"C Q", or, In the Wireless House/Chapter 2
II
Micky stumbles upon a peculiar passenger and explains the mysteries of the wireless to a young lady.
THE atmosphere of the second-cabin saloon was somewhat clearer than that of the first, and Micky’s appetite was of the best.
“Good afternoon, everybody!” he cried genially, as he slipped into his place at the head of the table nearest the door. “Fetch me some soup, Dobson.”
An intermittent chorus in Italian, English, and French greeted his arrival. There were seven at the table, one chair being vacant.
“Goot vetter we’re having!” nodded a German brewer from Hoboken.
“Fine!” said Micky. “I was talking to the Berlin this morning, two hundred miles to the westward, and they said it was like a mill-pond. And the Cedric—same distance ahead of her—reports the same thing.”
“I ’m so glad!” answered a wan English girl, traveling with her brother, who looked consumptive, yet ate almost nothing. “I ’d hate to be in a storm. Is n’t it dreadful, Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But we don’t get ’em this season—that is, head storms. You don't mind the others.”
“I ’d mind anything!” she sighed.
“Pardon, mees,” put in eagerly a sallow, lean-faced Algerian with grayish-black hair cut in a brush-like pompadour. “I haf been crossin’ twenty years on thees ships, and dere ees nuthin’ to fear. Alors, why should you care? It ees la mal de mer that ees bad. It ees the worst thin’ for ’uman bein’s dere ees! It ees awful. But, think, mees, you do not ’ave it—no?”
He smiled at her with a gentle smile, like the soft desert wind among his own orange groves.
“No, fortunately!” she answered.
“Then, eef you ’ave it, come to me and I will geef you a lemon!” he continued parentally. “These ship lemons! Mon Dieu! They are like nuts. You should see my lemons at Sadi-bel-Abbas! Dere ees nuthin’ like that country. It ees fine—so warm in winter an’ so cool in summer!
“But I thought Algeria was hot!” protested the girl.
“Algerie? Chaud! Ah, non, mademoiselle!” he cried, his face lighting up. “It ees like heaven. No hot weather like you have in New York. Always nice.”
“Say, Frenchie, what are you givin’ us?” inquired the broad-shouldered chauffeur of an American railroad-owner. “Kinder hot in the desert, ain’t it?”
“Mais, we do not live in the desert, m’sieu.” answered the other courteously. “Our plantations are in the mountains and the valleys. It ees not too hot for ’uman bein’s. Of course in the desert! Que voulez vous? But even dere in the Legion Etrangére build the roads in the sun. Those are the brave garçons, m’sieu! From all over the world they come—Espagne, Suisse, Russie, Allemagne, et les Etats Unis d’Amerique.”
“The United States?” questioned the chauffeur.
“Certainement, m'sieu!” the Algerian assured him. “They also work for nuthin’— you understan’—for nuthin’, with a sou each day for tobacco. They are the bravest men dans tout le monde! For they care nuthin’ for their lives. They no more fear than the Mohammedan. Kismet! No one can stand against them. I have known in the ranks the sons of American millionaires—c’est vrai!—princes of Russie, noblemen of Oesterreich, and priests that were but are no longer within the Church—fugitives from justice from every country in the world, men of broken heart, chevaliers d’industrie—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Rascals, you say, perhaps, but gentilhommes d’honneur. Ah, the petites histoires I have heard them tell around the camp-fire and at the hospital of ‘Les Isles d’Hyeres’— the ‘Golden Isles.’”
A shadow fell across the table, and he paused in his recital as the empty chair was filled. The man in the ulster had entered unobserved, and now took his seat unobtrusively. Evidently he had changed his mind about coming down to lunch. It was his first appearance at table during the voyage, but Micky knew that his name was Cloud—since the chair was thus assigned. It was obvious that he had over-heard the Algerian’s impassioned eulogy of his country, for he now bowed in his direction with a polite:
“Don’t let me interrupt you.”
The newcomer was dressed in faded but well-cut clothes of Scotch mixture, and he had a narrow, handsome, clean-cut English face, the high cheekbones of which were surmounted by bronzed temples and a forehead that ran well back over the crown until it met the rather thin but curly brown hair. Had it not been for the stubby beard, the face was such as you might have seen twenty times a day on the hunting field at Market Harboro or Melton Mowbray. Every distinctive feature of the sporting aristocrat was there—the flat, small ears, the ruddy skin, the clear blue eyes, the prominent arched nose, the large, white, even teeth—all but the chin, covered with that incongruous, grotesque beard. Such heads you see the world over, from Manitoba to Mombassa—sometimes even in the chorus of a comic opera, wherever the “younger son” is carving out his fate. But this man was not altogether true to type, for the skin about his eyes was dark and sunken, and he had the gaunt look of one who has played and lost, the hopeless expression of the man who has nothing left.
“Decided to come down, after all?” remarked Micky, with good humor.
“Yes,” returned the other in a slightly nervous manner. And the conversation lagged.
The stewards began clearing away, and the second-cabin passengers gathered in groups or sauntered out on deck. The wan girl and her brother, however, seemed to have made no friends, and lingered on. The girl was by no means bad looking, as Micky took pains to observe. Neither was the brother, although he had the pasty look of one who has lived his life inside closed doors, and the stoop that is apt to go with it—a clerk, Micky guessed, taking a sea voyage for his health.
Micky’s attention had been attracted to the pair early in the voyage for several reasons. In the first place, they, like Cloud, had come aboard at Gibraltar—a rather curious place to take a steamer for America in the month of September. Spain was pretty hot—infernally hot after the middle of June. Then, while the girl seemed like a chatty sort of person and was always ready to talk to her companions at the table, neither she nor her brother had by so much as a single word indicated whence they had come, what their purpose in life was, or where they were going. Micky had a vague suspicion that the girl showed an unusual dexterity in avoiding anything like an approach to personalities—but he confessed that he might have been mistaken. Lastly, with all the readiness of the two to make themselves agreeable in the saloon, they never talked to any one outside on deck, or joined in any of the games that were played. In fact, the brother had remained almost constantly in his state-room, while the girl sat by herself, reading or watching the gulls. He had a sensitive, rather cadaverous face, and, like the man Cloud, sported a half-grown, bristly beard. They were English, of course, but they piqued Micky’s curiosity, and he determined to break down the barrier of reserve with which they had surrounded themselves.
On the second-cabin list they were put down as “Mr. William H. Bennett, Miss Bennett,” and as such he now addressed her.
“Find it rather dull on board, Miss Bennett?”
“Oh, no-o,” she answered. “But we are not very quick at picking up acquaintances; and my brother has felt rather miserable until now.”
Like to take a look at the wireless house?" he asked, conscious, nevertheless, that the Captain might have meant what he said.
“Oh, could we! I thought it wasn't permitted.”
“I ’ll permit you," he reassured her. “Come along up.”
Outside, the breeze had flattened and a film of gray had come over the sun. Aft, a great flock of gulls were racing the ship, now swooping down after some morsel thrown from the sculleries, again poised motionless aloft, but still keeping even with the stern. The great blue rollers went seething by without really breaking, save where, here and there, a single whitecap showed what the wind had been.
Mrs. Trevelyan and her companion had wearied of their rendezvous and were no longer to be seen. Bridge had succeeded a flirtation which for these two was no longer profitable or a necessity. But the fumes of his lordship’s cigarette still lingered in the air, and Micky threw open the window and motioned his guests to take seats on the bunk. The man was obviously exhausted by his climb up the ladder, but the girl was all interest. The windows looking in every direction showed not a single sail or streak of black smoke on all the limitless horizon.
“You ’d think we were all alone, would n’t you?” said Micky, filling his pipe.
“Yes—are n’t we?” she replied innocently.
“Not one bit of it!” he answered. “We ’re in the middle of a regular drove of ships. He nodded westward. "Right over there are the Berlin and Cedric, and beyond them the Fulda and the Frederick II. Behind us are the Oregon and the Hohenlohe. About three hundred miles south of us is the Argentina, bound for Buenos Ayres, and the Karib for Colon. Just north is a big yacht, the Nevada, and the Frankfort, going eastward. I ’ve been talking to all of them. I know most of the operators, too. The chap on the Berlin is named Morrissy. We had an evening together at Algiers about a week ago. He owes me a shilling sixpence.”
The girl listened, wide-eyed.
“And you ’ve been talking to all of them! It ’s too wonderful. How do you do it?”
Micky laughed lazily.
“It ’s no trick at all!” He threw over his rheostat and wound up his magnetic detector. The converter gave a great roaring whir, and he threw it off again; but he put the receivers to his ears and listened.
“All at lunch,” he commented after a minute. “Anyhow, nobody ’s working. You see, there ’s very little doing except at night. The air ’s much more quiet then as a rule, and there ’s no one to bother you. Of course, I only get relay messages out here, because we ’re out of commercial range of The Ushant and Poldhu, and nobody sends anything from Tangier—at least, I never had a message for a passenger from there.”
“But I don't understand,” she hesitated. “What happened when the machine made that great noise?”
"It was generating the current for my aerials,” he replied. “You ’ve noticed those wires hanging down, something like a hammock, from the mast, of course? Well,”—he threw on his converter,—“now she ’s generating a current that is thrown off in waves whenever I close the circuit.”
The instrument was whirring like an aeroplane about to fly, and, when Micky pressed his key, crackled with a blue flame that made the girl jump.
“That’s nothing,” he grinned; “I ’m just sending out a few ‘CQ’s’—that ’s the call for ‘all stations,’ you know—to let the other fellows know I ’m alive. Hello! There ’s Morrissy already. He wants some ‘V’s’—letters so he can tune in.” Bz-bz—bz. “Now I ’m giving him ‘HS’—‘How are my signals?’—‘Signals good and strong,’ he says. You see, he’s tuned into my wave-length already by varying the capacity of his condenser and inductance. You have to send out the ‘V’s’ anyhow to test your spark.”
Micky was working his key rapidly, and now broke into a laugh.
“I asked him if he had forgotten about that shilling sixpence, and he said if I ’d run over he ’d give it to me.”
“How far off is he?” she asked wonderingly.
“Only about two hundred and fifty miles.”
“Two hundred and fifty miles!”
“That ’s about all you can do commercially by day, and it varies, at that, with the atmosphere. Every thunder-storm kicks up a bloomin’ row. The least thing makes a difference, you know—heat of the air, cool of the night, latitude, hills (if you ’re talking to a land station), any electrical disturbance (‘atmospherics,’ we call them)—storms in the ether you can’t see and only guess at. Three hundred mile by day is the very outside. But at night we get ‘freak’ working. I can send sometimes twelve hundred miles and receive two thousand miles. That ’s a bally long way. But, with the air nice and cool, I can take Poldhu every night—and it ’s well over a thousand.”
"It ’s the most wonderful thing I ’ve ever known!” she gasped.
“Yes—yes!” repeated the brother huskily, with an assumption of interest. “It is wonderful.” He coughed painfully a couple of times.
“Do you get the news from land that way?” she continued.
“Every night—regular as the clock,” answered Micky. “Why, I heard all about the Olympic-Hawke collision from The Ushant right through the Pyrenees, and I was lying in the bay of Algiers in a perfect nest of stations. There were fifty vessels all talking at once,—a terrible jam,—but I got every word. Now the regular press business comes every night through Poldhu—in Cornwall, you know! About a quarter past eleven you start your detector and begin listening. The detector is an endless iron band passing through a small coil of copper wire. It catches everything—any kind of an electric wave—any length. You tune into the other fellow’s wave by sliding these vulcanized rubber handles backward and forward. Well—now you ’re ready. Then at eleven-thirty sharp (Greenwich time) Poldhu begins working ‘CQ—CQ—CQ—ZZ—ZZ—ZZ.’ That means, ‘All stations—Poldhu talking.’ Then he begins to send his commercial messages and signal for the ships he wants. Every ship has a letter. If he wants the Caronia he sends out MRA.—MRA—until he picks her up, or if he ’s after the George Washington he sends out DKN. After he gets through his commercials he begins to distribute the news to our subscribers. ‘SP—SP—SP’ he says (‘Press for transmission only’), and gives the number of words. It ’s usually about six hundred. Then he goes ahead and tells how the market is, and who ’s dead, and who won the prize fight—and when he's finished he goes back and says it all over again. Why, I sit here every night and it ’s just as if I was on Picadilly Circus except for the lights. Often there ’s just as much noise.”
“So everything that goes on in the world is known on the sea!” said the girl lightly.
“Everything of importance,” he answered.
“And you ’re always in touch—never any more terrible uncertainty”—she hesitated for the smallest fraction of a second—“about—anything!”
“None. Even if you are n’t in touch with a land station, you ’re always in communication with a whole bevy of ships, and they give you all the dope—the news. Why, sometimes, up here, it ’s like an afternoon tea except for the women, and”—he laughed—"sometimes I have them too.”
“But, of course, there are many things that happen which are not worth reporting, like that, every night at such great expense—little things—that affect only a few people?” she asked, almost anxiously.
“Of course. It ’s just like a newspaper of six hundred to one thousand words. They send out what is vital, and some of it is deuced urgent. You remember when Crippen was caught getting over to Canada? It was all wireless. Why, that murderer would have beaten it if it hadn ’t been for the Captain snooping around and playing Sherlock Holmes among the passengers until he found a fellow that matched up to the description that had jumped through the air and overtaken him. Oh, it ’s quite exciting up here sometimes. Imagine me getting an SOS! You 're talking to some rosy ass on another liner about how their butter is holding out, or if they ’ve seen an iceberg, and suddenly—bing—out of nowhere you ’ll catch a little SOS. You listen, and sure enough it is! You drop the ass and the iceberg, and tune in quick, and you find it ’s a yacht that ’s punctured herself on a reef, God knows how far off! And then the air gets full of ships simply yelling. You can hear ’em all, from the Bay of Biscay to the Azores, from Tangier to Madeira, and the ones that have the same wave-length fall all over each other. Of course, you can cut out the others. It ’s a terrible mess! And then you find out where she is, and the nearest ship simply goes and looks after her, that ’s all. It's—hello! There ’s somebody working now. He 's sending out a CQ.”
Micky switched on his mains, and the blue flame leaped through the air as he answered.
“Signals are strong. I should say he must be close to us. Just look out the window, and see if there ’s anybody in sight, Miss Bennett.. . . He says he ’s the Donald Castle from Liverpool to Buenos Ayres, and in plain view of us.”
The girl looked all over the horizon. “There ’s nothing except a sailing-vessel over there to the right,” she said. “They don’t carry wireless, do they?”
Micky craned his neck and glanced through the starboard window.
“That ’s just some old tub,” he remarked. “It can't be her. Queer, is n’t it? It ’s like a man holding out his hand in the dark. You know he ’s there, but you can’t touch him. Now, this chap. He ’s shirty because we don’t see him.”
He pushed his key swiftly.
“Now, I ’ve just said, ‘Keep your hair on and tell me what sort of a bloomin’ vessel you are.’ . . . Oh my! He ’s like a hornet! Says I must be chaffing him! . . . Oh, I say! The beggar ’s too familiar! . . . He is that cruiser over there. Must have rigged a wireless for himself. Lots of 'em do. I ’ll fix him!”
He pressed his key a few times, grinned delightedly, and threw down his receiver.
“What did you say?” asked Bennett.
“I just said, ‘Oh, are you that old hay wagon on our starboard quarter?’”
The girl laughed again.
“It ’s really quite sociable!” said she as they rose to go. “Will you let us come up again?”
“Come any time you want” answered Micky, good-naturedly. “You ’ll always find me here, and you ’ll always be welcome.”