The Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Coast Guard

by Lewis E. Theiss

“You do that,” said Henry to his companion. “You’ve had lots of experience with the blinkers. I haven’t had any.”

Young Belford set the blinkers to winking merrily. The response was immediate. Colored lights began to flash aloft on the Capitol City’s yardarm. That vessel was resting easily on the sands, came the answer, and was taking in water no faster than her pumps could pump it out again. The tide was rising rapidly. It was already six feet deep. This news the assistant operator carried to the commander.

“We’ll save her yet,” said the captain. “This tide is going to be a very high one, if I am any judge. The wind’s been blowing the water shoreward now a full twenty-four hours.”

Rapidly the water rose. As the captain had said, the wind had been blowing it shoreward for a full day. The ebb tide had shown what the wind could do, for the water was far higher than usual when the tide turned to flood. Wind and wave both pressed the flood landward, and now the tide, running in with the wind, mounted and mounted until it was evident that the captain’s hope was to be realized. As the tide rose and the water about the cutter deepened, Captain Hardwick put a leadsman to sounding.

“We must work in with the tide, Lieutenant,” he said to his assistant on the bridge, “and be ready for action the instant the tide is at flood. It won’t wait a second for us, though, if this wind holds, it will delay the ebb. We must not lose a moment.”

Long before the tide was full, Captain Hardwick ordered the anchor-chain released. At once the cutter began to move toward the beach, very slowly at first, then faster and faster as wind and wave gave her momentum. The lead was kept going incessantly, the leadsman shouting the depths up to the bridge as he made his soundings. Foot by foot, fathom by fathom, the Iroquois drew nearer the Capitol City. Steadily the cutter’s searchlight played on the disabled ship, its brilliant beam boring through the inky dark.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet none the less truly, the wind abated its violence. Less often the great waves swept over the deck of the stranded steamship. Not so shrill was the screeching of the Iroquois’ cordage. The captain, with his wide experience, had evidently foreseen a change in the weather. He was evidently expecting the wind to fall, and if it did, it would help in the effort to float the stranded vessel, for a great pressure against the ship would be removed. But as the minutes passed, the wind did not become noticeably less. It still howled angrily, and swept with fitful force over ship and wave. Now it came in gusts, blowing furiously for a time, then lulling. But without ceasing the tide drove in, and the waves crept further and further up the sides of the stranded steamship, and the combers crashed ever higher up the sandy beach.

Fathom after fathom the Iroquois followed the rising tide shoreward. When the lead showed questionable depths, the anchor-chain was made fast, and the little cutter paused for a while in her progress, marking time, as it were, to the music of the storm. With unwonted rapidity the tide mounted up, and Captain Hardwick followed it as fast and as far as he dared.

Plainly there was a good chance to save the Capitol City. As the two ships came closer, every detail of the stranded ship was visible. She had suffered astonishingly little, when the violence of the storm was considered. She lay almost on an even keel. Though not pointing directly to the waves, the stern was so nearly in line with them that they were parted as they reached her, sweeping past with little damage to her hull. A section of her taffrail was gone, and a part of her rudder was broken off. Otherwise she appeared to have suffered little, and the success of the pumps in keeping down the water in the hold showed that even her plates had not been badly started. Her superstructure had suffered little. One of her small boats had been washed away, but otherwise she seemed to the watchers on the Iroquois to be in remarkably good condition.

What was more important, her crew was intact. Huddled high on the bridge and in the rigging, they had crouched together while the men from the Iroquois were trying to reach them. But as the tide ran low, those in the rigging had climbed down and mounted to the bridge and superstructure, seeking warmth, for the piercing winds had well-nigh frozen them as they clung to the rattling stays. Apparently not a man had been swept from the Capitol City. Almost the full crew was there to work the ship, and Captain Hardwick was glad, indeed, that there was no such shortage of hands on the Capitol City as existed on the Iroquois. There would be work for many hands when the time was ripe for the effort he had in mind.