The Young Wireless Operator—With the Oyster Fleet / How Alec Cunningham Won His Way to the Top in the Oyster Business

by Lewis E. Theiss

Weeks passed. The oyster business grew duller and duller. More and more ships were laid up for the winter. For days at a time the Bertha B lay fast at her pier. To a lad of Alec's energetic, impatient nature, it was a trying period. There was so little that he could do. From bowsprit to taffrail he already knew every rope and stick and implement on an oyster-boat, and the uses of them all. He knew the various parts of the engine and comprehended their functions. He had already learned how to splice a rope, reef a sail, bend on a line, cast a hawser, and do a thousand other tasks aboard ship. Ashore, he had inquired into every phase of the oyster business he could think of. Like Alexander, he sighed for more worlds to conquer; for it seemed to Alec as though there was nothing new left for him to do. He felt like a soldier marking time. He was going through the motions, perhaps, but not advancing. And to Alec's impatient nature, that meant that he was wasting his time, throwing away the only capital he possessed.

In reality his time was far from wasted. Though he did not realize it, he was continually picking up knowledge that was to be of use to him. Always he was on the alert. Ever he was asking questions. Continually he was weighing this and that practice in his mind. And from night to night, as he sat in the warm cabin of the Bertha B, talking with the skipper and Joe, both of whom lived aboard with him, he absorbed a vast fund of useful and practical information.

Of this fact Alec was hardly conscious. To him it seemed as though he were merely killing time by listening to the engaging yarns of the skipper; for Captain Bagley, like all real sailors, could tell the most fascinating stories of the sea. But through the medium of these stories Alec unconsciously picked up a great deal of information about the waters he would have to navigate as an oysterman, about the currents, the tides, the winds, the storms, the calms—in short about the very things he needed to know. Whenever he heard the least thing that was likely to be of use to him, he unconsciously singled it out and put it away in the storehouse of his memory.

For to Alec, as to every real thinker, it was given to learn through the experiences of others quite as much as through his own experiences. Indeed, Alec early had seen the folly of learning through his own experience if he could possibly learn through that of another. It might be true, he knew, that experience is the best teacher. But he quickly saw that he is a fool who learns only through his own experience. So, although the time seemed to drag, and he chafed under the enforced idleness, Alec was really acquiring something worth while all the time. Any one does who is really desirous of learning.

But on one account Alec was not sorry because things were so dull. He saw a great deal of Elsa. Alec's bright, cheerful ways had endeared him to the entire Rumford family. The shipper welcomed him to his home because he felt that he would rather have Elsa associate with Alec than with most of the lads he knew. The others might be all right or they might not be. Alec was true as steel. In a hundred ways the shipper had seen him tested. He knew about Alec.

Had Alec realized these things he would have been both gratified and puzzled—gratified to know that the captain really did think so well of him, yet puzzled to know why it was so. For in some ways Alec was singularly childlike. At the captain's home or in the captain's presence he had not acted in any way different from the way he always acted. What Alec did not realize was how fine at heart he really was. But though Alec did not comprehend these things about himself, the shipper understood them readily enough. And he knew, as well as he knew anything, that if he himself lived his allotted time, he would see the day when Alec stood at the very top of the oyster business. It is just as impossible to keep down a lad like Alec, as it is to dam back forever the waters of a stream. Either may be held back for a time. In the end both will break through.

One thing these days of idleness did for Alec that he did not comprehend at all. They gave him to the last measure the full coöperation and sympathy of Elsa. In an intangible way that neither understood or appreciated their relationship underwent a very real change.

By this time Alec's plans for the future were beginning to take tangible form. His ideas had crystallized. They were concrete enough to talk about in exact terms. And Alec wanted to talk about them. He wanted to discuss them with some one who could comprehend and sympathize with his plans, and yet criticize them in a friendly, intelligent way. Jim Hawley, though big of heart, hadn't the kind of mind to grasp what Alec was aiming at; Captain Bagley would have been indifferent to the matter; and Captain Rumford would have regarded Alec's plans as the veriest rubbish. Besides these three, there were no men in the oyster fleet with whom Alec would have been willing to discuss his plans.

Elsa met every requirement. When Alec told her what was in his mind she comprehended exactly what he meant, she sympathized fully with his position, she passed judgment on his schemes with the friendliest sort of criticism. It was exactly the sort of help Alec needed most. It gave him increased confidence in his own plans and stiffened his courage. He knew that Elsa understood him and sympathized with him fully and he needed such sympathetic understanding and encouragement if he were to win through.