“Try it,” smiled Roy. “Maybe you can pick up something interesting.”
Eagerly Willie plumped himself down in the operator’s chair, adjusted the receivers to his ears, threw over the switch and began to tune in. And as suddenly he snatched off the headpiece and jumped from the chair.
“I’ll couple up my own receivers, Roy,” he said, “and then we can both listen in.”
Willie dragged his heavy suit case out, threw open the cover, and quickly uncoupled the receivers from the wireless outfit in the case. In a moment he and Roy had coupled this additional headpiece to the Lycoming’s outfit. Roy drew up another chair, and the two sat down at the table and adjusted their headpieces. Roy considerately let Willie work the instruments, giving him, from time to time, such directions as seemed necessary.
When first Willie threw over the switch and began to tune in, the air seemed like a very bedlam. The headpieces screeched and wailed. Innumerable buzzings sounded. Spoken words could distinctly be heard. Yet the whole was an undecipherable jargon. But once Willie had gauged his instruments correctly, he soon made harmony out of discord. He was really a very good operator for an amateur, and he quickly began to pick up individual messages and shut out waves of conflicting length. Delighted, he listened to operator after operator, tuning in, now to messages in one wave-length, now to those in another.
“That’s the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said Roy, as a powerful, whining note suddenly shrieked through the air. “They’re calling for the coast guard cutter Modoc. And that’s Cape May calling. I’d know both those calls in my sleep. I get so close to both those stations that the operators almost seem to be in the cabin here with me.”
“You called Cape May the time you rescued Alec, didn’t you? He wrote us about it.”
“Yes; we had to get a tug to tow his boat into Cape May Harbor after we had picked it up.”
After they had listened in silence for a few moments Roy said, “That’s the New York Marconi Station,” as another powerful wireless voice spoke out. “Isn’t that operator a peach? He can send like a streak. Just listen to him.”
Now they heard ships at sea, first one and then another. The Mallory liner Lampasas, somewhere off the Atlantic Coast, was sending out messages for passengers. Nearer at hand, another coastwise steamer, the Cherokee, of the Clyde Line, was calling her New York office. From far out on the ocean came other voices. The White Star liner Majestic, largest vessel afloat, was relaying commercial messages received from ships far behind her on the highway from Europe to America. The Cunarder Berengaria was informing its New York office about some repairs made to its bow plates after a slight collision off the English coast. The Kroonland was shrieking out a call for the City of Paris, but getting no reply. Very, very faintly sounded in their receivers a whispering message from the Atlantic Transport steamer Minnetonka.