The Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Coast Guard/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
A Call for Help
YET Henry, having come to a decision, proceeded with characteristic directness to try to accomplish his purpose. The minute he had an opportunity to speak to the commander alone, Henry said to him, “Captain Hardwick, I’ve decided that I should like to become a Coast Guard wireless man. Ever since my old chum, Roy Mercer, became wireless man on the Lycoming, I’ve thought that I should like to have a similar job. Yet I wasn’t quite sure that I should like the sea. Now that I’ve seen the ocean, I have come to a decision. Is there any way I can get a job in the Coast Guard as a wireless man?”
“Just at present we have our full complement of wireless men aboard the Iroquois,’ replied Captain Hardwick, “so there is no opening on this vessel. There might be on some other ship. But in any case, you would have to take an initial examination at the hands of a ship’s chief radioman. You might as well take an examination here and now. Mr. Sharp will put you through your paces, if you like, and you will know whether you are competent to fill the place you want. If you are not, Mr. Sharp would be glad to coach you, so that you could become competent. So, whether there is an immediate opening or not, this really looks like an opportunity for you, doesn’t it? And if you prove to be competent, I can recommend you to another commander.”
“You are very kind, Captain Hardwick. I see that it is a real opportunity. And if Mr. Sharp is willing to examine me, I’ll be only too thankful to him and to you.”
The captain rose and rang his call-bell. “Rollin,” he said, when his attendant appeared, “tell Mr. Sharp that I would like to speak to him.”
In a few moments the chief electrician knocked and entered the cabin. The commander said to him, “Our young friend here,” indicating Henry, “has decided that he wants to become a Coast Guard radio man. I told him we had no opening for him on the Iroquois, but that we would examine him anyway and see whether he is qualified. I wish you would see what he can do, Mr. Sharp. Test him out thoroughly, and if he is a little weak, I would like it if you would coach him a bit. When will it be convenient for you?”
“I go on my regular watch in half an hour, Captain, and we would then be uninterrupted. I could give him a thorough examination.”
“Very good. That is the arrangement, then.”
Half an hour later Henry joined the chief electrician in the wireless shack. The latter first questioned Henry concerning the equipment and the theory of wireless. He found that Henry had a good basic understanding of these matters. The brand-new instruments that Henry had not hitherto been acquainted with, he understood at once when their operation was explained to him. In general knowledge and understanding Henry was, the examiner found, fully the equal of even a first-class radio man. When it came to operating the key, Henry showed that he was very proficient. That the chief electrician already knew. Nevertheless he examined Henry thoroughly. He made him flash out all the letters of the alphabet. Then he gave him a message to send, and told Henry to get it off at his best speed. Henry called the imaginary party to whom he was signaling and then dashed off the message almost as fast as the chief electrician could have done it himself. His sending was flawless.
“Now let me see how you receive,” ordered the chief operator.
Both men sat with phones strapped to their heads. Henry began to search the air for messages, shifting from the very short wave-length at which he was operating up through the longer wave-lengths. Suddenly he ceased his shifting, and, seizing a pencil, wrote down this despatch: “Hurricane warning displayed 10 p. m. in Louisiana, Alabama, extreme northwest Florida coast. Storm now central about latitude twenty-seven north, longitude ninety-two west. It has reached hurricane intensity and is apparently moving northeastward toward the Louisiana coast which it will reach late to-night or to-morrow morning. Dangerously shifting gales indicated.”
When Henry had finished taking the message, he tore from the pad the sheet on which he had written and passed it to his companion. The latter also had been copying the message. “Absolutely correct,” he said. “Ill give you one hundred on that.”
“And what will you give me on my entire examination, providing, of course, that the examination is ended?”
“It is. I can’t see that you lack anything as an operator. I’ll have to take off at least one point for your unfamiliarity with the new instruments. That would give you 99. I’d hate to give you such a grade, though. That would be too good to be true. I'll mark you 97.”
“But suppose I deserved the 99. Would that be fair?”
“Young man,” said the chief electrician, “I reckon there’s mighty few of us can qualify as being so near perfect. You ought to be mighty well pleased to get 97. The passing mark is 75, and mighty few ever get much above 90.”
“Oh! I am well enough pleased,” Henry went on. “But that wasn’t the point. It’s a question of what I deserve.”
“I’m giving you all you deserve—maybe more than you deserve.”
“Then mark me down,” objected Henry. “If I deserve 99 I think I ought to have it. And if I don’t deserve 97, I ought not to have 97. I want what’s right. This examination is taken under somewhat unusual circumstances. I realize that. And I don’t want anybody to think it wasn’t perfectly on the level.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll give you a grade that I think you are justly entitled to, and I’ll stand back of that grade to the last ditch. When we get right down to it, there’s more at stake than the matter of your grade. There’s my ability and honesty as an examiner. I’m not forgetting my own reputation in giving you your grade. That will be 97. Now I must copy in my log the message you caught.”
“What do you mean?” asked Henry.
“Why, you know the wireless man has to keep a wireless log just the same as the navigator has to keep a navigator’s log. I have to be able to show what goes on in the wireless house.”
“Just as we had to keep a record at the Frankfort station, I suppose. What do you put in your logbook?”
“Well, every day when we are not in port I have to send our position at certain hours to the radio station in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I have to send all other messages. Records of these must be kept. All storm warnings and naval-station broadcasts must be taken. I must record the messages received, and, from time to time, something that one picks out of the air should be entered, merely to show that the radio man was on his job. So I'll just enter that hurricane warning. It doesn’t concern us, but if it did affect us, I’d have to take it to the captain at once.”
“You said you had to send all messages,” replied Henry. “You didn’t mean that you send every message yourself, did you?”
“That’s exactly what I meant. I can’t take a chance on having anything happen to this outfit. I’m responsible for it, and if it got burned out, the result might be a court-martial, with possible dishonorable dismissal and loss of citizenship. You see our power transformer steps the current up to eight thousand volts. A green operator doesn’t understand the rheostats, and would allow too great a voltage to pass through the generator. That would burn out the transformer or puncture the condensers or break down the insulation in the spark-gap, according to which was the weakest. We usually carry spare condensers and spare jackets for the spark-gap, but no spare transformer. It’s a mighty serious thing to burn out a wireless set. If anything happened to the ship, there would be no way to call help, and the entire crew might, consequently, be lost.”
During the chief radio man’s entire watch of four hours, Henry sat with him in the radio shack. After the examination was ended, Mr. Sharp connected up with the loud speaker of the radio, and the two watchers laid down their head-phones. They could talk freely. The loud speaker would tell them of every message in their wave-length that passed their way. To Henry this was, indeed, a rare opportunity. Again and again he went over every detail of the wireless apparatus, until he could have reconstructed the intricate outfit alone, had it been taken to pieces. And he asked the chief electrician countless questions as to wireless practice. With the wide knowledge he already possessed, he was in a position to learn much in a short time. When he left the wireless shack at the end of the watch, Henry felt that he had added much to his ability as a wireless man.
If Henry could have heard Mr. Sharp’s report to Captain Hardwick, he would have been pleased, indeed. For the chief electrician went immediately to the captain’s cabin when the watch was ended.
“Does he know anything about wireless?” asked the commander, when the chief radio man told him the examination was over.
“He’s a dandy, Captain,” smiled the wireless man. “So far as the matter of wireless comprehension and ability to receive and send are concerned, he’s easily superior to my regular assistants, much superior. But what I like about him is his spirit and his comprehension. He’s anything but a dumb-bell. I think he’s fairly entitled to a grade of 97 on his examination.”
The captain smiled. “I guess you are favoring him a bit,” he said.
“No, I am not. You see he has had an excellent training. He was a substitute operator in the Frankfort government station for a time. They employ only first-class men in such a station, you know.”
“I’m glad to have such a favorable report of him. I’ve taken a great fancy to the lad, and wish he could be one of your assistants.”
“So do I,” said the chief electrician.
“You might coach him a little and help him get ready for his second examination. He’ll be taking it somewhere sometime.”
“I’ll be glad to do so, Captain.”
When Henry came to the cabin for the next meal, the captain said, “Mr. Sharp tells me your work was sufficiently good to pass you. I am glad. I wish there were a vacancy here to which I could appoint you. I hope you will keep on studying and practicing so as to acquire real proficiency. If you do, I shall be glad to do all I can to help you get a job.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Captain Hardwick,” said Henry gratefully. “What I can’t understand is why you should be willing to do so much for a boy who is a perfect stranger to you.”
“Would you really like to know?”
“Indeed I would.”
“Then I’ll tell you. It is because of what I read in your face.”
“What can you read in my face?” cried Henry in amazement.
“A great deal that you don’t dream of. Perhaps you do not know that all of us write our histories on our faces.”
“Our histories on our faces!” repeated Henry. “What do you mean, Captain?”
“I mean just what I say. I know exactly the sort of boy you are, just as well as though I had known you all your life. And I would know just as truly if you were mean or cowardly or dishonest.”
Henry was too much astonished for words. The captain’s remark made him very serious for a time. “Gee whiz!” he thought. “If what the captain says is true, a fellow has to be mighty careful what he does. Why, just think of all the wonderful things that Captain Hardwick has done for me, and he says he did them because of what he read in my face. I can hardly believe it. Yet there must be something in it, for there are those two assistant radio men and I dislike the one and like the other, and it’s nothing in the world that makes me feel that way except their faces. Gee! I’m glad the captain didn’t dislike my face. And if what I do is going to affect my face and so affect my fortune, you can bet I’ll be mighty careful what I do.”
Imbued, from this time forward, with the idea of becoming a radio man, Henry spent much of his time in the radio shack. His friendship for young Belford grew rapidly, and the two spent many pleasant hours together. They were about of an age and had much in common. Henry tried to be friendly with young Black, too, but the latter did not seem to welcome his advances. Nothing seemed to please him. He did not like his life on the Iroquois. He said his job was a miserable one, and when Henry asked why it was distasteful, he replied that being a radio man wasn’t bad in itself if only a fellow had decent companions to work with. Nobody, he said, could be expected to like his work if he had a boss like the chief electrician.
“Why don’t you like the chief electrician?” Henry asked the lad.
“He’s a slave driver. He’s nothing but a crank,” and the lad swore viciously.
“Why do you think he is a crank?” asked Henry.
“He’s too particular,’ and again he swore. “And he won’t let anybody touch his blamed old key but himself. You might think he owned it.”
“But just think,” urged Henry. “This outfit is worth ten thousand dollars. If it’s harmed, he is responsible for the damage.”
“Who'd hurt his old wireless? And, anyway, why should he care? It’s Uncle Sam’s, ain’t it?”
Henry was shocked at the lad’s attitude. He wanted to tell him that if Mr. Sharp considered his assistants fully competent to operate the wireless, he would doubtless gladly let them do their full share of the work. But he knew that would lead to a disagreeable argument, if not indeed to an open quarrel, so he passed the matter off by saying, “I suppose he has reasons we don’t know about.”
“Reasons,” sneered the operator. “Sure he has, and I know what they are. He don’t want nobody but himself to get ahead. He wants to make me stay a third-class man. He ain’t willing to let me use the instruments so I can learn more about it. Oh! His reasons are plain enough. He’s got it in for me.”
“How long have you been on the Iroquois? ” asked Henry.
“Six months.”
“Then I suppose you have taken your examinations for second-class operator.”
“Yes. And that old dumb-bell flunked me,” and again the lad swore viciously.
But Henry had little time to ponder over the grievances of the radio man, unreasonable though he believed them to be. Every minute was filled with interest. Particularly was he pleased when a message came out of the air for the Iroquois, ordering her to proceed to Boston to take aboard certain stores at the Boston Navy Yard. Henry had never dreamed of seeing Boston, and he was overjoyed at the prospect. It might give him an opportunity to see Bunker Hill and other historic spots he had read about.
The Iroquois, in her pursuit of the derelict, had run well up the New England coast, and it was not much out of her way to touch at Boston. The captain headed direct for that city, and Henry was looking forward to seeing, within a few hours, the scene of the Boston tea party, when another message came whining through the ether that made Henry for a time forget all about Boston. For this new message Henry read in the radio shack as young Black, who was on watch, copied it down. It read as follows:
The message came from a Norwegian tramp steamer, the Viking. Henry volunteered to take the message to the captain’s cabin. When the commander had read the message, he drew a chart from a drawer of his desk and picked up pencil and ruler.
“We ought to be about at forty-one north and sixty-four west,” he muttered, marking the spot on his chart. “The tramp is here,” and he made a second dot on his map. He drew an equilateral triangle on his map and noted where the shore-ward apex fell. “We won’t have to go a fathom out of our way,” he said. Then he drew a radio telegraph blank from the pigeonhole of his desk and wrote this message:
When Henry returned to the radio shack with the message, the chief electrician was there. “Would you like to send the message yourself?” he asked.
“Indeed I would,” said Henry.
“All right. Go ahead.”
Henry sat down and flashed out the message as rapidly and surely as Mr. Sharp would have done it himself.
“Enter that in the log,” said the chief to young Black.
The latter said nothing. Sullenly he picked up a pen and made the entry. But if black looks could have killed anybody, both Henry and the chief electrician would have dropped dead in their tracks. Before the young radio man had finished writing, another message came crackling aboard: “Will meet you sixty-seven west, forty-two north.”