CHAPTER XI
DRIFTING
There is, perhaps, no greater strain to be endured than waiting--waitingfor some certain time to come, waiting for an event to pass, waiting fora letter or a message. And when this nervous strain is multiplied severalthousand times, and when the waiting has to do with perhaps the verycontinuation of life itself, it becomes at last almost unendurable.
That is what Ned, Bob, and Jerry, and their thousands of comrades onboard the _Sherman_, found as they waited for some reply to come tothe wireless calls. As has been related, the dynamo that sent out theimpulses, controlled by the operators’ keys, had been patched up sothat it revolved. Steam was generated for a small engine.
“But how long she’ll work no one knows,” confided an operator to Jerry,coming off duty after several anxious hours in the little deck house.“The repairs are only temporary, the engineer tells me, and she maybreak down again any minute.”
“But you’ll keep on sending out calls as long as you can, won’t you?”asked Ned.
“Oh, sure,” was the answer.
“How do you account for not getting replies to the wireless calls?You’re sending them out broadcast, aren’t you?”
“That’s it. They can be picked up by any number of shore stations, tosay nothing of ships at sea.”
“Then why aren’t our calls picked up and answered?” Bob queried.
“Well, there are two reasons that may possibly explain it,” answeredthe operator. “One is that we’re having a great deal of trouble withstatic. That’s the electricity that’s always more or less in the air,you know. It interferes with our wireless waves.”
“I thought some fellow got up a patent apparatus to overcome thattrouble,” ventured Ned.
“He claimed to,” answered the operator; “but I haven’t yet seen anydevice that will turn the trick. And believe me, when Old Man Staticgets in his fine work you might as well close your switch, take offyour headpiece, and read a book. When the static gets ready to quietdown and stop cutting up high jinks it’ll do it, and not before.
“Of course I don’t mean to say,” he went on, “that it’s as bad aswhen wireless was first invented. A good deal of the trouble has beenovercome. But to-day it’s very bad.
“Then, too, our apparatus isn’t working right. She got a jolt when thatmidnight explosion took place, and the operator who was on duty thenslammed in a high-powered current and burned out some of the fuses.Since then it’s been on the floo, and, though we’ve been poundingthe keys for all we’re worth, we don’t know whether our messages aregetting anywhere or not. Evidently they aren’t, for we haven’t had anyreplies, and in the natural course of things we would, as we ought tobe in the track of many ships going and coming.”
“Just how far do you think the wireless message calls you’ve sent outhave gone?” asked Ned.
“Hard to tell,” was the answer. “They may shoot off for a thousandmiles--our range is fully that when the machinery is in goodcondition--and again they may not get a mile away from the ship. I’minclined to think, though, that the messages leave here all right, butare all balled up by static, or else by other messages jamming them,after they get up in the air.
“You know,” the operator went on, “we work according to different wavelengths. That is, the electrical impulses we send out are so manymeters in length. Now then, if we send out messages of one certainwave length, and some other ship, within the prescribed distance,sends out messages at the same time, tuned as ours are, but of a morepowerful wave length, ours get all jammed to pieces, so to speak. Andall the receiver hears is a jumble of dots and dashes in his earpiece.Naturally he tunes out of that clashing, and listens to what he canhear; to wave lengths that are just right.”
“So, as far as you can tell,” observed Jerry, “it’s just as if a manwrote a lot of telegrams, asking for help, and then, somehow, they gottossed into the waste-paper basket before any one who could give thehelp read them, is it?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” conceded the operator. “But there isone hope.”
“What’s that?” asked Bob.
“The static disturbance may clear off at any time, or some fellowlistening in may catch our call and then send it to the proper place.If that’s done, help will be rushed to us. But I must admit there’s notelling when this will happen.”
“What can we do if we don’t get any reply?” asked Bob.
“Well, we’ll have to drift on until they can patch up the machinery, Isuppose,” the operator replied.
“Can they do that?” Ned questioned.
“I believe they’re going to try,” was the answer. “Anything is betterthan just drifting around.”
“And yet some ship may sight us at any time,” ventured Bob.
“Yes, that’s true,” was the tired wireless man’s remark. “I’ve beentorpedoed twice, and I know what it means to be drifting about waitingfor the chance of being picked up. I had hoped I shouldn’t have to gothrough with it again, but it seems I may have to. Well, the boys aregoing to keep on trying, and I’ll do my share when I go on duty again.
“I don’t mind the sending off of messages so much,” he concluded, as hecontinued on his way to the cabin set apart for the use of himself andhis companions. “It’s the strain of listening for a reply that gets onmy nerves. You hear a click in the earpiece, and you think surely it’scoming. Then it turns out to be just Old Man Static getting in his finework, or else a jumble of dots and dashes from no one knows where--outof the sky, you might say--and there you are. Four hours of that areenough to wear any one’s nerves to a thread.”
“You said it!” commented Jerry. “Well, good luck to you!”
Interest in the reëstablishment of the wireless apparatus, even thoughit was only temporarily repaired, and anxiety to know when some of themessages sent off into space would be answered kept every one on boardthe _Sherman_ keyed up to the highest pitch. They were all under aheavy strain.
But as hour after hour passed, and no good news came, faces that hadtaken on looks of hope began to lose them. The time came for the manwho had talked to the Motor Boys to go back on duty.
“Well, here’s for another try,” he said, with a weary smile, as heentered the cabin.
Having nothing better to do, Ned, Bob, and Jerry remained as close aspossible to the wireless room. They wanted to know, as soon as mightbe, if any help was on the way.
It was about an hour after George Hardy, the wireless man who hadtalked to the three friends, had gone on duty for his second shiftsince the repair of the apparatus, that he came out of the wirelessroom with a despairing look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jerry quickly.
“It’s all up!” was the answer.
“All up! What do you mean?”
“Apparatus all burned out,” Hardy went on. “We tried to the limit ofthe power, and the whole business has gone bluey. Can’t get anotherspark out of her.”
“Whew!” whistled Ned, and the faces of Bob and Jerry, as well as thoseof others who heard the bad news, took on an added look of care andanxiety.
“But you can still listen in, can’t you?” asked Ned, after a pause. “Isthe receiving apparatus damaged?”
“No, that’s still in good shape,” Hardy answered. “If, by any chance,some of our messages reached some station, and they can tell where toreply to us, and how, we may get an answer. We’re going to listen infrom now on.”
“Well, let us hope that you hear something,” murmured Jerry.
“And all we can do is drift on,” said Ned drearily.
The day passed without anything happening. So many thoughts occupiedthe minds of the three Cresville boys that they almost forgot tospeculate on the outcome of the information they had given theircaptain. They did not cease to wonder at times, though, as to whooccupied the mysteriously guarded cabin, and they also tried to guessthe reason for the peculiar actions of _le cochon_.
“Maybe he’s locked up there as a
bomb-planter,” suggested Bob.
“It’s possible,” assented Ned.
“I wish Professor Snodgrass were here,” Bob went on.
“Why?” asked Jerry. “Do you think he could fix up the wireless, mendthe broken boiler, or help us in any way?”
“Not exactly,” was the answer from the stout youth. “But he’s betterfun than just standing about, waiting for something to happen.”
“Yes, I’d like to see him, too,” agreed Ned.
The night passed without incident, save that word went about the shipnow and then that the engine-room force was working desperately to makerepairs which would enable the transport to proceed, however lamely.
But when the sun rose, a red ball of fire in the morning, it saw the_Sherman_ still drifting.
“We’re in for some change of weather,” remarked a sailor in the hearingof the chums.
“A storm?” asked Jerry.
“Can’t say, but looks like it.”
And the disabled troopship kept on drifting--drifting--drifting.