“We have still to see the second part of the test,” answered Mortimer. “The fault may be in the gear or in the operators; I want to find out which.”
One of the men picked by the Bureau was then sent into the compass house. The signal was given for the sending to begin and in twenty seconds he reported by voice-tube, “Sixty-five.”
“That looks like business,” said the skipper of the destroyer. “How is it?” addressing the question to his navigator, who with his eye at the sighting vane of the pelorus followed the course of the patrol boat.
“She’s bearing sixty-four,” was the answer.
“Right to within one degree. Will he do it again?” said the skipper.
In five successive tests this operator reported the bearings with an average error of less than one degree, and his reports were delivered to the bridge with increasing promptness.
A signal to the patrol boats ordered the time of sending reduced to thirty seconds. The three remaining picked men then showed what they could do, and the greatest error was two degrees. On average barely eighteen seconds elapsed from the time the signals began till the report was heard on the bridge.
Admiral Bishop was now following the proceedings with interest and began to see what an accurate instrument the radio compass was when in competent hands, but his imagination was not keen enough to envisage the possibilities which it opened. The skipper of the destroyer was the first to propose a more spectacular demonstration.
“Let’s have him steer us to one of the boats,” he said.
A signal was made to the patrol boat on the port quarter to send signals continuously till further notice. The operator, when told what he was to do, listened a moment, revolving the coil and manipulating the switches, then called to the bridge, “Left rudder.” The officer of the deck passed the word to the helmsman, and as the ship swung round till the signaling patrol boat bore dead ahead, the voice from the radio-compass house called, “Steady as you go.” It looked like witchcraft, this guidance of the ship by an unseen and sightless power unerringly toward the source of the silent ether waves. As the patrol boat bore away to starboard, the operator kept the destroyer following her with her bow till, bearing down on her at eighteen knots, they were only a hundred yards from the little boat, when the skipper said, “Left rudder,” and the destroyer shot past the smaller boat within a stone’s throw.