The Young Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Secret Service / Winning his way in the Secret Service

by Lewis E. Theiss

Interesting enough was the manner of its delivery. Huge slings or nets made of rope were lowered into the hold, by a long derrick arm. The nets were filled with trunks and bags and boxes and bales. Then the donkey engines rattled and up through the open hatchways came the laden slings. A moment the loads dangled in air, while the cumbersome derrick arms swung round. Then the slings were lowered to the decks. Strong hands threw back the nets and, lifting the contents, sent trunk after trunk, box after box, and bundle after bundle, down an inclined conveyor to the pier, where gangs of freight handlers stood in line, with hand trucks, to wheel each piece of baggage to the proper place on the pier.

Willie had noticed long lines of huge placards, running lengthwise of the pier, and high overhead, bearing the letters of the alphabet. Now he saw what these letters were for. Near the foot of the baggage chute stood a man in charge of the baggage handlers. As each piece of baggage came down to the pier, this man looked at the label pasted on it, and called out S or P or T or whatever letter the label bore. The truckman who wheeled away the piece of baggage took it directly to that section of the pier under the corresponding letter. The baggage was marked in conformity with the owner’s name. Thus, if a man’s name was Jones, his baggage would bear a label marked J, and go to the section under the letter J, and thither Jones would follow and wait until a customs inspector came to examine his baggage, to see that the custom laws were not violated. If the inspector found the baggage all right, he pasted another label on it, and the owner was free to remove the piece of baggage so passed. But if the inspector was not satisfied about any piece of baggage, he could order it removed for further search or for seizure.

It was indeed a picturesque sight to see the inspectors going through piece after piece of baggage, while the excited owners gesticulated and tried to explain about this or that, in broken English, or volubly explained in explosive speech to an interpreter.

Yet interesting as these things were, they were not what Willie had come to see. Under different circumstances, he might have lost himself completely in contemplation of this interesting spectacle. But now he had small taste for it. The more prosaic boxes of freight were what interested Willie now.

The minute the luggage of passengers was out of the way, the freight holds were opened and articles of commerce began to shoot from the vessel to the pier. It was not such a simple matter to keep track of merchandise. It had not been stamped, in advance, with letters corresponding with the owners’ names. Nor was it spread out over a great part of the pier. Instead, the stevedores hustled it away on their trucks and stacked it in great piles, along the centre of the pier. Each piece of baggage was stamped with the consignee’s name, to be sure, but it was not always easy to find these marks, until Mr. Easterly directed the stevedores to put the boxes on their trucks, with the addresses up. Even then smaller packages were sometimes piled two or three deep on the little hand trucks. Mr. Easterly, however, was skilled at the sort of work he was now doing, and he readily kept tab on each piece of freight. Although Willie could not decipher the labels so readily as his companion, he was nevertheless of use in the search. He was examining the packages rather than the addresses. Specifically, he was looking for wheat. He knew it would be in bags and he was looking for sacks about like those he was accustomed to see American farmers deliver at the mills, with two bushels of wheat in them.

For a long time the only bags that came out of the hold were bags of Turkish coffee. Great, bulging sacks were they, far larger than the accustomed wheat sacks Willie was thinking of. And there was a considerable shipment of them. With these bags was hoisted another, not unlike them in appearance; and it is likely that it might have gotten by both the watchers undetected had not Willie observed that the stevedores had difficulty in handling it. The bags of coffee they had tossed about readily enough. But this huge bag required the united efforts of two men to get it safely to the pier. This little difference did not escape the observing eyes of Willie.

“I wonder what makes that bag so much heavier than the others,” he said to Mr. Easterly. “It isn’t any larger.”

“We’ll have a look at it,” said the customs agent.

They did. It was consigned to Marrash Roukas. Mr. Easterly directed the stevedores to set the sack to one side.

Willie was now almost as excited as some of the foreigners he had seen jabbering away at the customs inspectors. But he tried hard to control himself. The only thing that enabled him to keep himself quiet was the thought that there might be more freight on the boat for Roukas. It was really a wonder that they had noted this bag. They might easily miss something else. So Willie took himself in hand and settled down once more to a vigilant watch.