Kitobni o'qish: «The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Lost Liner»

CHAPTER I – AT SEA ONCE MORE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old quartermaster held up a finger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II – WIRELESS CONVERSATIONS

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

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

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

But Sam looked apprehensive.

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

“N-no. Not that,” hesitated Sam, “but seasickness, you know. And I ate an awful big dinner.”

“Well, don’t bother about that now. Lots of fellows who have never been to sea before don’t get sick.”

“I hope that will be my case,” Sam replied, without much assurance in his voice.

“Here, take this to the captain; hurry it along now,” said Jack, handing him the dispatch. “I guess he’ll be interested. Wait a minute,” he added suddenly. “There’s the Tennyson of the Lamport & Holt line talking to the Dorothea of the United Fruit, and the battleship Iowa is cutting in. All talking weather.”

It was true. From ship to ship, borne on soundless waves, the news was being eagerly discussed.

“Big storm on the way,” announced the Tennyson.

“We should worry,” came flippantly through the ether from the Dorothea.

“You little fellows better take in your sky-sails and furl your funnels; you’ll be blown about like chicken feathers in a gale of wind,” came majestically from Uncle Sam’s big warship.

Then the air was filled with a clamor for more news from the Neptune Beach operator.

“You fellows give me a pain,” he flashed out, depressing and releasing his key snappily. “I’ve sent out all I can. Don’t you think I know my job?”

“Let us know at once when you get anything more,” came commandingly from the battleship.

“Oh, you Iowa, boss of the job, aren’t you?” remarked the flippant Dorothea.

“M-M-M!” (laughter) in the wireless man’s code came from all the others, Jack included. The air was vibrant with silent chuckles.

“Say, you fellows, what is going on?” came a fresh voice. Oh, yes, every wireless operator has a “voice.” No two men in the world send alike.

“Hello, who are you?” snapped out Neptune Beach.

“British King, of the King Line, Liverpool for Philadelphia. Let us in on this, will you? What you got?”

“Big storm. Affect all vessels within three hundred miles of Hatteras. This is Neptune Beach.”

“Thanks, old chap. Won’t bother us, don’t you know,” came back from the British King, whose operator was English. “Kind regards to you fellows. Hope you don’t get too jolly well bunged up if it hits you.”

“Thanks, Johnny Bull,” from the Dorothea. “I reckon we can stand anything your old steam tea-kettle can.”

The wireless chat ceased. Sam hastened forward to the sacred precincts of the captain’s cabin, while Jack went below to his belated dinner. As he went he noticed that the sea was beginning to heave as the dusk settled down, and the ship was plunging heavily. The wind, too, was rising. The social hall was brilliantly lighted. From within came strains of music from the ship’s orchestra. Through the ports, as he passed along to the saloon companionway, Jack could see men and women in evening clothes, and could catch snatches of gay conversation and laughter.

“Humph,” he thought, “if you’d just heard what I have, a whole lot of you would be getting the doctor to fix you up seasick remedies.”

In the meantime Sam, cap in hand, presented the message to the captain. The great man took it and read it attentively.

“This isn’t a surprise to me,” said Captain McDonald, “the glass has been falling since mid-afternoon. Stand by your instruments, lad, and let me know everything of importance that you catch.”

“Very well, sir.” Sam, who stood in great awe of the captain, touched his cap and hastened back. He adjusted his “ear muffs,” but could catch no floating message. The air was silent. He sent a call for Neptune Beach, but the operator there told him indignantly not to plague him with questions.

“I’ll send out anything new when I get it,” he said. “Gimme a chance to eat. I’m no weather prophet, anyhow. I only relay reports from the government sharps, and they’re wrong half the time. Crack!”

Sam could sense the big spark that crashed across the instruments at Neptune Beach as the indignant and hungry operator there, harassed by half a dozen ships for more news, smashed down his sending key.

CHAPTER III – A STRANGE REQUEST

When Jack came on deck again, he thought to himself that it was entirely likely that the warning sent through space from Neptune Beach would be verified to the full by midnight. The merriment in the saloon appeared to be much subdued. The crowd had thinned out perceptibly and hardly anybody was dancing.

The ship was rolling and plunging like a porpoise in great swells that ran alongside like mountains of green water. Although it was dark by this time, the gleam of the lights from the brilliantly illuminated decks and saloon showed the white tops of the billows racing by.

Just as Jack passed the door leading from the social hall to the deck, a masculine figure emerged. At the same instant, with a shuddering, sidelong motion, the Tropic Queen slid down the side of a big sea. The man who had just come on deck lost his balance and went staggering toward the rail. The young wireless man caught and steadied him.

In the light that streamed from the door that the man had neglected to close, Jack saw that he was a thickset personage of about forty, black-haired and blue-chinned, with an aggressive cast of countenance.

“What the dickens – ” he began angrily, and then broke off short.

“Oh! It’s you, is it? The wireless man?”

“The same,” assented Jack.

“Well, this is luck. I was on my way up to your station. On the boat deck, I believe it is. This will save me trouble.”

The man’s manner was patronizing and offensive. Jack felt his pride bridling, but fought the feeling back.

“What can I do for you, Mr. – Mr. – ”

“Jarrold’s the name; James Jarrold of New York. Have you had any messages from a yacht – the Endymion– for me?”

“Why, no, Mr. Jarrold,” replied Jack wonderingly. “Is she anywhere about these waters?”

“If she isn’t, she ought to be. How late do you stay on watch?”

“Till midnight. Then my assistant relieves me till eight bells of the morning watch.”

Mr. Jarrold suddenly changed the subject as they stood at the rail on the plunging, heaving deck. Somebody had closed the door that he had left open in his abrupt exit, and Jack could not see his face.

“We’re going to have bad weather to-night?” he asked.

“So it appears. A warning has been sent out to that effect, and the sea is getting up every moment.”

Mr. Jarrold of New York made a surprising answer to this bit of information.

“So much the better,” he half muttered. “You are, of course, on duty every second till midnight?”

“Yes, I’m on the job till my assistant relieves me,” responded the young wireless chief of the Tropic Queen.

“Do you want to make some money?”

“Well, that all depends,” began Jack doubtfully. “You see, I – ”

He paused for words. He didn’t want to offend this man Jarrold, who, after all, was a first-cabin passenger, while he was only a wireless operator. Yet somehow the man’s manner had conveyed to Jack’s mind that there was something in his proposal that implied dishonesty to his employers. Except vaguely, however, he could not have explained why he felt that way. He only knew that it was so.

Jarrold appeared to read his thoughts.

“You think that I am asking you to undertake something outside your line of duty?”

“Why, yes. I – must confess I don’t quite understand.”

“Then I shall try to make myself clear.”

“That will be good of you.”

The man’s next words almost took Jack off his feet.

“When you hear from the Endymion, let me know at once. That is all I ask you.”

“Then you are expecting to hear from the yacht to-night?” asked Jack wonderingly. It was an unfathomable puzzle to him that this somewhat sinister-looking passenger should have so accurate a knowledge of the yacht’s whereabouts; providing, of course, that he was as certain as he seemed.

“I am expecting to hear from her to-night. Should have heard before, in fact,” was the brief rejoinder.

“There are friends of yours on board?” asked Jack.

“Never mind that. If you do as I say – notify me the instant you get word from her, you will be no loser by it.”

“Very well, then,” rejoined Jack. “I’ll see that you get first word after the captain.”

Jarrold took a step forward and thrust his face close to the boy’s.

“The captain must not know of it till I say so. That is the condition of the reward I’ll give you for obeying my instructions. When you bring me word that the Endymion is calling the Tropic Queen, I shall probably have some messages to send before the captain of this ship is aroused and blocks the wire with inquiries.”

“What sort of messages?” asked Jack, his curiosity aroused to the utmost. He was now almost sure that his first impression that Jarrold was playing some game far beyond the young operator’s ken was correct.

Jarrold tapped him on the shoulder in a familiar way.

“Let’s understand each other,” he said. “I know you wireless men don’t get any too big money. Well, there’s big coin for you to-night if you do what I say when the Endymion calls. I want to talk to her before anyone else has a chance. As I said, I want to send her some messages.”

“And as I said, what sort of messages?” said Jack, drawing away.

“Cipher messages,” was the reply, as Jarrold glanced cautiously around over his shoulder.

The door behind them had opened and a stout, middle-aged man of military bearing had emerged. He had a gray mustache and iron-gray hair, and wore a loose tweed coat suitable for the night. Jack recognized him as a Colonel Minturn, who had been pointed out to him as a celebrity the day the ship sailed. Colonel Minturn, it was reported, was at the head of the military branch of the government attending to the fortifications of the Panama Canal. The colonel, with a firm stride, despite the heavy pitching of the Tropic Queen, walked toward the bow, puffing at a fragrant cigar.

When Jack turned again to look for Jarrold, he had gone.

CHAPTER IV – A PECULIAR COINCIDENCE

But the young wireless boy had no time right then to waste in speculation over the man’s strange conduct. It was his duty to relieve Sam, who would not come on watch again till midnight.

As he mounted the steep ladder leading to the “Wireless Hutch,” he could feel the ship leaping and rolling under his feet like a live thing. Every now and then a mighty sea would crash against the bow and shake the stout steel fabric of the Tropic Queen from stem to stern.

The wind, too, was shrieking and screaming through the rigging and up among the aërials. Jack involuntarily glanced upward, although it was too dark to see the antennæ swaying far aloft between the masts.

“I hope to goodness they hold,” he caught himself thinking, and then recalled that, in the hurry of departure from New York, he had not had a chance to go aloft and examine the insulation or the security of their fastenings himself.

In the wireless room he found Sam with the “helmet” on his head. The boy was plainly making a struggle to stick it out bravely, but his face was pale.

“Anything come in?” asked Jack.

“Not a thing.”

“Caught anything at all from any other ship?”

Sam’s answer was to tug the helmet hastily from his head. He hurriedly handed it to Jack, and then bolted out of the place without a word.

“Poor old Sam,” grinned Jack, as he sat down at the instruments and adjusted the helmet that Sam had just discarded; “he’s got his, all right, and he’ll get it worse before morning.”

Sam came back after a while. He was deathly pale and threw himself down on his bunk in the inner room with a groan. He refused to let Jack send for a steward.

“Just leave me alone,” he moaned. “Oh-h, I wish I’d stayed home in Brooklyn! Do you think I’m going to die, Jack?”

“Not this trip, son,” laughed Jack. “Why, to-morrow you will feel like a two-year-old.”

“Yes, I will – not,” sputtered the invalid. “Gracious, I wish the ship would sink!”

After a while Sam sank into a sort of doze, and Jack, helmet on head and book in hand, sat at the instruments, keeping his vigil through the long night hours, while the storm shrieked and rioted about the ship.

The boy had been through too much rough weather on the Ajax to pay much attention to the storm. But as it increased in violence, it attracted even his attention. Every now and then a big sea would hit the ship with a thundering buffet that sent the spray flying as high as the loftily perched wireless station.

The wind, too, was blowing as if it meant to blow the ship out of the water. Every now and then there would come a lambent flash of lightning.

“It’s a Hatteras hummer for sure,” mused the boy.

The night wore on till the clock hands above the instruments pointed to twelve.

Above the howling and raging of the storm Jack could hear the big ship’s bell ring out the hour, and then, faint and indistinct, came the cry of the bow watch, “All’s well.” It was echoed boomingly from the bridge in the deep voice of the officer who had the watch.

“Well, nothing doing on that Endymion yet,” pondered Jack.

He fell to musing on Jarrold’s strange conduct. Why had the man suddenly vanished when Colonel Minturn appeared? What was his object in the strange proposal he had made to the young wireless man? What manner of craft was this Endymion, and how was it possible that she could live in such a sea and storm?

These, and a hundred other questions came crowding into his dozing brain. They performed a sort of mental pin-wheel, revolving over and over again without the lad’s arriving at any conclusion.

That some link existed between Jarrold and the Endymion was, of course, plain. But just why he should have vanished so quickly when the Panama official appeared, was not equally evident. Jack had a passenger list in front of him, stuck in the frame designed for it.

He ran his eyes over it. Yes, there was the name:

Mr. James Jarrold, N. Y. – Stateroom 44.Miss Jessica Jarrold, N. Y. – Stateroom 56.

Suddenly Jack’s roving glance caught the name of Colonel Minturn, U. S. A., stateroom 46. So the colonel’s stateroom adjoined that of the man who appeared to be so anxious to avoid him! Another thing that Jack noted was that, although the ship was crowded and a stateroom for a single passenger called for a substantial extra payment, both Mr. Jarrold and the army man had exclusive quarters. In the case of Colonel Minturn this was, of course, understandable, but Jarrold? Jack looked at the latter’s name again, and now he noticed something else that had escaped him before.

Stateroom 44, the room occupied by Jarrold and adjoining Colonel Minturn’s, had evidently been changed at the last moment, for originally, as a crossed-out entry showed, Jarrold had been given stateroom 53. A pen line had been drawn through this entry by the purser evidently, when Jarrold had changed his room.

Jack happened to know that Colonel Minturn had come on board at the last moment, so, then, Jarrold had changed his stateroom only when he had found out definitely that Colonel Minturn’s room was No. 46. There must be something more than a mere coincidence in this, thought Jack, but, puzzle as he would, he could not arrive at what it meant.

He was still trying to piece it all out when suddenly the door, which he had closed to bar out the flying spray, was flung open.

A gust of wind and a flurry of spume entered, striking him in the face like a cold plunge.

“Bother that catch,” exclaimed Jack, swinging round; “I’ll have to get the carpenter to fix it to-morrow, I – ”

But it was not a weakened catch that had given way. The door had been opened by the hand of a man, who, enveloped in a raincoat and topped by a golf cap, now stood in the doorway.

The man was James Jarrold.