The Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Coast Guard/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
A Ship in Distress
THE day succeeding that on which Mr. Sharp found the nail in the field coil was another of those cold, stormy days so typical of the fall. The heavens were gray with threatening clouds. Fitfully the wind moaned and sobbed, and there was a rawness in the atmosphere that penetrated even the warmest of woolen clothing. Everything portended the approach of a storm.
The weather itself was enough to make one gloomy. But Henry, already worried sadly by the misfortune that had befallen him, was almost sick with apprehension. If only he could have done something toward unraveling the mystery that surrounded him, time would have passed more quickly and not so dismally. But there seemed to be nothing he could do except wait.
The day’s newspapers, brought aboard with the mail, told of gales raging farther along the coast, and of storm warnings posted along the entire Atlantic. Evidently another gale was sweeping the ocean. Terrible as had been the storm Henry had so recently witnessed, he felt that he would almost rejoice at an opportunity to go out and face another. Then there would be a chance to do something, there would be an opportunity for action.
It seemed to Henry as though he simply could not endure to remain idle. Naturally he wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery of the field coil. But what he should do or what he should try to do he could not even imagine. To talk about the matter was useless. That would get him nowhere and advertise something that was known only to a few. Furthermore the captain himself was continuing his investigations, and had given strict orders not to talk about the affair.
When Henry chanced to pass the stateroom of the wireless operators, he thought he would stop and inquire how Mr. Sharp was. The latter had quite evidently been sick the preceding day, though he stuck to his post. Henry knocked at the door. A feeble voice invited him to come in. Henry entered, and found the chief electrician alone. Belford was on watch. Henry did not know where Black was. It did not matter. He saw at once that Mr. Sharp was very sick. His cheeks were flushed. Henry stepped to the bunk and laid his hand on the man’s forehead. It was dry and very hot, and his eyes had that burned-out, almost plaintive look, that fever sufferers sometimes have.
“Why, Mr. Sharp,” said Henry, “you’re sick; you’re real sick. You must have a high fever.”
“I guess that I am about all in,” agreed the chief electrician. “I’ve been taking some dope that the doctor gave me for this cold, and I thought that I could throw it off, but. I guess it’s got me.”
“Have you reported sick to the doctor?”
“No. I thought a while ago that I had better do so, but there wasn’t any one here to take a message, and I felt so rocky I just hadn’t gumption enough to get up and go to the doctor myself.”
“Let me call the doctor for you,” urged Henry.
“All right. I’ll be obliged to you.”
Delighted to find something to do, Henry stepped from the room and hurried aft to the wardroom. There he found the doctor, who came at once. When the latter had taken Mr. Sharp’s temperature and examined him otherwise, he said: “Sparks, it’s you for the sick bay, quick. What do you mean by lying here half dead and not sending for help?”
“You can’t put me in any sick bay,” protested the chief electrician weakly. “I’ve got to go on duty shortly.”
At that the doctor exploded. “Humph!” he snorted. “Duty! Yes, on a white cot! You’ll be lucky if you see the radio room again in a fortnight.”
Henry saw his chance. “Let me take your turns at the key, Mr. Sharp,” he begged. “I promise you nothing more shall happen to the instruments when I am on watch. I'll never leave the room for a second, after this.”
When the chief electrician seemed to hesitate, Henry continued his pleading. “Mr. Sharp, you don’t believe that I had anything to do with damaging that coil, do you?”
“No, I do not,” said the chief electrician decisively. “And I’m perfectly willing to have you go back on duty, but I don’t know what the skipper will think about it.”
“Will you ask him if I may go back on duty?” begged Henry.
“Yes,” murmured Mr. Sharp weakly.
Henry fairly raced for the captain’s cabin and told the commander that Mr. Sharp was sick and would like to speak to him. Captain Hardwick at once went forward. Henry stepped outside the stateroom and the captain conferred with the chief electrician. The result of that talk was that Mr. Sharp, who was now suffering from pneumonia, went to the sick bay and Henry again went on duty in the wireless house.
The very first message he caught was an order from headquarters for the Iroquois to proceed to sea at once and take the oil tanker Rayolite in tow. Henry was going to have his desire fulfilled. The cutter was to go out and once more wrestle with the ocean. The Rayolite, an unfinished tanker, was being towed from Nova Scotia to New York. In the storm the towing tug had deserted her, and the ship was somewhere out on the ocean, driving helplessly before the wind. Her position was given in the despatch as approximately forty-one north, seventy-one west. There were some maps in the wireless shack, so after he had sent the message to the imperiled tanker Henry looked up her position. It seemed to be almost due east of the eastern end of Long Island. The wind was east of north, so that the helpless tanker would be blown along almost parallel with the coast line. Henry was glad of that. He did not want to see any more ships piled up on the shore.
Within a very few minutes after the receipt of this message, the Iroquois was once more heading out to sea. Clad in thick woolen garments and oilskins, the captain stood on the bridge, conning the cutter through the channel. He was needed there. The passage, so fair and easy on a clear day, now called for the utmost caution. Lowering clouds of fog were driving in from the sea, increasing in density with every minute. Snow had begun to fall, at first coming in gusty squalls. Then it fell steadily, the dancing flakes driven in swirling clouds before the sweeping winds. At times the snow changed to rain, and was flung in blinding sheets against the little cutter.
Cautiously the Iroquois nosed her way down the channel, the water becoming rougher and rougher as she approached the open sea. Looking into the swirling, blinding curtain of fog and snow, Henry did not see how the captain could possibly find his way. But with chart and compass to direct him, and his wonderful seaman’s sense of direction to aid him, he took the cutter from buoy to buoy, along the channel, straight out again to the Ambrose Lightship.
With the open sea before him, the captain now confidently set the cutter upon the course he had plotted to reach, a point to leeward of the position forty-one north, seventy-one west, whither the Rayolite would likely have drifted. All the while wind and sea were making up, more and more tumultuously. In the wireless shack Henry tried again and again to reach the Rayolite. No one on board knew whether the unfinished tanker was equipped with wireless, but hour after hour, at intervals, Henry persisted in his attempt to get word from the helpless vessel. As the Iroquois continued on her way, the wind began to shift to the east, a fact that Henry noted with apprehension. He had seen all that he wanted to see of raging storms that blew directly toward the shore. Regardless of wind and wave, the Iroquois drove on through the storm, hour after hour, until at last, as nearly as the commander could tell by dead reckoning, the cutter had attained the desired point to leeward of the position forty-one north, seventy-one west.
Long ago night had fallen. Again and again Henry had swept the stormy skies with the wireless, seeking to get some answering vibration from the Rayolite, but always his efforts had been futile. Now, as the cutter rolled in the seas, at the point where the captain had figured the Rayolite ought to be, there was neither light nor sound to suggest the presence of another ship. Tumultuous waves and driving curtains of fog and snow shut in the Iroquois. Again and again Henry combed the atmosphere with his flashing signals, but no answering sound returned through the night. Henry could not see how it would be humanly possible to find a ship under such circumstances in such a welter of raging water.
But nothing seemed to dismay Captain Hardwick. When he had swept the seas with his searchlight, and blown his siren again and again, without getting any response, he methodically set about finding the lost tanker, making a grid as he had done when searching for the derelict. All night long the cutter followed the pattern of the grid, and all night long the storm grew worse, and wind and sea made up more furiously than ever. The captain was very careful to lay his course so that mostly he was either bucking the heavy seas or running before them.
Dawn brought no cessation of the storm. With undiminished fury it lashed the sea and clutched at the staunch little cutter. Nor was there any sign of the lost Rayolite, until young Black, standing his watch in the radio shack, caught a very faint call for help. He magnified the sound to the maximum, but was able to get nothing more. At once Henry was summoned. He threw over his switch and flashed out an answering call, asking for the vessel’s name and position. His message carried true, for almost immediately came a hardly audible answer. The message was from the lost tanker. She did not know her position. She had sixteen men aboard, with no machinery, no ballast, and forty feet of freeboard. There was little food and almost no water left. She had a small radio set, operated by a small storage battery, that might carry fifty miles at most. She was wallowing fearfully and driving helpless before the storm.
Henry remained on watch while Black took the message to the captain. “Try to get a bearing with the radio compass,” ordered the captain.
Black hurried to rejoin Henry. “Tell the Rayolite we want to get a compass bearing,” said Black.
Henry turned to his key and flashed the call of the Rayolite. Hardly audible was the acknowledgment. “Iroquois wants compass bearing,” telegraphed Henry. “Flash letters MO con- tinuously several minutes. Stand by for answer.”
“Will flash let” came the reply, so faint that Henry hardly caught the signals. The end of the message was lost altogether.
“She’s gone,” said Henry, aghast. Then he added: “Maybe she’s only gone out of hearing. We must be heading away from her. Tell the captain.”
Black rushed for the captain. Henry turned to his key. Again and again he flashed out the call of the Rayolite, but no answering signal came through the storm. Without turning from his instruments he knew that the Iroquois was changing her course. She began to roll fearfully in the trough of the sea. Henry had to cling to his desk to keep from sliding out of his chair. Once such rolling of the ship would have filled him with terror. Now he thought little of it. He was too intent on what he was doing.
For a long time they drove on through the storm. Belford relieved Black in the wireless shack. Suddenly Henry became aware that something unusual was happening. Again he sensed the fact that the ship was turning, but this time he knew that it was different. Now the motion of the cutter was terrifying. At times she was almost on her beams’ ends. Henry peered out through the windows. He noticed that life-lines had been run along the deck, to grip when passing. He had not realized how truly awful the sea had become. When he glanced over the side of the ship, his heart fairly stood still. They were almost in the breakers. Evidently the captain had been wrong in his reckoning. The cutter had almost piled up on the shoals. She was coming about, very, very slowly. Now Henry understood why she rolled so terribly. He clung to his desk and watched the sea and the boiling breakers in silence, fascinated, almost paralyzed with horror. Was the Iroquois going to be where the Capitol City had so recently been?
At last the ship was headed about, bow to the sea, but the waves had drifted her so close to the surf that every second Henry expected to feel. the ship jar and pound on the sands. In the pilot house the captain stood with nerve of iron, though his cheeks had gone white, directing every movement of the Iroquois. The instant she was nose to the sea, he signaled for full speed ahead. The cutter drove forward, and a huge wave, sweeping completely over her bow, tore aft along her deck, smashing and rending. The two small boats were snatched bodily from their davits and hurled far astern into the raging sea. A third was torn loose, and hung by its after-fall, swinging back and forth with the motion of the Iroquois, like a monster pendulum, pounding the ship’s rail to pieces.
“Look!” cried Henry. “That boat will batter a hole in the side of the ship. I must tell the captain.”
He dashed out of the radio house, leaving Belford on watch. Before Henry had taken two steps he realized how reckless he had been to jump out on the deck so thoughtlessly. He could not stand erect without support. Wildly he clutched for a life-line, caught it, and started for the bridge. But the captain was well aware of what had happened. Already he was making preparations to cut away the swinging boat. Sailors were issuing on deck with axes. The captain himself came down from the bridge.
“Stand back,” roared the commander. “That boat’s liable to tear loose and kill somebody.”
Quickly a rope was tied about the body of a sailor, and cautiously he approached the swinging boat. Watching his opportunity, he swung his axe against the fall, severing it. The lifeboat dropped outboard like a plummet. An upshoot-ing wave lifted it and flung it aft. The sailors turned to seek shelter. A cross comber broke over the side of the ship, drenching everybody. Henry alone was not in oilskins. He was soaked to the skin. Quick as thought he darted to the stateroom and grabbed up a dry jacket. He didn’t know whose it was. Back in the radio shack, he drew off his own dripping coat and slipped on the borrowed garment. In the warm radio shack he knew he would soon dry out.
Steadily the Iroquois headed into the wind. That outlying shoal that had all but caught the Iroquois was the eastern tip of Long Island. Well enough the captain knew that, and now he corrected his course. Somewhere to the southeast of this point the Rayolite would likely be.
When he had worked far enough offshore, the captain changed his course again, heading west of south. All the while Henry was trying, from time to time, to pick up the Rayolite again with the wireless. For a long time he got no answer to his messages. Then came an almost inaudible reply. The Rayolite could hear the Iroquois plainly and had answered all her calls. Once more Henry instructed the Rayolite to sound the letters MO while the Iroquois tried to get a compass bearing. While Henry sat at his key, Belford made his way to the radio compass room. This was a little, squarish structure amidships. Inside, the roof was lined with copper screening so that the body of the operator would not influence the inductance and affect the compass. The radio compass itself, a great wrapping of wire on a rectangular frame, like the four sides of a rectangular box, was mounted on a vertical metal rod, so it could be twirled round in a circle. Encircling the revolving vertical shaft was a circular plate, not unlike the steering wheel of a motor-car, upon which were marked the three hundred and sixty degrees of a circle. The compass was at zero when its windings or wire-wrapped sides were parallel with the ship. As the compass was revolved, the listening operator would hear, with varying degrees of loudness, the signal he was watching for. Now he heard the sound with maximum distinctness. Again it grew faint, and, as he twisted the compass farther around the circle, the signal once more reached its loudest pitch. The two maximum sound points the operator noted on the degree-marked circular plate. Halfway between these two maximum points, or at the point of minimum distinctness, was the desired bearing, the point whence came the desired signal. A zero bearing meant that the signal came from either dead ahead or astern.
Now young Belford carefully closed the door of the compass shack, adjusted the head-phones, and slowly revolved the radio compass. Very indistinct was the signal from the Rayolite. Again and again the young operator revolved his compass, uncertain when the sound came loudest, so faint was it at all times. But finally he decided upon a bearing, and through the speaking tube called up this bearing to the quartermaster on the monkey bridge. A true compass was located on the monkey bridge. The compass in the radio shack deviated from this, so that it was necessary to correct young Belford’s bearing. This the quartermaster did, and conveyed the resulting information to the captain. There was a deviation table in the radio shack that Belford could have consulted, but he had had little experience with the radio compass.
Now the Iroquois was headed straight in the direction indicated by the radio compass. Every fifteen minutes Henry flashed out the call of the Rayolite and got a reply. For some time these replies grew constantly stronger, and then became fainter, yet the ship signaled that she could hear the Iroquois with increasing distinctness. It was evident that the tanker’s wireless was failing.
Henry went up to the bridge and told the captain. The captain considered a moment, and Henry looked about while he waited. The storm had abated not a particle. The view was still veiled by shifting, swirling curtains of snow, but the fog had lifted. The waves were tremendous, but as the Iroquois was no longer bucking them, they did not seem so terrifying. Yet the sea was appalling enough to one so little accustomed to it as Henry was.
Suddenly the captain spoke. “Henry,” he directed, “tell the Rayolite that her signals are getting weaker, and that her battery is evidently going bad. Tell her to save her battery. I’m going to fire a gun every twenty minutes. Tell her to indicate whether or not she hears it. A single word will answer.”
Henry returned to the radio shack and flashed the message to the tanker. A moment later there was a terrific explosion that made him fairly jump in his chair. He began to make the sparks fly under his key. “Iroquois just fired gun,” he flashed. “Did you hear? ”
A long pause followed. Then came the faint reply, “No.”
Twenty minutes later another shot was fired. Once more Henry called the Rayolite and asked if she had heard it. And again came the answer, “No.”
Three times every hour the Iroquois fired a shot, but for a long time the sound of the reports did not reach the struggling ship. Meantime the day was passing fast. Late afternoon came, and still the Iroquois had not found the helpless tanker. But as dusk was descending there came the joyful word from the Rayolite, “Heard your shot faintly.”
Again the captain called for a compass bearing. This time the signals from the tanker came much more distinctly, and the captain accordingly altered his course. The first faint call had given Belford a bearing not quite correct. The Iroquois continued to fire her gun. Forty minutes after the course was changed the Rayolite reported that she heard the shot from the Iroquois clearly.
When Henry sought the bridge with this cheering news, the commander said, “Tell the Rayolite operator to set his watch with yours. At five o’clock I will fire another shot. At the same instant you are to notify him by wireless. Tell him to note how many seconds elapse between the time he gets your flash and the time he hears my gun.”
Once more Henry called the Rayolite and explained the captain’s plan. “At five exactly we will fire,” concluded Henry.
Five o’clock came. Henry sat at his desk, switch thrown over, finger on his key. “Bang!” crashed the gun. Flash, went Henry’s signal. Then he sat in silence, waiting almost breathlessly for the reply. Five, ten, fifteen seconds elapsed. Half a minute went by. There was no reply. Another half minute passed and the wireless was silent. Henry looked worried.
“Do you suppose her wireless has failed altogether?” he asked Belford. Before the latter could answer, Henry’s head-phones began to speak. “Sixty-five seconds difference,” came the reply, both brief and faint.
When the captain received the news he did a little figuring. “Thirteen miles distant,” he commented. “We ought to be up with her in a couple of hours.”
The two hours passed, and no ship was visible. Still the storm raged without abatement. Night had come. For two days and a night the Iroquois had been searching the stormy sea for this tanker that seemed to evade her so persistently. She ought to be at hand, but nowhere could she be seen. Through the blinding storm came no sign of the fugitive vessel. No shaft of light pierced the swirling curtain of snow and mist.
Then suddenly there was the Rayolite, almost abreast of them, not more than three hundred yards distant. It was impossible to send a line to her. No small boat could live in such a sea. It was doubtful if a shot would carry true. The captain swung the Iroquois directly to windward of the tanker, and cut down his speed almost to nothing. In a moment the huge ship was almost out of sight. With her tremendous freeboard, she drove before the gale almost as fast as the Iroquois could steam. The captain turned his searchlight directly on the vanishing tanker, signaled for more speed, and drove straight at her. And all night long the Iroquois steamed directly at the Rayolite, which drove furiously ahead, under the pressure of the gale. The captain left the bridge and threw himself on the cushioned seats in his cabin, to snatch some sleep. Henry, who had spent long, long hours on duty, made his way to the operators’ cabin and lay down, fully dressed, in Black’s bed. The latter and Belford were to watch through the night, with Henry subject to call, if messages had to be sent. He was so worn out that he did not even remove his coat, the jacket he had snatched from the wardrobe after his wetting.
Daylight saw no cessation of the wind, though the snow had ceased to fall, and no longer was the face of the deep clouded with mist. When the captain came on deck again, after a few hours’ rest, he pushed the cutter straight at the Rayolite until she was close behind her. Meantime he had sent a wireless to the tanker, telling her to watch for a line. Now the little brass gun was brought to the cutter’s forward rail, and that sturdy little craft was pushed still nearer the tanker, which was driving ahead, broadside to. At a favorable moment the shot was fired, the slender shot-line went hurtling squarely over the centre of the huge tanker, and the men on her seized it and began to draw it home. A heavier line was bent to it, and soon the end of this had been pulled aboard the Rayolite. Meantime a heavy towing hawser had been passed out through a stern chock of the Iroquois, and the bight of it brought forward, outside of the rail, where it was stopped up or tied with little stops or small ropes. This was to keep the hawser from fouling the propeller, when the cutter should swing around, stern to her tow. Then the hawser was rove round the cutter’s forward bitts. Through Henry the commander now sent a message to the Rayolite.
“Take hawser in through your forward chock and make it fast around your foremast,” telegraphed Henry.
The men on the Rayolite bent to their task and soon pulled the great hawser aboard. They made it fast to the mast.
“Everything ready,” came the message to Henry from the Rayolite.
The captain signaled for more speed. The Iroquois was pushed ahead to get slack. Then the bight of the hawser was cast off the bitts, and the speed of the cutter lessened. Gradually the hawser grew taut. It stretched as tight as a fiddle-string. Then slowly the giant tanker, pressed by the wind, began to turn. The hawser, led through her forward chock, held her bow fast. The wind drove her stern round until she was head to the Iroquois. In another moment the Iroquois herself began to swing. With a startling snap one of the slender stops that held the hawser to the rail parted. Another broke under the strain. The cutter swung further around. One stop after another parted. Finally the Iroquois lay stern to her tow, the hawser taut between them, with no danger of its fouling the propeller.
In turning, the little cutter lay for a moment in the trough of the sea. She rolled alarmingly. At her first pitch Henry’s chair went sliding across the floor, and pads and pencils flew from the desk. At the same instant a message from the Rayolite began to sound in the lad’s ear. He could not reach his fallen pencils. Instinctively he reached in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing. He found a mass of trash and drew it forth, hoping to find a pencil. There were strings, matches, cigarette papers, bits of chalk, and other articles. Among the mass shone two slender little cylinders of metal that made Henry’s heart fairly stop beating. They were two slender finishing nails.