Three days later, after an uneventful afternoon, Flash and Joe Wells were lounging in the photography department, waiting for their trick to end. It was not quite four o’clock.
“Never saw things so dull since I’ve been on the Ledger,” Joe Wells yawned. “A few more days like this, and we’ll be laid off.”
Flash took his friend seriously. “I’ll be the first one to go,” he said, “because I’m the youngest man.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Wells replied. “We didn’t need an extra photographer when Riley hired you. He took you on because you showed a lot of promise. Your work has been all right, too.”
“But nothing spectacular.”
“Spectacular pictures don’t drop into a fellow’s lap every day. You’ll get your big chance one of these days, Flash.”
The door opening into the news room stood ajar. From where they were they could hear the teletype machines pounding out their news from all parts of the country. Suddenly everyone in the office was startled to hear a steady jingle of the signal bell, followed by Riley’s excited shout:
“The Alexander has gone down!”
Flash and the other photographers ran into the adjoining room, crowding about the teletype machine. The first bulletin was brief, stating little more than the bare fact that the great passenger liner had sunk less than fifty miles from New York, following a violent explosion. Three hundred American passengers, nearly all of them holiday tourists, had been taken aboard the steamship Belmonia which was making for New York. Ten persons were known to be dead, and thirty were missing.
“There were several Brandale passengers on the Alexander,” Riley recalled excitedly. “We ran a story about two weeks ago. Adams, check on that angle!”