The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic
Page 9
The _Ajax_ made the run through the Channel and out on to the broadAtlantic without incident. Coming through the Channel, they encounteredfog and some bad weather, but on the whole the skipper was pleased withthe conditions and the ship’s behavior.
They had been two days on the ocean and a fairly high sea was runningone night, when Jack, who was seated in the wireless room, where he hadbeen exchanging information and wireless small-talk with half a dozenother operators, noticed a sudden bustle on the deck outside.
A grimy fireman had run forward from the fire-room companionway and thenthe captain had hastened aft. He went to the door and looked out. He wasjust in time to see several men carrying up a limp form from theengine-room and taking it into the captain’s cabin.
“An accident!” exclaimed the boy. “Somebody hurt! I wonder who it canbe?”
He hailed a passing fireman who was coming off watch and going forward.
“What has happened below?” he asked.
“An accident. Someone hurt.”
“Do you know who it is?”
The fireman shook his head.
“I was just coming off watch and didn’t stop to inquire.”
He made off and then Jack saw the captain hasten past and come hurryingback with his surgical case. Jack would have asked him, if he had dared.As it was, he buttonholed another grimy stoker on his way to theforecastle and put his question again.
“Sure I know,” was the reply, “one of the engineers hurt.”
“Badly?”
“I dunno.”
“Who was it?”
“The third. Name’s Raynor, I guess.” And the man hurried on, leavingJack standing there aghast.
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CHAPTER XXI.
SURGERY BY WIRELESS.
While he still stood there, the captain emerged from his cabin and, toJack’s surprise, came up to him.
“Know anything about surgery, Ready?” he asked.
“Why, no, sir. I heard there had been an accident. My friend Raynor. Ishe badly injured, sir?”
The question was put with painful eagerness.
“Not necessarily, my lad. His arm was crushed in a shaft while he wasoiling it. The deuce of it is, we’ve no doctor on board and I don’t knowhow to care for it. I may have to amputate it. I did that once on asailing ship; and in that case, I’ll need assistants. That is why Iasked you if you knew anything of surgery.”
“You’ll have to amputate it? Oh, sir! Poor Raynor!”
“I don’t want to do it if I can help it, but I don’t want to run therisk of blood poisoning. If only we had a doctor! It would go to myheart to deprive the boy of an arm, but what am I to do?”
Never had the captain seemed so human, so sympathetic to the youngwireless man. He looked genuinely distressed.
“They ought to compel every ship to carry a doctor,” he said. “Accidentsare always happening, and—strike my topsails! What’s the matter with theboy?”
For Jack’s eyes had suddenly begun to dance. He gave a sudden caper andsnapped his fingers.
“I’ve got it, sir! I’ve got it!” he cried.
“What, in the name of Neptune? St. Vitus’s dance?”
“No, sir. A doctor. I can get you a doctor, sir.”
“Have you suddenly gone mad?” demanded the captain. “We’re a thousandmiles out at sea.”
“I can get one by wireless, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the big liners carry doctors, sir. I was in communication with oneonly a few minutes ago. The _Parisian_ of the Ocean Line.”
“Where is she?”
“About three hundred miles to the west of us on the Atlantic track,sir.”
“Three hundred miles away! Then how can we get a doctor from her?”
“Very simply, sir, I think, as you say it may not be necessary toamputate. Have Raynor brought in here and laid on my cot. I’ll raise the_Parisian_ and get her doctor on the wire. Then I can flash a fulldescription of the case and the doctor can flash back to us, through the_Parisian’s_ operator, full directions how to proceed!”
“Jove, boy! You have got a head on your shoulders, after all. It soundsextraordinary, but why shouldn’t it be done?”
“It is worth trying, anyhow, sir,” said Jack, his face radiant at theidea that he might be the means of saving his poor chum’s arm. Thecaptain hastened off to give the necessary orders, while Jack raised the_Parisian_ once more.
In crisp, flashing sentences he sent, volleying through the air, anexplanation of the case. By the time poor Raynor, white and unconscious,was carried to the bunk and laid out there, while the open-eyed sailorslooked on, the _Parisian’s_ doctor was standing by the side of theliner’s operator listening gravely to the symptoms of the case as theycame pulsing through space.
The captain, with bandages, instruments, antiseptics and so forth, satby Raynor’s side, anxiously awaiting Jack’s first bulletin.
“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than once as Jack sat alert,waiting for the first word from the doctor who was to treat a surgicalcase across three hundred miles of ocean.
The silence was tense and taut, and broken only by the heavy breathingof the injured engineer.
“What is the man doing?” said the captain impatiently at length.
“It takes even shore doctors time to give a correct diagnosis in somecases, sir,” ventured Jack gravely. “I suppose he is considering theconditions.”
“Absent treatment at three hundred miles,” muttered the captain. “Ready,I begin to believe that this is a crack-brained bit of business, afterall.”
“Wait a minute,” warned Jack, holding up his hand to command attention,“here is something coming now!”
His pencil flew over the pad and then stopped while he flashed back:
“Thanks, that’s all for now. I’ll cut in again when we are ready for thenext step.”
He turned to the captain and read slowly from his pad the doctor’sdirections for treating the injury.
“He says that, from your description, there are no bones broken. The armis merely crushed,” said the boy; and then, bit by bit, he read off thefar-distant surgeon’s directions for treating the injured member. As heread, the captain and his assistant amateur surgeons plied dressings andantiseptics with diligent care.
At last the doctor of the _Parisian_ said that he had no more advice togive that night, but flashed a prescription for a soothing draught to becompounded from the ship’s medicine chest.
By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully without any symptoms offever, and Jack cut off communication with the distant liner afterpromising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”
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CHAPTER XXII.
“YOU SAVED MY ARM.”
It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured arm in a sling, sat onthe edge of Jack’s bunk. They had passed out of range of the _Parisian_,but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the crushed arm was getting along well,and the “wireless doctor” had left instructions for the treatment of thecase as it progressed.
“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for me, all right, with thoseHertzian waves of yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I feelabout it. But how in the world did you ever come to think of such astunt?”
“I can’t claim that it was very original,” was Jack’s rejoinder; “infact, it has been done two or three times before on freight ships thatcarry no doctors.”
“Tell us about it,” urged the invalid.
“Well,” was the answer, “one case I heard about occurred on board the S.S. _Parismina_, while she was crossing the Gulf of Mexico. A sudden callcame to her from a small island out of the path of regular ships calledSuma. A small colony lived there like so many Robinson Crus
oes, miningphosphates.
“A tramp steamer happened along once in a while, and they could sail tothe mainland, but those were their only links with civilization. Tocarry the phosphates from the mines to the coast, they had a narrowgauge railway. One day this railway cut up didoes; a train ran away andcrushed a workman’s foot.
“Luckily, the island had a wireless station with a powerful equipment.There was no doctor and the man was so badly injured that it was fearedhe would die before they could get one. Well, what did the bright youngwireless man do but get busy and start sending out calls broadcast for adoctor.
“At last the _Parismina_ picked up his message, and Dr. C. S. Carter ofthe ship volunteered his services. The _Parismina_ was then just twohundred miles away from the island. The doctor transferred his office tothe liner’s wireless room and took the patient’s pulse and temperature,via the air line. Then he told them just how to prepare a strongantiseptic and how to fix up the broken ligaments.
“The wireless treatment was kept up till the _Parismina_ was fourhundred and twenty miles away, when the doctor was able to dismiss thecase.”
“Some class to that,” said Raynor admiringly. “Do you know any more likethat?”
“Yes, there is one other I can recall, so you see that I can’t claim thecredit for any originality in the idea.”
“Tell us about that other one,” urged Raynor.
Jack paused a moment to adjust his instruments and send a message toanother ship, giving their position and the weather. Then he shut offthe connection and turned to his chum.
“This other one, as you call it, occurred on the freighter _HermanFrasch_, while she was well out at sea. Captain McGray of the ship wasseized with a bad attack of ptomaine poisoning. He grew worse, althoughthey did all they could for him with the help of the ship’s medicinechest and the book of directions that goes with it.
“The ship was out in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. The captainsuddenly thought of a plan by which his case might be treatedintelligently. He knew there was a government station at Dry Tortugas,Florida, one hundred miles off. He ordered a despatch sent there.
“As it so chanced, the despatch was not picked up by the governmentstation, but by the operator of the Ward Liner _Merida_, which was justleaving Progresso, Yucatan.
“‘Doc!’ he exclaimed, rushing into the cabin of the _Merida’s_ doctor,‘there’s a man awful sick with ptomaine poisoning.’
“The doctor lost no time in grabbing up his medicine case.
“‘Where is he, my man? What stateroom?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to loseany time on such a case.’
“‘Well, he’s about eight hundred miles to the west of us, Doc,’ said theoperator dryly, ‘but here is the diagnosis,’ and he handed the doctor along aerogram.
“The doctor whistled.
“‘Pretty bad,’ said he, ‘temperature 104, nausea, rash on face andneck.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Give me an aerogram blank quickly.’
“He wrote out a prescription and a few minutes later it was beingflashed across the sea to the _Frasch_. The medicine was prepared, andnot long after the wireless reported that the captain was ‘Restingeasily.’
“The following morning the captain’s temperature was sent and he wasreported ‘a little better.’ The prescription was changed and the captainimproved rapidly. By this time a number of other ships had picked up themessages, and the stricken skipper might have had a consultation ofphysicians if his case had demanded it.
“So you see I did nothing very wonderful,” concluded Jack with a smile,turning once more to his key.
“You saved my arm,” insisted Raynor stoutly, and then he left Jack tohis work and hastened off to the chief engineer’s cabin to ascertain howsoon he could be taken off the sick list.
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CHAPTER XXIII.
A RIOT ON THE DOCKS.
In due time the voyage ended at the port of New York. The _Ajax_ wouldnot be ready for sea again for two weeks to come, and in the meantimeher crew was paid off, Jack among them.
Raynor, after promising to call on the young wireless man on board the_Venus_ as soon as he returned from a flying visit to his sister, shookhands warmly with his young chum. He proffered his left hand, though,for his injured arm was not entirely mended even then.
Uncle Toby received his young nephew with characteristic demonstrationsof delight. He inquired if he had had occasion to use anything from thevoluminous chest of medicines that the drug-compounding uncle had givento the boy. Jack had not the heart to tell the anxious old man that thecontents of most of the bottles had gone overboard, although he hadgiven some of them to a stout old quartermaster, who was as fond ofdosing himself as are most sailors. The patient had drunk off theembrocations and rubbed in the internal remedies and declared himselfmuch benefited; so that Jack could, without stretching the truth, tellhis uncle that his remedies had accomplished a lot of good on the_Ajax_.
“I knew it! I knew it!” declared the old man, rubbing his handsdelightedly. “They were never known to fail. I’ll give you anotherboxful when you are ready for sea again.”
“I’ve plenty left of the old lot, uncle,” declared Jack.
“Nothing like being well provided, though, my hearty,” said his uncle.“I’d hate to think of you being sick, away out at sea, without some ofthe ‘Universal Tonic and Pain Eradicator’ handy.”
The night after his return Jack bethought himself of some bits ofapparatus he had left in his cabin on the _Ajax_. He decided to go overto her dock and get them. It would not take long and he was anxious toconduct some experiments with a view to the betterment of his “wirelessalarm,” which had not worked quite satisfactorily.
The _Ajax_ was not berthed in the Erie Basin, there being temporarily noroom for her there, but lay at one of the Titan Line’s wharves in NewYork City.
The dock was on West Street, and it was not a long trip across theBrooklyn Bridge to where she lay.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” he told his uncle as he left.
“All right, my hearty,” said the old salt, engrossed in the compositionof an invaluable malarial remedy for a captain bound for the SouthAmerican coast.
When Jack reached the ship the evening had turned from a cloudy, dulltwilight into a damp, disagreeable drizzle. A heavy Scotch mist filledthe air and the big electric lights on the pier shone through the hazelike blobs of pale yellow.
At the head of the gangplank was an old ship’s watchman who readilypassed him on board on his explaining his business. Jack was surprisedto see that there were several vague figures flitting about the elevatedafter-structure of the “tanker.”
“I thought all hands were ashore,” he said.
“No; there’s the fireman and an engineer left on board,” said thewatchman. “They mean to keep up steam till it’s time to berth her overin the Basin, I guess.”
Jack’s mission took him longer than he had thought it would. He decidednot to go home to supper, but to take it at any nearby restaurant andthen come back to search for what he wanted later.
He found a quiet, respectable place and ate a hearty meal. When he hadpaid his check he returned to the ship and to his cabin. Some littletime longer was spent in getting together the odd effects he wanted.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a sound of shouting and yellingand brawling somewhere, as near as he could make out at the river end ofthe dock.
“Wonder what’s up?” thought the boy; and then the next minute, “Soundsto me like a lot of firemen cutting up in a riot.”
There was a lull and then the clamor burst out afresh. Loud, angryvoices rose, and fierce shouts, as if the men on the dock were in deadlystrife.
Jack ran out of his cabin.
As he did so the old watchman came pattering along the steel decks andclambered up the ladder to the superstructure, where Jack was standing.
“The firemen!” panted the watchman, pointing to the dock.
“Well, what’s the reason of all this racket? Are they fighting?”
“Fighting! They are trying to kill each other!” puffed the old watchmanin a scared voice.
The lad knew that the firemen of big steamers are about as hard a crowdas can be found anywhere; but it was unusual for them to be making sucha racket so close to the ship. He surmised correctly that some of themen had been ashore on a carouse while the others kept up steam.
“You’d better run for the police,” he told the scared watchman, andwhile the old fellow pattered off on his errand Jack’s ears weresuddenly assailed by another sound.
Splash!
Something had struck the water right alongside the ship. Jack was justabout to shout, “Man overboard!” when he peered over and saw in thefog-wreathed space between the ship and the dock a dark object drop fromsome port in the fire-room below him and strike the water with a secondsplash.
For a flash he thought it might be some fireman taking French leave ofthe ship. But a second’s thought convinced him that what had dropped wasno human being but a big bundle of some sort.
“Now what in the world is going on?” he thought undecidedly.
On the dock the din of the fighting firemen still kept up. But rightthen Jack was more concerned with the mysterious happenings on board theship itself. Something very out of the ordinary was going forward, thatwas plain enough. But what could it be? What was being thrown out of thefire-room port?