Captain Briggs shook his head. He was a seaman of the old school and did not place much faith in wireless.
“Just stick at your instruments,� he said, “but if there’s bergs about the look-out, bet my nose ull pick ’em up ahead of any fool wireless contraption.�
Jack made his way aft, burning with indignation. Here was a fine, new ship, being driven at top speed toward the greatest peril a seaman can encounter, at the whim of a man who had been drinking. But there was nothing to be done, as Jack reflected with a sense of speechless anger. Aboard ship the captain, no matter how insane his orders may appear, is absolute czar of the situation. His word is law. He can hang or imprison, for mutiny, anyone who dares to question his orders.
The young wireless operator paused, before he reentered his snug cabin with its shining instruments, to lean over the rail and gaze out into the night. The mist had thickened now. It struck at his face like clammy fingers. The night was quite silent but for the vague hum of the engines far below him, and the hiss and roar of the sea as the hulk of the Cambodian was driven through it.
Ahead it was almost impossible to see anything but a dense, black pall that might hide anything. Dimly through the mist curtains, Jack could make out the figure of the look-out in the crow’s nest. Occasionally he could catch his hoarse shout of “All’s well� and an answer, booming through the smother, from the bridge.
Suddenly the whistle began sounding. At regular half minute intervals it shrieked hoarsely.
Jack knew what they were doing. If bergs were in the vicinity, in the intervals of silence between blasts, an echo would be flung back.
“Pshaw, that’s a haphazard way of detecting bergs at best,� muttered Jack to himself.
But he found himself listening with strained ears to catch the slightest sound of an echo after each clamorous yammer of the big siren. He fell to musing of the night on the Ajax when the big berg had loomed up before them.
Details of that night were told in the first volume of the Ocean Wireless Series, which was called “The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic.� This volume introduced Jack, his strange dwelling place, and his odd relative, Cap’n Toby Ready, to our readers. We found Jack, pretty well disheartened in his ambition to become a wireless operator, on his way home among the shipping to the queer old derelict craft where he lived with his uncle Toby, the latter a purveyor of vegetable drugs and medicine, to old and superannuated skippers.