He turned away and began talking to his first officer. Jack made his way back to his cabin with mingled feelings. The captain had spoken to him sharply, almost gruffly. He began to revise his opinion of the man.
“He is a martinet and no mistake,” thought the boy; “a bully too, I’ll bet. But pshaw, Jack Ready, what’s the use of kicking? You’ve got what you wanted; now go through with it. After all, if I do my duty, he can’t hurt me.”
But as he took his seat at his instruments again, Jack, somehow, didn’t feel quite so chipper as he had half an hour before. In his own estimation he had rated himself pretty highly as the wireless man of the Ajax.
“But I reckon I don’t count much more than one of the crew,” he muttered to himself as the memory of the captain’s brusque, authoritative manner rankled in his mind.
CHAPTER VI.
LEARNING THE ROPES.
Having sent his “T.R.”—as the first message from an outward bound ship is, for some mysterious reason known,—Jack occupied himself by occasionally chatting with some other operator and exchanging positions.
As the Ajax forged on, the boy began feeling ahead with his key for the wireless stations at Sagaponack or Siasconset. Messages to and from Nantucket he had already caught, and had sent in a report of the Ajax and her position.
Supper time came and Jack ate his meal in company with the second and third engineers. The captain and the other officers were far too important to sit down with a wireless man on his first voyage. The second engineer was a lively youth with a crop of hair as red as the open door of one of his own furnaces. His junior was not more than two years older than Jack, a stalwart lad, with a bright, intelligent face, named Billy Raynor.