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

by Lewis E. Theiss

He was especially interested when the captain showed him the range-finder. Never had he seen anything like this before. It was a small horizontal tube, containing prisms and reflecting mirrors. There were eyepieces in the middle of the sides of the tube. When one looked through this range-finder at a distant ship, or target, that target seemed to be divided into two parts, half above and half below a common line. By twirling a screw, and so moving the reflectors within the tube, the parts of the ship moved into place until at last there stood forth a perfect image of a ship. Above this image was a scale, which indicated the range. To find the range, all the commander had to do was to look through this tube at his target, twirl the screw until the image of the target became perfect, and then read the figures that stood just above the image.

The collision drill was also interesting. In imagination, the Iroquois had run into another ship, and a great gaping hole had been torn in her hull. At the captain’s word of command the crew sprang to their places, and a collision mattress was quickly produced and unrolled. This was then lowered over the side, so as to cover the hole in the hull. In practice, of course, the collision mattress was not actually lowered into the water, but it was brought to the side of the ship and balanced on the rail, ready to be dropped over. It required little vision to see how useful such an article would be after an actual collision. Unless the hole in the ship were too large, the mattress would be caught in it as it was drawn inward by the suction of the inrushing water, much as a cork might be drawn fast by suction down the neck of a bottle. The mattress, of course, was meant to act like a cork and keep the sea out.

The abandon-ship drill would have had more fascination for Henry had he not by this time been so familiar with the process of lowering a small boat. Nevertheless it was interesting to see the men prepare themselves, just as they would if they were really going to abandon the ship, with compasses and rifles, and provisions, and then line up opposite the boats while the roll was called and each man mustered. Of course the men did not actually get in the boats, though these were lowered even with the rail. Likewise this drill gave Henry a chance to examine the small boats better. Though these were new, they were much like those the Iroquois had lost. The quartermaster called his attention to the water-beakers and the boat-boxes that contained certain kinds of food, fishing-lines, etc. They were so snugly stowed away that Henry had hardly noticed them. A crew adrift in one of these boats would have food and water for some time.

The fire drill had little novelty for Henry. Too often he had seen the firemen in his native town couple their hose to a fire-plug and squirt water, to be much excited about a similar display now, though it was rather interesting to see eight streams going at one time.

The infantry drill had more attraction for him. It was not exactly a novelty, either, but it gave him a new idea of the Coast Guard men. He had not previously thought of them as soldiers. But when the quartermaster told him that in time of war the Coast Guard becomes part of the navy, he saw that marines on a battleship were no more necessary than they were on a Coast Guard cutter.

Probably Henry would have enjoyed all these exhibitions more, had he not been under the shadow of suspicion. No formal charges had been made against him, and he was not exactly a prisoner. Neither was he free to leave the boat. He hoped that the captain would soon get to the bottom of the mystery. Henry did not feel free to say anything to the chief electrician about the matter, lest the latter think that he was seeking to influence him. So he stayed away from the radio shack. He was no longer a part of the wireless force, for the return of the chief electrician had taken his job from him.

But while Henry was disconsolately considering the matter, things were moving briskly in the wireless shack. Though he was now really sick, the chief electrician continued on duty. Alone on his watch, he was working patiently to uncover the difficulty with his grounded coil. Once more he had examined this coil thoroughly, yet he could see no external indications of impairment.

Slowly he now unwound the covering cords that formed the outer casing for the wrapped wires within. There was still nothing visibly wrong. But when he had cleared the cords away, and had gotten to the coil itself, his sharp eye detected a shining little dot, hardly bigger than a large pinhead, among the wire wrappings. With the point of his knife-blade he picked at this shining point and found it was hard, like metal. He believed he had found the difficulty.

Getting a large wooden spool, he began to unwind the copper wire from the coil, rolling it up on the empty spool as he unrolled it from the coil. Swiftly he transferred the wire from one cylinder to the other. As his coil grew thinner he saw that he had found the difficulty. The bright dot was the head of a long, thin finishing nail. Presently it was sticking up a half inch above the winding of the coil. The chief electrician started to pull it out, then thought better of it and desisted. But even his first slight tug at the nail showed him it was pretty tight. He went on unwinding. But now he examined the wire carefully as it unrolled. In piercing the coil, the nail had cut the insulation of practically every wire it had touched. In one or two places it had even severed the wire wrapping itself. When at last the chief electrician unwrapped the last winding of the coil, the nail dropped to his desk. Its end was bent over at an angle, and the metal core was scratched where the nail had been bent sidewise. The whole thing was as plain as day now. Some one had driven the nail through the coil, finishing the job with one or two hard blows that had bent the point against the core of the coil, sinking the head far below the corded cover. The question was, who had done it.

As soon as he had made this discovery, Mr. Sharp carefully removed all traces of his work, locked the parts of the damaged coil in his private drawer, bundled himself up, and sought the captain. The nail he had in his pocket.