The Young Wireless Operator—Afloat / Or, How Roy Mercer Won His Spurs in the Merchant Marine

by Lewis E. Theiss

There were tears in Roy’s eyes as he jotted down the message. “Wishing us good luck while he’s going perhaps to his death,” muttered Roy. “He’s a man—as every wireless operator ought to be.” And while he listened for other signals, he sent up a silent prayer that when the pinch came he would be equally brave.

Meantime the ship staggered on. With the stars blotted out, with the seas mounting higher and higher, with the wind blowing at hurricane force, it was impossible to tell what speed the ship was making, whether she was being blown far from her course, or where she was. Yet the captain must decide all these things and decide them right, if the Lycoming was to come through the storm in safety. The most hazardous part of her journey still lay ahead of her. It would be doubly hazardous now because the wind would be abeam when she turned west to pass through the Straits.

In the early hours of the morning the motion of the ship seemed to alter. For Roy, on the very top of the vessel, every movement was intensified. At once he was conscious of this altered motion. Before, her movements had been mostly violent forward plunges. Now she rolled fearfully from side to side. First she rolled far over to port. Then she dipped at a terrifying angle to starboard. Roy could not understand it. After a time it came to him that the ship was wallowing in the trough of the waves. Had something gone wrong? Had the steering-gear broken? Was the ship out of control and drifting toward land, even as the Comal had done? These and a hundred other questions Roy asked himself as he sat breathless at his operating table. Should he call the bridge to see if the captain wanted the SOS sounded? Small chance they would have of getting help in such a storm, Roy told himself, when it was all any ship could do to keep herself afloat, let alone help another. All the while Roy was conscious of the regular vibration of the ship’s engines. Presently it occurred to him that if the ship were unmanageable the engines would probably be stopped. Then he knew what was wrong. The ship had turned west. They were in the Straits. The waves were catching the Lycoming abeam. The pinch had come. Could the Lycoming survive it?

Hardly had Roy asked himself the question before there was an awful roar. With a noise like a thousand thunders a mighty sea struck the Lycoming broadside and poured over her decks. It was the first sea that had come aboard. By intuition Roy knew what had happened. His thoughts reverted to the day when he had expressed surprise, almost incredulity, at the purser’s statement that waves sometimes swept the deck. Thirty feet, the purser had said the waves sometimes rose. He wondered how high this one was. He knew it was a monster. He wondered what the sea looked like with waves like that. He wished it were day so he could see. Then he was glad it was not day. He was afraid he would be afraid. Whatever happened, he did not want to be a coward. The thought of the captain on the bridge heartened him. It was wonderful how the bare thought of that fearless man restored Roy’s courage.

On and on plunged the Lycoming, ploughing through cross-seas, wallowing between mighty waves, fighting her way through a welter of water such as Roy had never dreamed of. Hour by hour, the force of the wind increased. The seas mounted higher. The ship labored more heavily. Time and again great waves swept over her. Her bulwarks were smashed. Railings and woodwork were torn away. Iron stanchions were bent like wire. The bridge was battered. The waters clawed at her hull and the winds tore at her superstructure. But unflinching, unyielding, undaunted, gripping the rail with grasp of iron, the captain stood on the bridge, master of wave and wind.

Never had Roy welcomed daylight as he welcomed the dawn next morning. All night long he had sat at his instrument, waiting, waiting, waiting for the moment when he might be needed. A hundred times he had pictured the sea to himself; but his wildest picture was tame in comparison with the actual scene as revealed by the light of dawn. The confusion of the waters was beyond conception. Mountain high the seas were piling up. Under the awful blasts of wind they rushed forward like frenzied demons, frothing, seething, hissing, roaring, climbing up and up until the hurricane tore their tops away, flinging the spray like tropic rain in blinding sheets. Again and again Roy watched with bated breath as a monster wave bore down on the ship, rising higher and higher, until it plunged forward on the Lycoming with a crash, shaking the sturdy ship from stem to stern. The roar of the elements was deafening. Beyond all power of imagination, the tempest was awful.

Hour by hour the stanch vessel fought her way through the maelstrom. The wind tended ever to blow her toward the keys and shoals that menaced on the north, but the man on the bridge kept pointing her into the wind. No land was visible. Neither was the sun. It was impossible to take a reckoning and determine the ship’s position. Yet with that instinct born of years of experience, the captain allowed for the drift, gauged the ship’s speed, and kept her on her course. Noon should normally have seen her far past the Dry Tortugas. It was hours later when the Lycoming actually reached them. For a few minutes the rain ceased and the air cleared. Again and again the man on the bridge swept the horizon with his glasses. Finally he glimpsed land. That one glance told him all he wanted to know. He had seen a landmark on the Dry Tortugas. He knew he was only slightly off his course. At once he rectified his position. The wide Gulf was now before him and, barring accident, he knew he should come through safely. But he was traveling with the hurricane. He did not run through it, but advanced with it. So the storm continued hour after hour without abatement.

Late in the day, Roy sought food. If he had thought the storm terrible, within the shelter of the wireless house, he had no words to describe it now as he stood in the open, exposed to the elements. Clutching the rail with all his strength, bending low before the gale, Roy advanced foot by foot. He was almost afraid to go down the ladder lest he be pitched headlong into the hissing seas. A step at a time he descended, hugging the ladder tenaciously. Then, crouching close to the superstructure of the ship, he fought his way against an awful wind until he reached a door. In another second he was inside, trembling all over from the violence of his efforts and his close contact with the storm. When he remembered that for twenty hours the captain had stood on the bridge, facing that awful wind and those crashing seas, he was speechless with admiration. It was more than admiration. It was almost worship. A burning desire came into his heart to do something in return for the captain.