It had come! The inevitable! Ensign Rankin had to face his fate without a single extenuating circumstance in hand! He strode to the interview with something less of carelessness than had been his habit. For some reason the fact of having missed his ship troubled him more than he had ever thought possible.
In the commandant’s office he waited for some minutes in silence. That stern, self-possessed autocrat let him stand unheeded. He was nervously agitated over the papers which he held, official radio forms. He bit his pencil, frowning. At last he scribbled a message on a pad, fired it at an orderly, and looked up sharply at the delinquent officer. His tone was snappily brusk.
“H-m. Just arrived, I suppose. Well, my message was meant to reach you hours ago. Sorry. Can’t attend to your case just now. Urgent matters come to hand. You will consider yourself confined to the officers’ mess till I can find time to send for you again.”
III.
Rankin tiptoed out, thankful as any schoolboy that his sentence should at least have been postponed. On his way to the mess he was determined to look in for a last chance about his message to “his ship.” He was thinking of it in those terms himself now; though his anxiety to get in touch with her was quite beyond his own analysis.
In the little sending-room, heavy with ozone, there was an atmosphere of frenzied haste. The operator was working frantically at his sender and straining to listen for the answering whispers which came only in intermittent dashes or in blurred nothings. The man continued sitting at his instrument and shot broken sentences at the officer between the spasms of staccato raspings from his key.
“Sorry, sir—nothing yet—tried five minutes ago—try her again later. Urgent code stuff comin’ in—awful jumble. Static is somethin’ fierce, ’count o’ this storm brewing.”
In the intervals of hurried speech he worked his key with his right hand and scribbled simultaneously with his left. He tore the form from his pad and thrust it at his messenger.
“Commandant! Jump to it! Yes, sir; somebody’s all excited up somewhere; coding like mad. Trying to give a bearing, but I can’t get it. There she goes again! If you’ll wait a bit, sir, I’ll try your ship again soon’s I’m clear.”
Rankin waited, feeling vaguely uneasy about the breakdown of his ship’s wireless. The key crackled on, harsh, powerful, suggestive of imminent mystery somewhere. Rankin’s elementary study of the international Morse presently recognized the recurring dash-dot, dash-dot as “repeat.” Suddenly the operator sprang to his feet and stood to rigid attention.