“Not a word!” he exclaimed. And then, to Jack, with an air of finality:
“I’ve no more time to dally words with an ungrateful boy. Is it yes orno?”
“It must be _no_, sir,” said Jack, setting his teeth, “but, if you wouldlet me explain, I——”
“Say no more! say no more!” exclaimed Mr. Jukes, jamming on his hat.“Come, Tom. As for you, Ready, I wash my hands of you. I’ve no desire tointerfere with your prospects on the line. You retain your job, butexpect no favors from me. You must work out your own salvation.”
“That is just what I want to do, sir,” was Jack’s quiet rejoinder, asMr. Jukes bounced out of the room, dragging Tom, who looked wistfullyback.
“The boy is mad! Stark, staring mad, by Jove!” exclaimed the angrymagnate as he stamped his way out of the hospital.
“I suppose anyone would think me a fool for what I’ve done,” thoughtJack, as he lay back on the pillows after the frantic Mr. Jukes’departure, “but I couldn’t help it. I’m not going to be a rich man’spawn if I know it. What was it he said? Work out my own salvation? Well,I’ll do it, and maybe I’ll astonish some folks before long. Too bad,though I’m not such a chump as not to know what powerful friends andinfluence can do in the world, and now, through no fault of my own, I’vehad to chuck away both. But if grit and determination will help any,I’ll get up the ladder yet.”
Not long after that Uncle Toby arrived with cheering news. The _Ajax_was docked in the Erie Basin and would not sail for three days more,owing to a defective boiler which would have to be repaired.
“So I can join her, after all,” thought Jack, cheered vastly by thenews. “Well, that’s a streak of fat to put alongside the lean!”
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CHAPTER XXXI.
A WHISPER OF DANGER.
Jack made his second eastward trip on the _Ajax_ under smiling skies andseas almost as smooth as glass. Nothing out of the routine happened, andin due course the _Ajax_, once more in ballast, cleared from Antwerp forthe home run. Jack had heard nothing more from Mr. Jukes and deemed thatthe magnate had utterly cast him off.
Before he left the hospital, he had had visits from Captain Dennis andhis daughter and from Tom Jukes, who came secretly and brought theinformation that, although his father was furious with the youngwireless man for rejecting what he deemed a magnificent offer, he wouldyet pay Jack’s hospital bill.
“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Jack had flared up, and when he left theinstitution, it was the lad himself who footed the bill.
It ate quite a hole in the check that was his reward for his share inthe detection of the tobacco smugglers, but it would have choked him tothink of accepting Mr. Jukes’ charity after the scene at his bedside themorning after he had received his injury.
But the disfavor with which he was regarded by Mr. Jukes was the onlycloud on Jack’s horizon. Since that night in New York, CaptainBraceworth’s manner toward the young wireless boy had changed. He wasstill austere and silent, but now and then, as he swung past thewireless room on his way forward or to his cabin, he would exchange aword or two with the lad. Perhaps he never guessed how much thisencouraged the boy who, on his first voyage, had set down the skipper ofthe _Ajax_ as a cruel, harsh despot.
Knot after knot the steadily revolving engines of the _Ajax_ brought hercloser to home. The weather continued fine until one day, when Jack washalf wishing something would happen, the curtain began to draw up onwhat was to prove a drama of the deep, destined to test every man onboard the big tanker.
A fog, dense, swirling and moist as a wet sponge, shut down all aboutthe _Ajax_ that morning soon after breakfast. The captain donned hisoil-skins and took up his position on the bridge, to stay there, as washis custom, till the fog should lift and everything be secure again.
The chief engineer was sent for and instructed to keep his force in thegrimy regions below, keyed up for instant obedience to orders from thebridge, for the _Ajax_ was on the Atlantic lane, a well-traveled,crowded ocean track.
Like a blind man, the big tanker felt her way along, now startingforward and now almost stopping with an air of fright, as some fanciedobstruction loomed in her path.
Through the weary day and the long night that followed, the _Ajax_groped her way through the fog blanket that hung like a densemist-shroud over the sullenly heaving sea. It was a marine game of touchand go, with possibly death and disaster for the stakes.
The engine-room telegraph spun in a weary succession of “Comeahead”—“Slow”—“Ahead”—“Slow”—“Stop her”—and “Come ahead, slow” again.
When daylight came, it shone on the fog walls that bound the _Ajax_prisoner. The wan light showed Jack the figures of the captain and hisfirst officer on the bridge. He knew that through the long night theyhad kept their weary vigil. But so dense was the fog that it was notalways possible to see the bridge from the after superstructure.
Only when light and vagrant breezes sent the fog-wreaths fluttering andwrithing, like ghosts, could a blurred view of the forward part of theship be obtained.
Jack, too, had been on duty all night and he felt dull and wretched.Through the fog had come calls from other ships, and vague whisperingsand chatterings, all fraught with fear and caution.
So far as those on the _Ajax_ knew, there was no ship closer to themthan the _Plutonia_ of the Smithson Lines. Jack had been busy throughthe night, running back and forth with messages. Now, as he came to thedoor of his cabin for a breath of the fog-laden air, he was musing tohimself on the anxious look on the captain’s furrowed face.
It was not the fog. Jack had seen the captain guide his ship througheven denser smothers than the present one. He had always been his calm,collected, even cold, self.
But now the very air appeared to be vibrant with some vague apprehensionwhich the boy could not name or even guess at. But it was something thatlay outside the fog. Some overshadowing peril of more than ordinaryimminence.
As the steamer crawled forward, the mournful hooting of her sirensounding like the very spirit of the mist, Jack revolved all thesethings in his mind. He felt vaguely troubled.
It was no small thing that could worry the stalwart skipper of the_Ajax_, as he palpably was worried. Fog was dangerous, yes, but whatwith the wireless and the extraordinary caution observed, the peril wasreduced to a minimum.
The watches forward had been doubled and in the crow’s nest two men hadbeen stationed. But that was customary in a fog. Suddenly, as Jack stoodthere, his wireless alarm,—he had perfected the device and had madeapplication for a patent on the same,—began to clamor loudly.
Jack hurried to his post. It was the _Westerland_, a hundred and fiftymiles east and considerably to the south, calling.
“Dense fog clearing here,” so the message ran, “but many large icebergsin vicinity. If in fog, use great caution. Please repeat warning.
“KRAUSE, Master.”
Jack’s heart gave a bound.
“Icebergs!”
So it was fear of the white terrors of the north that kept the captainchained to the bridge with that anxious look on his weather-beaten face.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
ICEBERGS!
When he reached the bridge with this all-important despatch, Jack foundthe captain in consultation with his officers. Tests of the temperatureof the water were being made, and the skipper was listening attentivelyto the roaring of the siren.
If there was ice in the vicinity, the echo of the great whistle would beflung back and serve as a warning.
“Well, boy?” the captain turned impatiently on Jack.
“A message, sir. I think it’s important,” said the boy deferentially.
The captain g
lanced through it and whistled.
“Important! I should think it is. Just what I thought. Confound thisocean!”
He hastened over to his officers and showed them the despatch. A livelyconsultation followed, which Jack wished he could have overheard. Hewould have liked to know what further steps could be taken to avert thedangers amid which they were crawling forward.
As a matter of fact, all that could be done had been done. Humanlyspeaking, the _Ajax_ was as safe as she could be rendered in the midstof the invisible dangers that, like white specters, might be swarmingabout her even now.
Jack was ordered back to the wireless room and told to stand by for anyfurther information. The captain evidently placed great reliance ongetting further word of the location of the ice-fields and bergs.
But, although Jack worked ceaselessly, sending out his crackling,sparkling calls, no reply came back out of the blinding fog. Clearly theship that had sent the wireless that was so all-important had passed outof his zone, or else the “atmospherics” were arrayed againstcommunication.
It was a thrilling and not altogether a comfortable thought to considerthat at any moment there might loom above them, out of the choking mist,a mountainous white form that might well spell annihilation for thesturdy tanker.
Raynor, whose hand was now quite well, poked his head in at the door. Hewas grimy and soot-covered but cheerful, and was going off watch.
“Hello, Jack,” he cried, “what do you think of this? Burning soft coalin heaven, I guess! Isn’t it a smother, for fair?”
“It sure is,” rejoined Jack, “but the fog isn’t the worst of it.”
Raynor looked surprised.
“What are you driving at? They’ve had us on double watches since itstarted, stopping and starting up the engines till they must thinkthey’re being run by a gang of crazy engineers.”
“It’s icebergs, old fellow,” said Jack in an awed tone.
“Icebergs! At this time of year, that’s unusual,” said Raynor.
“I don’t know about that, but I got a message from the _Westerland_telling about them.”
“The dickens, you say! No wonder the old man is worried out of hissocks. Say, Jack,” went on the young engineer.
“Well?”
“What a fine chance we’d stand down below there, if we ever hitanything, eh?”
And young Raynor, whistling cheerily, passed on to his room to wash upand change.
Jack gave a shudder. “If they hit anything.” Well did he know what asmall chance the men in the grimy, sooty regions of the fire-room andengine-space would stand in such a contingency. It would be their dutyto keep up the fires till the rising water put them out, and then—everyman for himself!
Woo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo! boomed the siren.
“Ugh! You sound as cheerful as a funeral,” shuddered Jack; and, todivert his mind into a more cheerful channel, he fell to running thewireless scale, in the hope that he might find himself in tune with someother ship with fresh news of the white monsters of the northern polarcap.
But the white silences were broken by no winged messages; and so theafternoon waned to twilight, and night descended once more about thefog-bound ship.
The strain of it all began to tell on the young wireless man. He madehourly reports to the shrouded figures on the bridge that looked likeexaggerated ghosts in the smother of fog. The lights on the ship shonethrough the obscurity like big, dim eyes, and the constant booming andshrieking of the siren grew nerve-racking.
Vigilance was the order of the night. Bridge, deck and engine-room wereall alike keyed up to the highest pitch of watchfulness. At any moment amessage of terror might come clanging from the bridge to the engineers’region.
The suspense made Jack, strong-nerved as he was, feel like crying out.If only something would happen, he felt that he would not care so much,but this silent creeping through the ghostly fog was telling on him.
Half dozing at times, Jack sat nodding at his key. All at once, withoutthe slightest warning what all hands had been waiting for with keyed-upnerves happened.
From somewhere dead ahead the shriek of the siren was hurled backthrough the fog in a volley of echoes.
It was Captain Braceworth himself who jumped to the engine-roomtelegraph and signaled:
“Full speed astern!”
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE COLLISION.
At the same instant a voice boomed out from the fore-peak:
“Something dead ahead, sir!”
And then the next moment a heart-chilling hail from the crow’s nest:
“Ice ahead! A big berg right under our bow!”
Jack leaped from his instruments, a nameless dread clutching at hisheart. There had been no impact as yet, but he did not know at whatinstant there might come a crashing blow that would tear the stout steelplates of the tanker open as if they had been so much cardboard.
For a moment wild panic had him in its cold grasp. Then, heartilyashamed of the cold sweat that had broken out on him and the wildimpulse he had had to cry out, he clenched his hands and regainedcontrol of himself.
The whole fabric of the ship quivered as the mighty engines flew roundin the opposite direction to that in which they had been rotating. Atthe instant Captain Braceworth’s order had been given it had beenobeyed.
For a breath there was killing suspense; and then suddenly there camethe shock of an impact. It was not a violent one, but just a grating,jarring shock.
“Great Scott! We’ve struck!” exclaimed Jack, as the next instant therecame a second and more violent contact.
He was thrown bodily from his feet. Forward there came a babel of cries.
The ship listed heavily to port and then slowly, like a woundedcreature, she righted. Then came a sound of thunder as the masses ofice, dislodged from the berg by the collision, toppled and slid from herfore-decks.
Jack knew that what the skipper had dreaded had come to pass. In spiteof ceaseless, sleepless vigilance and the exercise of every caution aman could use, the _Ajax_ had rammed an iceberg.
Above the yells and shouts of the seamen came the captain’s calm,authoritative voice.
His orders rang out like pistol shots. Accustomed to obey, the seamenstopped their panic and fell to their work. The mates were down amongthem, silencing the more obstreperous in no very gentle manner.
A squad of men came running aft to the boats. For an instant Jackthought that, in their panic, they were about to lower away and makeoff. But he speedily saw, to his immense relief, that they were incharge of cool-headed little Mr. Brown; they had been sent aft merely tostand by the boats and tackle in case it became necessary to abandon theship.
Jack jumped to his key. If the ship was sinking, he would show them thathe could live up to best wireless traditions.
Out into the black, fog-bound night went thundering and volleying thestricken ship’s appeal for aid. But the boy did not send out the S.O.S.;that could only be done by the captain’s orders. His intent was toinform any ship within his zone of their plight, so that they mightstand by to render assistance if it should be necessary.
But no answer came to the wireless appeal that the boy flung broadcastthrough space. Time and again he tried to summon help, but none answeredhis call.
The captain himself came aft, leaving things forward to the firstofficer. The second officer and the carpenters were sounding the ship todiscover if her wound were mortal or if she could make port somehow.
Somewhere off in the fog Jack could hear the swells breaking as if on arocky coast. He knew they were beating against the iceberg that the shiphad crashed against!
Jack looked up as the captain entered the wireless room. Never had headmired the man as he did in that instant. Pale, but stern and resolute,Captain Braceworth looked the man of the minute, a fit person to copewith the dire emergency that had befallen them.
<
br /> “Any ships in our zone, Ready?” he asked calmly.
“No, sir, I’ve been trying to raise some and——”
“Very well. Keep on. If you get into communication, report to me atonce.”
“Yes, sir. Are—are we badly hurt, sir?”
“It is impossible to say. We are trying to find out now. I need not tellyou it is your duty to stay at that key till the last boat leaves theship.”
“You need not tell me that, sir,” said Jack, flushing proudly. “I’d godown with her if it would do any good.”
The captain looked oddly at the boy a moment and then slapped him hardupon the back.
“You’ve the right stuff in you, Ready,” he said and hurried off again.
The ship was still slowly backing. Presently Jack heard the mate’s bigvoice booming out from forward.
“She’s flooded to the bow bulkhead, sir, but so far as I can see,there’s no immediate danger. When daylight comes, we may be able topatch her up.”
This was hopeful news, and a cheer arose from the men as they heard it.But mingled with the cheer came another sound—a muffled roar like thatof wild animals or of an enraged mob.
What it meant flashed across Jack in a jiffy.
The firemen, The Black Squad, as they were called! They had mutiniedagainst being penned in the fire-room on a sinking ship and were rushingto the deck.
Without knowing just what he was doing, the boy took his revolver out ofthe drawer where he kept it and rushed outside. The first thing he sawunder the glow of the lights was the figure of Raynor.
The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic Page 12
