Jerry knew there were certain signals that would indicate a vessel in distress, while others would show the craft was merely unmanageable. He came under both headings, so to speak.
By rummaging in the chart room the lad found a signal book, and also a set of flags and some lanterns. These last had oil in them and were ready for lighting.
“That’s what I’ll do!” decided Jerry. “I’ll hoist the flags for day work, and use the lanterns at night. Might as well get the best I can out of it.”
Finding the proper combination of flags to indicate that he was both in distress and unmanageable, Jerry hoisted them as high as he could on the wireless masts.
“I’d send out a call for help if I could get the electrical machinery to working,” said Jerry, as he looked into the wireless room. But he saw that there had been a destructive force engaged here, for some of the instruments were smashed. He knew how to operate a simple sending set, and also how to receive messages, but he reasoned that it was out of the question to make this apparatus available.
“The Huns must have set off a bomb here to prevent the Altaire signaling for help,” he reasoned.
Having hoisted his signals, Jerry began to look about for the material for getting sail on his craft. There was plenty of canvas, and he knew enough about a boat to feel sure he could get up some kind of surface that the wind might get hold of.
“It will give her steerage way, anyhow,” he reasoned, “and I’ll need that if the wind begins to blow and the old craft falls into the trough. Got to keep her head up to the waves or I’ll be swamped. If a sail won’t do it, I’ll have to rig up a sea anchor.”
This is merely a drag, fastened to the stern of a disabled ship by means of ropes. A sea anchor floats just submerged under the surface, and, offering no surface to the wind while the higher structure of a vessel acts almost as a sail, the anchor becomes a sort of auxiliary rudder in cases where there is not momentum enough for the regular rudder to be effective, or where it is missing.
Jerry found what he thought would make a sail, and he was considering how he could best use this when he noticed that there was a puff of wind. As this had been the first in some days it attracted his attention.