THE OCEAN WIRELESS BOYS OF THE ICEBERG PATROL

Amidst a glare of red flame and lurid smoke, the young operator staggered backward.

CHAPTER I: ON THE OCEAN TRAIL.

The big, high-sided Cambodian, in ballast, that is, carrying no cargo, and outward bound from New York for Rotterdam, was shouldering through the green seas that came racing to meet her. The Cambodian was a brand new freighter of the big shipping combine controlled by Jacob Jukes, and as just then no better berth had been offered, Jack Ready found himself occupying her wireless room getting the newly installed radio apparatus in shape and tuned up for effective service.

As he worked over a refractory detector Jack, although normally of a cheerful disposition, felt a strong inclination to grumble at his present berth. He had been hoping for a chance at the wireless operator job on board the Empire State, the newest and greatest of the Jukes trans-Atlantic liners. But at the last moment he had been passed over and another operator appointed on the ground of seniority.

But Jack’s gloomy mood did not last long. As usual, the stimulus of work soon caused the clouds to dissolve, and by the time he had the detector adjusted, he was humming cheerfully. As he looked up from his completed job, a ruddy-faced, cheery-looking lad about two years older than Jack, who was eighteen, stuck his head in at the door of the wireless-room which, besides the apparatus, contained Jack’s bunk, a picture of the boy’s dead mother hanging at its head, and the desk at which he made out his reports.

“Hello there,” hailed Jack, as Billy Raynor appeared, “going off watch?”

“Well, don’t I look it, with this fine old coat of grime on my hide?” laughed Jack’s chum, now promoted to the post of second engineer on the new freighter.

“Thought when you got to be second you were just going to loll around with your hands in your pockets and give orders,” commented Jack.

“Um, so did I,” rejoined Raynor with a rather wry grin, “but, as you see, it didn’t just work out that way. By-the-way, I thought you were going to be the dandy, brass-buttoned wireless hero on a passenger packet this trip.”

It was Jack’s turn to give a rueful smile and he rejoined, “So did I.”

“Old Jukes was mighty nice about it though,” he explained. “I’m getting the same pay as I would on a liner and then, too, that check for that South American business came in mighty handy, so that, financially, I’m not kicking. But I do want to get ahead in my work.”

“Well, old Jukes ought to shove you right along,” declared Raynor, coming in and planting his overalled form in a chair by the desk. “You’ve sure done a lot for him, starting in by saving his daughter, and——”

“Say, shut up, will you!” sputtered Jack, turning red. “I don’t want any favoritism for anything I may or may not have done. That isn’t it. I just want to get right ahead in the wireless game.”

“And so you are, so far as I can see,” replied Raynor. “Incidentally, how’s the portable set coming along?”

He referred to Jack’s pet hobby, an invention over which he had worked during all his spare time, afloat and ashore, for months. It was a portable wireless set in which weight and complexity had been cut to the bone. Jack had managed to reduce the weight by degrees till at last he had produced what he believed would prove a practicable device for use in the field, which weighed a trifle under fifty pounds, and could be carried over the operator’s shoulder in a satchel.

In reply to young Raynor’s question, Jack opened a closet and produced a set of instruments of exquisite finish. Attached to them was a neat coil of copper wire and, strapped to the base that supported the whole, was a flat package of cloth and bamboo sticks.

“What’s that jigger underneath?” asked Raynor, referring to the latter bit of apparatus.

“That’s a box kite,” explained Jack.

“A box kite? What in the world do you want with that?”

“Well, you can’t send out or receive messages without aërials, can you?” parried Jack.

“No, but you could hitch your aërial wires to a tree or——”

“All right, Mr. Smarty, but just suppose that you are in a country where there are no trees.”

“Oh, I see,” exclaimed Raynor, “in that case you’d do a little kite flying.”

“That’s the idea exactly,” responded Jack.

“Have you tested it yet?” inquired Raynor.

“Up to 150 miles. It works splendidly. I’m going to gear up my hand-generator higher so as to produce a stronger alternating current, however. Then I think I’ll get better results.”

Clang-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!

A gong above Jack’s head sounded clamorously. This gong was another of the boy’s inventions. By means of a silicon detector ingeniously connected, a wireless wave striking the antenna of the Cambodian’s apparatus instantly sounded the gong. In this way Jack had done with a lot of tiresome waiting for calls with his receivers clamped to his head.

“Something doing?” asked Raynor, as Jack sprang from the chair he had been sitting on and seated himself in front of the wireless key.

“I guess it’s nothing much,” was the reply, “Siasconset maybe, or Race.”

But a moment later the expression of the young operator’s face grew concentrated. His hand reached out for a pencil and he began to scribble on his transcription pad the words that came pulsing against his ears like waves out of a vast sea of space.

“Steamer Athenia (Br.) reports,”—thus Jack wrote—“Along parallel of 45.06 saw ice as follows:—Grindstone, one mile of ice inshore. Scatari, close-packed ice inshore. Cape Ray, loose strings distant. Money Point, heavy close-packed ice inshore. Cape Race, several small strings loose ice drifting S. W.”

Raynor had been peering oyer Jack’s shoulder as the boy wrote. When he ceased, the young engineer was full of eager questions. Jack flashed out an answer to the Athenia and then “grounded” his instrument.

“Well, that’s to be expected in April,” was his comment. “I guess we’ll get a lot more of such reports before long.”

“Think we’ll run into any bergs?” asked Raynor rather anxiously.

“Don’t get nervous,” laughed Jack, “the iceberg patrol is on the lookout for those. I’m surprised they haven’t ‘tapped-in’ yet with some information. That’s the service for you, old man, the iceberg patrol. Think of the lives you have a chance to save and—and—but I’ve got to be off with this message to the old man.”

Jack hurried from the cabin, and forwarded his message to Captain Briggs on the bridge. Raynor followed with more deliberation and made for his own cabin and soap and water. As he removed the grime of the engine-room, he mused on the subject of icebergs. Not many weeks before a big liner had blundered at night into a huge floating continent of ice and had sunk, with a terrible toll of lives and suffering.

“If a big old liner like that couldn’t stand one wallop from an iceberg what chance would the Cambodian stand?” he wondered. “Still, as Jack said, since the accident they’ve had a regular iceberg patrol to send out warnings by wireless of any bergs that happen to be in the vicinity. I wouldn’t mind seeing a berg though, if it wasn’t at too close range. Wonder if I ever will?”

Had the young engineer possessed the gift of second sight, he would have been able to foresee that in the immediate future he was destined to come into closer contact with icebergs than he would have dreamed possible, and also that the entire current of his life was to be changed by a series of unlooked for and astonishing happenings.

CHAPTER II: ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ICE.

With the dropping of the sun it fell bitter cold. The sea heaved in a leaden, lightless swell which the forefoot of the Cambodian, as she drove along, broke into spuming spray. The officers donned their heavy bridge coats. The crew, or that portion of it which had the watch on deck, wrapped up as warmly as they could in the scanty garments they possessed.

When Jack opened his cabin to go below to his evening meal, a slight flurry of snow struck him in the face.

“Goodness!” thought the boy, “here’s a change, and when we left New York folks were thinking about Coney Island and putting their winter coats in moth-balls.”

The captain was the only other occupant of the dining-room, from which opened the officer’s cabins, when Jack went below. The boy noticed that Captain Briggs’ face was rather flushed, and his eyes were very bright as he took his seat. The captain had finished eating but before he left the room he came to Jack’s side and, leaning over him, asked in a rather thick voice, if there had been any more reports on icebergs. Jack replied in the negative.

“Tha’s aw’ ri’ then,” said the captain in a loud, boastful voice, whose tones were thick. “Donner be ’fraid icebergs with Cap’n Briggs on board. I’m an old sea-going walrus, I am. I jes go ri’ through ’em, yes, sir, jes like knife goin’ thro’ cheese. Thas me.”

He swaggered out of the cabin with his scarlet face grinning. Jack’s eyes followed him as the captain rather staggeringly ascended the companionway.

“I don’t know much about such things,” thought the boy, while a serious look came over his face, “but it seems to me that Captain Briggs is under the influence of liquor. That’s a bad thing. Liquor is bad at all times but it’s more dangerous at sea than anywhere else.”

He finished his meal hastily and returned to his cabin to find his “wireless bell” ringing furiously. Jack lost no time in getting to work. He found that the U. S. revenue cutter Seneca, one of the craft detailed by Uncle Sam to the iceberg patrol, was flashing out signals of warning. Jack got the operator to repeat them when half a dozen or more other steamers had picked them up.

The Seneca’s operator was in a bad mood at this.

“Confound you fellows,” he flashed through space, “why don’t you pay attention and get the message from the jump?”

“I was eating supper,” Jack replied contritely.

“I haven’t had a chance to eat yet, and I’m so hungry I could gobble a boiler-plate pie,” growled the government man. “This is a dog’s life.”

“I’d trade you jobs,” flashed Jack, but the other ignored this and began thundering out his message concerning the white terrors of the north.

“Ready?” he flashed.

“Fire away!” sparked crackingly from Jack’s key. Far above him, in the night, the aërials flashed and snapped.

“Seneca, U.S. Iceberg Patrol. Str. Montrose reports from 50:47 on parallel 42, sighted three bergs, two growlers, April 6th, moving S.W. Barometer 30. Temperature 36. Overcast. Wind N.W. About 18 miles per hour.

“April 7th, 2:00 a. m., big berg, lat. 42.34, long. 48.15. Growler four miles north-west. Both moving south.”

“That’s all. Now I’ll get a chance to stow some grub—maybe,” grumpily concluded the report. Jack did not jot down these latter words.

As he made his way forward with his report, the young wireless man noticed that the fog was beginning to rise from the sea in long, wavering wreaths. They looked ghostlike under the stars. In the light breeze they danced a sort of witches’ dance. It looked as if the sea was a boiling expanse with whirling banners of steam rising from it. Even as Jack hurried forward he saw that the banners were closing in to form a solid web of mist.

The Cambodian was ploughing steadily forward. From her single big funnel, black with a broad white band, inky smoke was pouring out a volume that showed there was to be no niggardly saving of coal on the present voyage. In fact, before sailing, Jack had heard that she represented a new type of fast freighter, and that her maiden voyage would be utilized as an opportunity of trying her out thoroughly.

Above the young operator hung the spiderweb strands of the antenne. Practiced operator as he was, Jack had never quite lost his wonder at the often recurring thought that from those slender copper cables, seemingly inert, he could, by the pressure and release of a key, send out a message, in time of danger, that would bring a score of ships hastening to the stricken one. It was characteristic of the boy that close acquaintance with the wireless had not in the least dimmed his enthusiasm and reverence for its marvels.

On the bridge were three figures, shrouded in heavy coats. They were the captain, chief officer, and second officer. From one end of the bridge a seaman was constantly casting overboard a canvas bucket attached to a rope and hauling it in board again. Each time he brought the bucket to the group of officers, one of whom thrust a thermometer into it and then read off the temperature of the water.

“Dropped ten degrees, by Neptune!” Captain Briggs exclaimed thickly as Jack came up. He had just finished scrutinizing the thermometer under the light of a hooded lantern.

“Ten degrees, sir!” cried Mr. Mulliner, the first officer.

“That’s what. We ought to smell ice before long,” was the reply, with a loud, hilarious laugh.

CHAPTER III: A NARROW ESCAPE.

“It’s too bad. The captain has certainly been drinking,” mused Jack to himself as he stood at attention and presented the dispatch he had just copied.

“What’s this?” demanded the captain, regarding him with bloodshot eyes that blinked suspiciously.

“Report from the Seneca, sir. Bergs in the vicinity,” spoke up Jack.

“Report from the Seneca, eh?” muttered Captain Briggs muzzily. “Well I know as well as they do there are bergs ahead. Let’s see what it’s all about.”

He took the message and scanned it under the light of the lantern by which he had been taking thermometer readings. His hand shook and he called first officer Mulliner to read the message to him. Mulliner repeated it in a grave voice.

“Hadn’t we better slow down, sir?” he asked.

“Slow down? What for?” blustered the flushed captain.

“Why, sir, the temperature of the water and then this dispatch all go to show that we are nearing ice-fields, maybe growlers and bergs. We are making fully eighteen knots now and——”

“We’ll continue to do so,” exclaimed the captain. “I’ve sailed these seas for a good many more years than you’ve been on earth, Mr. Mulliner.”

“That may all be, sir,” rejoined the young officer anxiously, “but at this speed——”

“At this speed we’ll head ’em off according to my calculations,” declared the captain. “If we slowed down we’d land in the middle of ’em. If we keep full speed ahead, we’ll pass to the south of ’em.”

“Then you mean to race them, sir?”

“That’s what. If that’s what you want to call it. Now get to your duty, Mr. Mulliner,” added the captain in sharp tones, as if he felt he had been too lenient even to argue with his subordinate. Mr. Mulliner, muttering something about “suicidal,” turned away.

“Any orders, sir?” asked Jack, when he was alone with the captain.

Captain Briggs shook his head. He was a seaman of the old school and did not place much faith in wireless.

“Just stick at your instruments,” he said, “but if there’s bergs about the look-out, bet my nose ull pick ’em up ahead of any fool wireless contraption.”

Jack made his way aft, burning with indignation. Here was a fine, new ship, being driven at top speed toward the greatest peril a seaman can encounter, at the whim of a man who had been drinking. But there was nothing to be done, as Jack reflected with a sense of speechless anger. Aboard ship the captain, no matter how insane his orders may appear, is absolute czar of the situation. His word is law. He can hang or imprison, for mutiny, anyone who dares to question his orders.

The young wireless operator paused, before he reentered his snug cabin with its shining instruments, to lean over the rail and gaze out into the night. The mist had thickened now. It struck at his face like clammy fingers. The night was quite silent but for the vague hum of the engines far below him, and the hiss and roar of the sea as the hulk of the Cambodian was driven through it.

Ahead it was almost impossible to see anything but a dense, black pall that might hide anything. Dimly through the mist curtains, Jack could make out the figure of the look-out in the crow’s nest. Occasionally he could catch his hoarse shout of “All’s well” and an answer, booming through the smother, from the bridge.

Suddenly the whistle began sounding. At regular half minute intervals it shrieked hoarsely.

Jack knew what they were doing. If bergs were in the vicinity, in the intervals of silence between blasts, an echo would be flung back.

“Pshaw, that’s a haphazard way of detecting bergs at best,” muttered Jack to himself.

But he found himself listening with strained ears to catch the slightest sound of an echo after each clamorous yammer of the big siren. He fell to musing of the night on the Ajax when the big berg had loomed up before them.

Details of that night were told in the first volume of the Ocean Wireless Series, which was called “The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic.” This volume introduced Jack, his strange dwelling place, and his odd relative, Cap’n Toby Ready, to our readers. We found Jack, pretty well disheartened in his ambition to become a wireless operator, on his way home among the shipping to the queer old derelict craft where he lived with his uncle Toby, the latter a purveyor of vegetable drugs and medicine, to old and superannuated skippers.

Seeing a crowd on a dock, Jack went to find out what was the matter. He soon discovered that the young daughter of Jacob Jukes, the millionaire head of the great shipping combine, had strayed from her father, who was visiting a great “oil-tanker” moored there, and had tumbled overboard.

Jack leaped from the dock, while the others stood paralyzed with helplessness, and saved the child in the nick of time. This won him Mr. Jukes’ extravagant gratitude. He wanted to give Jack money. But all Jack wanted was a job as wireless operator on the big “oil-tanker,” the Ajax. He got it. Mr. Jukes would have given him the ship had he asked for it. But the millionaire was autocratic. After Jack’s first voyage he wanted the lad to give up the sea and, at a big salary, become the friend and companion of the millionaire’s son, Tom, a sickly lad. This by no means suited Jack and he and the millionaire quarreled.

But Jack forged steadily ahead in his chosen profession. On his first voyage, by a clever wireless trick, he brought confusion on a gang of tobacco smugglers and set all their plans at naught. For this brave act he almost paid with his life. But all came out well, and on a homeward voyage from Antwerp he was able, once more with the aid of the wireless, to unite Mr. Jukes and his son, Tom, who had become separated when the millionaire’s yacht caught fire and burned to the water-line at sea.

In the next volume, which was called “The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Lost Liner,” Jack found himself the natty chief wireless man of the crack West Indian liner, Tropic Queen, one of the finest passenger craft plying those waters.

Jack and his assistant, a youth named Sam Smalley, found themselves involved in an intrigue almost at once. A mysterious wireless code and a plot to steal papers involving the Panama Canal formed its chief features.

In trying to fight the ring of rascals, against whom he found himself pitted, Jack was drugged in the Island of Jamaica and cast into an inaccessible dungeon—part of an old Spanish castle called The Lion’s Mouth. By wonderful ingenuity and pluck he escaped from the fate planned for him.

Later a safe was blown open on the Tropic Queen and the Panama papers were stolen.