“I’m giving you all you deserve—maybe more than you deserve.”
“Then mark me down,” objected Henry. “If I deserve 99 I think I ought to have it. And if I don’t deserve 97, I ought not to have 97. I want what’s right. This examination is taken under somewhat unusual circumstances. I realize that. And I don’t want anybody to think it wasn’t perfectly on the level.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll give you a grade that I think you are justly entitled to, and I’ll stand back of that grade to the last ditch. When we get right down to it, there’s more at stake than the matter of your grade. There’s my ability and honesty as an examiner. I’m not forgetting my own reputation in giving you your grade. That will be 97. Now I must copy in my log the message you caught.”
“What do you mean?” asked Henry.
“Why, you know the wireless man has to keep a wireless log just the same as the navigator has to keep a navigator’s log. I have to be able to show what goes on in the wireless house.”
“Just as we had to keep a record at the Frankfort station, I suppose. What do you put in your logbook?”
“Well, every day when we are not in port I have to send our position at certain hours to the radio station in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I have to send all other messages. Records of these must be kept. All storm warnings and naval-station broadcasts must be taken. I must record the messages received, and, from time to time, something that one picks out of the air should be entered, merely to show that the radio man was on his job. So I’ll just enter that hurricane warning. It doesn’t concern us, but if it did affect us, I’d have to take it to the captain at once.”
“You said you had to send all messages,” replied Henry. “You didn’t mean that you send every message yourself, did you?”
“That’s exactly what I meant. I can’t take a chance on having anything happen to this outfit. I’m responsible for it, and if it got burned out, the result might be a court-martial, with possible dishonorable dismissal and loss of citizenship. You see our power transformer steps the current up to eight thousand volts. A green operator doesn’t understand the rheostats, and would allow too great a voltage to pass through the generator. That would burn out the transformer or puncture the condensers or break down the insulation in the spark-gap, according to which was the weakest. We usually carry spare condensers and spare jackets for the spark-gap, but no spare transformer. It’s a mighty serious thing to burn out a wireless set. If anything happened to the ship, there would be no way to call help, and the entire crew might, consequently, be lost.”
During the chief radio man’s entire watch of four hours, Henry sat with him in the radio shack. After the examination was ended, Mr. Sharp connected up with the loud speaker of the radio, and the two watchers laid down their headphones. They could talk freely. The loud speaker would tell them of every message in their wave-length that passed their way. To Henry this was, indeed, a rare opportunity. Again and again he went over every detail of the wireless apparatus, until he could have reconstructed the intricate outfit alone, had it been taken to pieces. And he asked the chief electrician countless questions as to wireless practice. With the wide knowledge he already possessed, he was in a position to learn much in a short time. When he left the wireless shack at the end of the watch, Henry felt that he had added much to his ability as a wireless man.