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 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.
“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.
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.
CHAPTER IX
“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.”
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.
“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.
“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.”
“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
