful binoculars on the object that had
aroused their attention.
“It’s not a boat,” he pronounced at length.
.bn 295.png
// 295.png
.pn +1
“Not a boat? Then what is it?” asked Jack,
puzzled.
“It’s a life raft, one of those patent affairs. I
can see men paddling it with bits of wood. S’pose
they had no time to get oars.”
The crew bent to their work with renewed
fervor. They knew that not far off from them
there must be suffering and misery in its keenest
form.
Mr. Brown did not need to urge them now,
although he kept hopping about and shouting his
favorite:
“Give it to her, my bullies!”
As they approached the raft, they could see
that it was crowded almost to the water line with
a wretched, forlorn-looking assemblage of humanity.
It was clear that the yacht must have been left
in the most desperate haste.
.pb
.bn 296.png
// 296.png
.pm illust 05 p296.jpg 437 "“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully, “Don’t worry; we’ll soon get you!”—Page 293"
//[Illustration: “Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully, “Don’t worry;
//we’ll soon get you!”—Page 293]
.pb
.bn 297.png
// 297.png
.pn +1
The clothes of the castaways were burned and
their faces blistered and smudged. They must
have fought the fire desperately till the last moment,
when they found further effort useless.
“Ahoy, there!” shouted Mr. Brown cheerfully.
“Don’t worry; we’ll soon get you!”
“We can wait a while longer,” came back a
cheery voice.
It proceeded from a stout, good-natured looking
man whose clothes were perhaps a trifle more
disreputable than any of the others.
“I’m Wireless Willie,” he cheerfully explained,
as he climbed on board. “This is a fine note, isn’t
it? I’ve lost everything and came pretty near
losing my mind. Do you blame me? She caught
fire forward, and—Pouf!—up she went like
kindling wood.”
The others clambered on board, one after another,
and last came two seamen, who dragged
a ragged, limp, smoke-blackened form from the
raft and handed it to the mate in the boat.
.bn 298.png
// 298.png
.pn +1
For a moment Jack had a shock. He thought
the man was dead. But a groan convinced him
otherwise. At last all were on board.
“Now, bullies,” said Mr. Brown, addressing
his crew, “it’s a long, hard pull back to the ship,
but think of what you’re going to get when J. J.
comes to!”
“Is Mr. Jukes on board?” asked Jack. “I
thought maybe he was in another boat and cast
adrift.”
“What, you didn’t know him?” demanded the
mate, in genuine astonishment.
“No, I——”
“Well, that’s J. J., right there.”
He indicated the unconscious form to which
some of the sailors were trying to administer
nourishment.
“Yes, this is the owner, all of a heap,” volunteered
one of them. “His heart’s gone back on
him, I reckon.”
“Looks that way,” assented Mr. Brown, glancing
at the recumbent form.
.bn 299.png
// 299.png
.pn +1
“But where is Tom?” cried Jack, the thought
of the son of the magnate coming suddenly to
him.
“Hush,” said one of the sailors from the
Halcyon, “don’t talk too loud. He might hear
you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack, staring at
the man.
“The boy went off in one of the boats. We
lost them in the fog. The good Lord only knows
where they are now.”
“Drive the old man crazy when he hears of
it, I reckon,” put in another man, the mate of
the yacht. “He thought the world and all of
Tom, he did.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” thought Jack; and
then aloud to Mr. Brown:
“There’s another boat adrift, sir. Aren’t we
going to look for it?”
.bn 300.png
// 300.png
.pn +1
Mr. Brown shook his head and pointed to the
western horizon. The sun, like a big copper
ball, was sinking.
“It would be like looking for a needle in a
haystack,” he said. “But cheer up, they’ll be
picked up somehow. You can depend on that.”
“I only hope so,” said Jack sadly.
He looked around at the empty sea. It made
him shiver to think that somewhere on that desolate
expanse was a boat full of castaways looking
in vain for succor.
.bn 301.png
// 301.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 40 XL. "THE RESCUE OF MR. JUKES."
“How did the fire happen?” asked Mr. Brown
of the wireless man of the Halcyon as they rowed
back to the ship, for the wind had now entirely
dropped.
“Well, it all came about so blessed quickly that
I doubt if anyone knows just what the start of
it was,” came the reply. “The skipper thought
he could fight it (Here Mr. Brown nodded
knowingly to Jack as if to say, “I told you so”),
and we battled with it for a long time. The fire
affected my dynamos, I guess, for my current
was miserably weak.”
“I noticed that, all right,” said Jack.
“But you caught it though. Lucky for us you
did. Well, to continue. The old man,—Mr.
Jukes, I mean, was furious. He wouldn’t hear
of abandoning the ship.
.bn 302.png
// 302.png
.pn +1
“He wanted to fight the fire to the last moment.
But he sent his son off in a boat. The
fog had lifted a bit, and we thought it would be
no job at all to pick them up. But then the
smother shut down again, and when it lifted and
we were forced to leave the ship, there wasn’t a
sign of that boat high or low.”
The prostrate figure of Mr. Jukes, who had
been sedulously attended by the sailors, stirred
lightly and he gave a moan. Suddenly he sat
bolt upright.
The sight of him gave Jack a shock. Was this
bedraggled, pallid, soot-smeared scarecrow the
once pompous and lordly head of the Titan
Steamship Company’s activities?
Yes, it was Mr. Jukes, sure enough. He sat
up and asked in a hoarse, husky voice:
“Where’s Tom?”
“He’s in the other boat, Mr. Jukes,” said one
of the sailors soothingly. “He’s all right.”
.bn 303.png
// 303.png
.pn +1
“Yes, but where is the other boat? What boat
is this?”
“By a strange coincidence, Mr. Jukes,” said
Jack, “it is one of the boats from your tanker,
the Ajax. Don’t you know me, Jack Ready? I
picked up your wireless call for aid.”
“Oh yes, yes, I know you now,” said the magnate
dully. “But my boy Tom, where is he? I
want him.”
Some of the men were whispering.
“What’s that I hear?” said Mr. Jukes, turning
quickly on them. “Tom adrift? Adrift in
that boat? Look for him. Find him, I tell you.
Oh, Tom, my boy! my boy! I didn’t mean to
desert you!”
Jack patted him on the shoulder as he might
have a companion in misfortune. Gone now was
the lordly, magnificent air of the head of the
steamship combine. Mr. Jukes was simply a
sorrowing parent, crushed by his misfortunes.
.bn 304.png
// 304.png
.pn +1
But in a minute his old domineering manner
came back.
“You are in my employ, every one of you!”
he shouted. “Find my boy!”
Mr. Brown shook his head.
“It’s almost dark, sir, and you yourself are
badly in need of attention.”
“What, you will abandon him?” shouted the
magnate.
The unfortunate mate looked sorely puzzled.
“It would be useless to look for him now, sir,”
he said. “To-morrow, perhaps, by daylight.”
“To-morrow,” groaned Mr. Jukes.
“Don’t worry, sir. He’ll turn up all right,”
said Mr. Brown consolingly.
“Oh, if I could only think so!” burst out the
man of millions. “But to think of my boy, my
Tom, out on this desolate sea! Lost in an open
boat! How shall I ever face his mother?”
“He’ll be all right, sir,” was all that the mate
could repeat.
.bn 305.png
// 305.png
.pn +1
“If we don’t pick them up, some other ship
will,” added Jack.
It was a hard lesson that Mr. Jukes was learning.
He was finding out that money cannot buy
everything. All his millions were as dross to
him at that moment.
“How can I face my friends?” he muttered
presently. “I am saved and Tom is gone! How
can I explain to his mother? Oh, if it had only
been me in his place!”
Then suddenly his rage turned on Jack.
“You boy! You, whom I tried to help! Why
are you here and my boy gone? How is it you
are safe and sound, and my son is lost?”
“I’m as sorry as I can be, Mr. Jukes,” said
Jack. “If there was anything I could do, I’d do
it gladly, and you know it.”
“Bah-h-h-h-h!” was the contemptuous reply.
But Jack kept his temper.
“I’d stay out here a week, sir,” he said, “if
that would do any good.”
.bn 306.png
// 306.png
.pn +1
But the half-crazed man only snarled at him
and sat silent, till the welcome sight of the Ajax’s
rockets and flares showed them that they were
nearing the ship.
.bn 307.png
// 307.png
.pn +1
.pm chap 41 XLI. "A JOYOUS REUNION."
The Ajax was almost ready to proceed when
the boat joined her. The repairs had been made
with even more success than the captain had
dared to hope.
When, therefore, Mr. Jukes informed him
tremulously that he was not to leave the vicinity
till they found some trace of Tom Jukes, he did
not receive the orders with the best grace in the
world. But, of course, there was nothing for it
but to obey.
Perhaps, too, the captain, who was a father
himself, felt a sort of sympathy for Mr. Jukes,
although he did not believe for an instant that
Tom was in any danger.
Mr. Jukes passed a sorry night, and the next
morning, haggard and gray, he was up and about
early. He came up to where Jack was leaning
against the rail.
.bn 308.png
// 308.png
.pn +1
“So it’s you, is it?” he said, in a softened
tone. “I’m sorry I spoke as I did last night, but
I was almost beside myself with grief. You cannot
understand how this thing is preying on me.”
“I do understand, Mr. Jukes,” said Jack
earnestly; “and as for being sorry about the way
you spoke of me, I don’t blame you one bit.”
The strangely softened magnate sighed and
his tired eyes swept the sea.
“We must not leave here till we get some news
of Tom,” he said.
Then he fell to pacing the deck, while Jack went
back to his wireless.
Suddenly he picked up a message.
“Ajax! Ajax! Ajax!” buzzed the instrument.
Jack sent a replying message and then came
this:
.bn 309.png
// 309.png
.pn +1
“This is the Caronia. We were in communication
with you yesterday. We’ve picked up a
shipwrecked crew and——”
“What!” volleyed back Jack’s key.
“What’s the matter, are you crazy? Don’t
butt in when I’m giving you the news. Where
are your manners?”
“Oh, stop that and get on!” sputtered Jack’s
key.
“Well, you must have got out of bed the wrong
side this morning!” came the reply. “I said that
we had picked up a shipwrecked crew. They
want to go aboard some vessel for New York, so
I called you up. We’ll pass you pretty soon
now.”
“Was there a boy among them?” asked Jack.
“Yes. Name, Tom Jukes, son of the old millionaire.
Why?”
“Because his father is on this ship!”
“For the love of Mike!”
“Yes; have you got a clear wire?”
“All clear now.”
.bn 310.png
// 310.png
.pn +1
“Then send for Tom. Let him speak to his
father. The old man is almost unbalanced over
his loss.”
“Nothing easier than that.”
And so it came about that, ten minutes later,
Tom’s greetings came to Jack through the air,
while Mr. Jukes, with tear-filled eyes and a heart
full of thankfulness, stood in the wireless room
of the Ajax and dictated his answering messages.
He was a changed man from that instant, but
he could hardly keep his patience till the Caronia
came up and the transfer of the castaways was
made. The drifting boat of the Halcyon had
been picked up early that morning by the liner,
after her crew had become hopelessly lost and
bewildered.
What a meeting that was! And when the
father and son had finished wringing each
others’ hands, it was Jack’s turn. Tom Jukes
declared that if it had not been for the wireless,
he might at that very moment have been on the
Caronia bound for Liverpool, and it might have
been weeks before he and his father were reunited.
.bn 311.png
// 311.png
.pn +1
“I suppose we can go ahead now, sir?” said
Captain Braceworth, poking his head into the
wireless room where the joyous reunion had
taken place.
“Yes, captain. And, by the way, I want the
names of those men you sent to the rescue.
There’s something handsome coming to them.
As for this lad,” smiling at Jack, “he’s too proud
to accept a gift.”
“I know one he wouldn’t mind,” said Tom
roguishly.
“And what’s that?” asked his father, patting
the lad’s hand.
“A better job on a bigger ship.”
Jack’s eyes danced. Mr. Jukes smiled.
“Well, we shall see what we shall see,” he said;
“but, if I do anything like that, it will be on condition
that you go along with him. He wouldn’t
have anything to do with you on land. Perhaps
he will on the ocean.”
.bn 312.png
// 312.png
.pn +1
“And I can learn wireless?” asked Tom.
“If Ready, here, will teach you. I’m convinced
now that it is one of the seven modern
wonders of the world. Look at what it has done
for us! And I’m going to see that the lad who
worked it isn’t neglected.”
Mr. Jukes was as good as his word. When
the injured Ajax came into port ten days later,
Jack’s reward came.
But what it was and how he carried out the
additional responsibilities imposed upon him by
his new work must be saved for the telling in
the next volume of this series, which will be
called: “The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Lost
Liner.”
.sp 2
.ce
THE END.
.pb
.bn 313.png
// 313.png
.pn +1
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.pm illustnocap ad01 p313.jpg 250
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Transcriber's Notes
.sp
.if t
In the text of this book, italicized phrases are presented by surrounding the text with underscores,
and boldface phrases are presented by surrounding the text with equal signs.
.sp
.if-
Hyphenated words have been retained as they appear in the original text,
except as noted in the full list of changes below.
.sp 2
.nf l
Changes made to the text:
table of contents - changed "Aim" to "Arm" to match the
actual chapter title
original text: XXII. You Saved My Aim
table of contents - added dash after "Adventure" to match
actual chapter title
original text: XV. An Adventure
page 10 - changed "shipowner" to "ship-owner" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Her dad, he’s Jacob Jukes, the big ship-owner
page 10 - changed "shipowner" to "ship-owner" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Someone had found the ship-owner
page 33 - changed "figure-head" to "figurehead" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Your figure-head looks like you
page 36 - changed "top-sails" to "topsails" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Douse my top-sails
page 55 - changed "oilskins" to "oil-skins" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: uncouth figure in dripping oilskins
page 70 - changes "pairs" to "pair"
original text: very red pairs of ears
page 100 - changed "ship-wrecked" to "shipwrecked"
to be consistent with other usage in the book
original text: transfer the ship-wrecked men
page 184 - added italics to "Ajax" to be consistent with
other usage in the book
original text: The Ajax would not be ready for
page 185 - added closing quote at end of paragraph
original text: you are ready for sea again.
page 190 - changed "is" to "in"
original text: Now what is the world is going on
page 196 - changed "fireroom" to "fire-room" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: had been transferred to the fireroom
page 218 - changed "water-front" to "waterfront" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: the shadowy region toward the water-front.
page 220 - changed "up-town" to "uptown" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Mr. Jukes was speeding up-town
page 226 - changed "lamppost" to "lamp-post" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: When you struck that lamppost——”
“That lamppost!” exclaimed Jack.
page 243 - added closing quote to sentence
original text: Please repeat warning.
page 258 - changed "thought" to "brought"
original text: The boy could not have thought
page 271 - added apostrophe to "Heavens"
original text: For Heavens sake, send help!
page 279 - changed "Keelhaul" to "Keel-haul" to be
consistent with other usage in the book
original text: Keelhaul me if ever I sail
page 297 - added closing quote
original text: was miserably weak.
page 305 - changed "Dukes" to "Jukes"
original text: Dukes, son of the old millionaire.
no page number - ad page "Log Cabin to White House Series"
changed "statemanship" to "statesmanship"
original text: of his statemanship
no page number - ad page "Log Cabin to White House Series"
changed "citzenship" to "citizenship"
original text: circles and private citzenship.
no page numbers - five advertisement pages (first, second, fourth,
fifth, and sixth) have a subheader line that contained a small
number followed by a square bracket - these two character
notations have been removed, as they appear to be some type
of typographical annotation not relevant to the text
.nf-
.in