“Some people,” he said, “can’t see anything outside their own little problems. A man in charge of a thing like this radio compass, for example, is apt to think it’s the most important thing in the whole navy, and everything else should give way before it. I believe a man should see the problem as a whole. Now take my case: I’m in charge of radio, but it would be silly of me to fancy that radio was the most important thing in the whole organization. I recognize that Admiral Bishop has a much wider vision, that radio is only one small part of a colossal machine, and I am ready to defer to the needs of gunnery and the like when occasion demands.”
In preparation for the test, Evans had to come up on the bridge to confer with Elkins. Encountering Commander Rich, he saw in his face a look of scorn as this keen-looking officer eyed him in his dungarees, and in the look he fancied he saw, too, something more sinister than scorn. It haunted him as he returned to the radio compass, but with an effort he dismissed the thought, convincing himself that it was probably the result of pique in his own rather sensitive nature.
Commander Rich, watching Evans swinging himself nimbly up the ladder to the radio-compass shack, remarked jovially to Mortimer, “Looks to me like that gunner had a little of that monkey-gland extract you read about, the way he goes climbing round the ship.”
And when during the subsequent stages of the test Evans appeared, Commander Rich was ever ready, if the chance offered, to drop a sarcastic remark about the “monkey-man.”
Admiral Bishop had some difficulty engineering his portly form up the steep ladder leading to the destroyer’s bridge. It would be hard to find anywhere, on land or sea, a scene more vividly expressive of human efficiency than is presented by the bridge of a warship executing a maneuver even of the simplest sort. Officers, signalmen, and helmsman, alert and intent on the perfect team-work needed to fit the operation of the ship into the working of the larger machine, the fleet, execute their orders in a way that testifies to the high character of their training. Into such a scene came Admiral Bishop with all his pomp, as the signals were being sent which directed the patrol boats to their stations.
When all was ready for the test, the patrol boats circled round the destroyer at a distance of a mile or so, and first one, then another, was signaled to send messages. First, the operators just graduated from the special radio-compass course were tested. Each man was given three bearings to report, one on each patrol boat. The first operator to be tested nervously entered the radio-compass house, wondering if his fate hung on his performance, and fumbled for a while with the somewhat unfamiliar apparatus. Finally he tuned in the patrol boat signal, and then, as he twirled the hand-wheel which rotates the coil, he became confused, and before he could gather his wits he realized that his minute was up and he had reported no bearing. On his second and third bearings he made a little progress, but the results were considerably in error. As he took off the head-phones and stepped out of the house, he said to the chief radio operator of the destroyer, “That don’t sound nothing like what they give us to learn on in the course. It’s all so different I couldn’t make nothing of it.” The next man, awaiting his turn, heard the remark and profited somewhat by it. He obtained a rough bearing each time just before his minute was up. Out of the ten operators tested, only three gave even a respectable performance.
Admiral Bishop had but a hazy idea of the nature of the test which was being made. When he first came on the bridge, he got into conversation with the skipper of the destroyer, who fortunately had his officers well enough indoctrinated to operate the ship and carry on the test without his personal attention. The Admiral, having been on shore duty for several years, coming once more on shipboard, was reminded of cruises of long years ago. His talk became one of reminiscence about the good old days. It was not until the test of the ten operators was nearly finished that he became aware that it had begun. Commander Rich then explained to him just how the test was being conducted.
“You see the patrol boat out there is sending us signals. Down there in the radio-compass house aft, the operator is taking the bearing he gets on the signal as it comes in. He reports it to us here on the bridge by voice-tube. At the same time the navigating officer here is noting the actual bearing of the patrol boat by eye with the pelorus, to see whether the radio bearing is right.”
About this time the last of the ten operators completed his test, and the results were displayed before Admiral Bishop, revealing clearly their unsatisfactory performance.
“Seems to me this radio compass doesn’t show up very well in service conditions, Mr. Secretary,” said the Admiral. “That’s the way with a lot of these gadgets; they’re all right on paper and in the laboratory, but on board ship they don’t cut much figure.”