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 sign. On it in sprawling characters of white on a black background was the following inscription:
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.
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 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.
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 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.
CHAPTER III
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 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.
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 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,
