CHAPTER IX
SARGON SOUND
A line of wagons were unloading along a ridge of land that overlookedthe turbid yellow waters of the Sargon flood. One group of men werestacking sacks of meat and meal, which had been lugged over the hillroad to help feed the stricken families that had lost everything.Another group had already started for the woods with their saws and axesto fell trees for rafts, on which to bring off the hundreds of refugeeshuddled on ridges still showing above the water.
"Powerful heavy, and don't feel like nothing to eat," said Jed Prother,giving a disdainful kick against some crates and a pile of metal pieceswrapped in old sacking which he had just lifted off a wagon.
"Hi--don't! That's our radio! Might break something!" protested Renaud,coming on the jump.
"Radio? Huh!" snorted Prother. "Better have brought meat and blankets'stead of that thing! No time to tinker at toys down here!"
"He must allow to serenade the rabbits and the 'possums--give 'em alittle music, perhaps," broke out another of the workmen with a bitterlaugh.
Lee Renaud started to retort, then checked his words. These fellows hada right to feel bitter, with all their possessions swept away in thatrolling ocean of muddy waters. It was an appalling disaster. Acloudburst up in the hills had flooded a whole valley. Trees, houses,dead animals rode the current in a procession of horror. And if help didnot reach out soon to the pitiful families marooned on tiny islands,human bodies would be swirled off into that awful drift.
The need was great, yet there were so few to do the relief work, and theequipment of homemade scows and lumbering log rafts was so inadequate.
Sargon district was peculiarly isolated--fourteen miles from a railroad,not an automobile in the whole valley, no telegraph or telephoneconnections. Starvation, sickness from exposure, any of a hundred otherills could sweep in on the trail of the Sargon flood before the outsideworld would be aware of it.
These facts stalked endlessly through Lee's mind as, with Lem Hicks tohelp him, he began unpacking his crates and sackcloth bundles in a tinycabin on the edge of the flood. Here was wireless apparatus, a fearfuljumble of it! This stuff might work--and then again it mightn't.
"Two strong huskies! Better be rowing a boat 'stead o' tinkering!" was ajeer that drifted in through the cabin door.
Maybe they ought to, and yet--with a sudden out-thrust of chin, Renaudsettled back to work. Jeering be blowed! He must carry on as best hecould.
Shades of all inventors! Lee Renaud had brought to Sargon Valley his oldMarconi model, with a wild scheme for hitching a receiving circuit on toit. He had lugged down, also, his two crude little portables for fieldradio use, but they were too unperfected as yet to depend on for anydistant use. And "distance" was what young Renaud had to get in anemergency like this.
Lem Hicks thought that in all these months he had learned a bit aboutwireless. But he was lost in trying to follow the complexities of theimprovised wiring plan Renaud was flinging into shape. Batteries,induction coils, couplers, transformers seemed to fairly spring intoplace. In his haste, Lee appeared to be rushing the work with incoherentcarelessness, but in fact he was following a wiring plan of rigidexactitude, binding, twisting, tying wires with fingers that knew themeaning of every move.
Lem, unskilled as he was, could only fetch and carry.
"Lively now! Let's get at the aerial! Where's the hammer, the chisel?"Like one demented, Renaud drove himself and Lem Hicks, too.
Here was a bewildering tangle of coils and tubes hitched onto the littleold-fashioned Marconi "brass pounder" of electric wireless telegraph.
Then at a touch from Lee the spark began to sputter. Adjustments, and itsputtered more.
"Now--now! It's hitting it up! And I'm going to CQ Mobile till the cowscome home!" muttered Lee between set teeth. "That's the nearest big cityand we got to have help out of 'em for down here--quick!"
To the crackle of the spark, the "urgent" call sped over watery wasteand land ridges towards civilization.
Every few seconds Lee eased up on his telegraphic tapping and switchedover to listen. "Ah, we've touched a station!"
"WDK talking! Point Hope Amateur Relay. Who are you, brother? Newstation, eh? Glad you're on the air." On and on the string of Morserolled in.
"Idiot!" snorted Lee in disgust, switching his key back to transmissionwith a vicious jab. "We've got to have action, not gab!" Then withsteady spark he hammered relentlessly, "S.O.S.--S.O.S.--S.O.S.--Help!Help! Save!"
That brought Station WDK up to taw in a hurry, knocked the gab out ofhim, and held him keyed for business. "Shoot! Who's in trouble? We standby to help!" flashed in the message.
Lee settled down to transmission. His code poured out in a steady streamfrom the brass pounder. "RL Amateur Station calling. Sargon Riverdistrict flooded. Need immediate help. Cut off from everywhere--norailroads--no telegraph. Need food, tents, doctors. Pass on the call!"
On through the day Lee Renaud stuck to his pounder, CQing up and downthe whole state of Alabama, sending word of the dire need. Mobile,Anniston, Birmingham--the cities over the state were tapped into touch.
Yes. Help was coming. Red Cross was answering the S.O.S. of the loneoperator down in the flood country. "O.K. for you, Flood Station RL. Onthe way with supplies, tents, doctors, couple more radios and reliefoperators. Army Post sending emergency airplanes. Coast steamer atMobile wants to head up the Sound for rescue work. Can she make it?"
And so, hour after hour, Lee Renaud kept his old Marconisparking--taking innumerable calls, sputtering back directions in Morse.
Then his little portable radios had their inning. Lem Hicks, with one ofthe fieldpack mechanisms on his back, traveled the return trail till hewas halfway between Sargon and King's Cove. From here he relayed theflood reports from Lee on to Jimmy Bobb at the Cove. This was done toease the minds of the King's Cove folk who had plenty of kin all up anddown Sargon Valley, and were anxious for news.
It was a blessed thing, though, that young Renaud had pounded his oldMarconi on longdistance calls for aid through the day, for the nighthours brought a new and worse disaster. A great power dam, fifty milesup the Sargon, broke under the pressure of water, and by early morning asecond flood rushed down and widened the first flood by miles.