know a thing about the sea. I don’t have any desire to be a mechanic, and so I wouldn’t make a good engineer. And I really would not care to be a sailor.”
“You might become a wireless man, like your friend on the Lycoming. You could doubtless learn to operate the wireless as well as he can.”
Henry smiled. “There wouldn’t be any trouble about the wireless,” he said. “Ive already worked for Uncle Sam as an operator.”
“The dickens you have! ‘Tell me about it.”
And Henry told Captain Hardwick all about the Wireless Patrol, about the capture by that patrol of the German dynamiters at Elk City, about the hunt for the secret wireless right in Staten Island, and about his serving as a substitute operator in the Frankfort wireless station.
The captain’s eyes opened wide as he listened to the story. “If there’s anything in having plenty of good operators aboard, we ought to be safe on this ship,” said the captain, “for you are going to stay here as my guest until your friends get back to New York. Meantime, you can find out a whole lot about the life on a Coast Guard cutter, and perhaps you might decide to enter the service yourself.”
“Do you mean it, Captain Hardwick?” asked Henry, his heart beating high at the prospect.
“Certainly I mean it.”
