Skipper Tom received the paper, studying the position and course as Joe had jotted them down.
“The Langley boats run to Rio Janeiro, don’t they?” asked Halstead.
“Yes, and every boat of that line carries a wireless installation now, too,” Joe continued. “She’s the only boat that answered my hail.” 124
“Take the new course, Hank,” called the young skipper to the boy at the wheel, and rattled it off. The “Restless” swung around to a nearly northerly course.
“At her speed, and ours, it needn’t be many minutes before we sight the ‘Fulton,’” judged Halstead. “Hank, you keep the wheel. I want a chance to handle my glasses.”
With the marine binoculars in his hand Skipper Tom soon began to sweep the horizon.
“There’s what the wireless did for us,” he chuckled to Mr. Seaton. “Without our electrical wave we wouldn’t have known, for sure, that there was a Rio boat in these waters this afternoon. And, but for getting the ‘Fulton’s’ position and course by wireless, we’d have swept by to the eastward, away out of sight of the freighter.”
Within a few minutes more the young skipper, by the aid of his glasses, got a glimpse of a steamship’s masts. A few minutes later the upper works of her high hull were visible.
“That’s the ‘Fulton.’ I know the Langley type of freighter build,” Halstead explained, eagerly. “We’ll soon be close enough to see her name-plate through the glass. And—oh!—by Jove!”
Tom waved the glasses with a flourish, pointing, then handed them to Powell Seaton. 125