[CHAPTER XIX—A CALL IN THE NIGHT]
Sapphire days of steaming through deep blue tropic seas beneath a cloudless sky passed by dreamily. The Tropic Queen was now in the Caribbean, rolling lazily southward through azure water flecked with golden patches of gulf weed—looking like marine golden-rod. Fleeing flocks of flying fish scuttered over the water as the steamer’s sharp bow nosed into the stuff, like a covey of partridges rising from cover before a sportsman’s gun.
To Jack and Sam, making their first voyage in these waters, everything was new and fascinating. They never tired of leaning over the rail, watching the different forms of marine life that were to be seen almost every moment.
Jack had succeeded in attaching a bell to the wireless apparatus, which, while it did not sound powerfully when a wireless wave beat against the antennæ, yet answered its purpose so long as they were in the vicinity of the wireless room. Jack had hopes, in time, of perfecting a device which would give a sharp, insistent ring and awaken even the soundest sleeper. The boy knew that on many small steamers only one wireless operator is, from motives of economy, carried. When such an operator is asleep, therefore, the wireless “ears” of his ship are deaf. But with an alarm bell, such as Jack hoped to bring to perfection, there would be no danger of the man’s not awakening in time to avert what might prove to be grave disaster.
They now began to steam past small islands, bare, desolate spots for the most part, but surrounded by waters clear as crystal and gleaming like jewels. Some of them were covered with a sparse sort of brush, but generally they were mere specks of sand in a glowing sea of azure.
One evening Jack was sitting at the key, when through the air there came, beating at his ears, a wireless summons. Such messages were common enough and the boy languidly, for the night was stiflingly hot, reached out a hand for his pencil in order to jot down whatever might be coming.
But the next instant he was sitting bolt upright, sending out with strong, nervous fingers a crashing reply to the message that had come to him.
“To any ship in vicinity,” it read. “Send us a boat-load of provisions and water or we shall perish.”
“Who are you?” flashed Jack’s key in reply.
Feebly, as if the supply of juice was running low, the mysterious sender of the urgent appeal sent back his answer.