The Radio Boys at Ocean Point: or, The Message that Saved the Ship

“You haven’t had the experience with them that we have,” said Bob. “But we enjoyed the trip immensely, anyway, and certainly want to thank you for lending us your boat.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Harvey heartily. “Any time you want it again, just say so. When are you coming to visit me at the station again?”

“Why, we’ve been meaning to get there for several days past,” said Bob. “If you’re going to be there to-morrow, we can drop in then. How about it, fellows?” turning to his friends.

“Sure thing,” said they all, and so it was agreed. Mr. Harvey had been walking with them in the direction of the bungalow colony while the foregoing conversation took place, but now his path branched off from theirs, and he said good-night after reminding them of their promise to visit him the following day.

The boys continued on home, discussing the events of the day. They arrived just a little before the evening meal was served, and they fell on the repast like a pack of young wolves, as they had taken no lunch with them, not expecting to be out so late.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Mrs. Fennington, when they had at last finished. “I’m glad you boys don’t go motor boating every day. You’d soon eat us out of house and home if you did.”

“If we owned the Sea Bird, Mother, we wouldn’t need any home,” said Herb. “We’d live aboard, wouldn’t we, fellows?”

The others laughingly agreed to this.

“There’s a dandy concert on to-night,” remarked Jimmy. “I saw the program in the newspaper. Some colored singers from a college down South.”

“Suits me,” returned Joe, and a little later all the boys and a number of the others were listening in. The musical numbers were well rendered, and they listened with delight.

“Hark!” cried Bob, when they were waiting for another announcement by wireless. “There goes a regular code message. Wish we could read it.”

“I can make out some of it,” answered Joe. “W – I – K – no, I guess that was L. Maybe it was WILL. Might be ‘will arrive,’ or something like that,“ and he sighed. “Gee, if we only could get onto it!”

“We will some day,” answered Bob.

“You bet!”

CHAPTER XVII – AN OCEAN BUCKBOARD

One morning soon after their arrival at Ocean Point the boys went down to the beach equipped with a novelty that they had often heard about, but had never seen until the night before.

It had been Jimmy’s birthday, and his father had made and sent him a gayly decorated surfboard to celebrate the occasion. When he first saw it Jimmy was at a loss to know what kind of strange present he had received, but when he showed it to the other radio boys, Bob quickly told him what it was for.

“I saw a moving picture once that showed the beach at Tampa,” said Bob. “It looked as though almost everybody had one of those surfboards, as they are called.”

“Yes, but what do you do with the thing? That’s what I want to know,” complained Jimmy. “It looks like something that would be fine for scaring the birds away from the garden, but, aside from that, I can’t think of much use for it.”

“Why, you just flop down on it against the crest of a surf wave, and the wave does the rest,” explained Bob. “At least, that’s the way it looked in the pictures. The wave carries you and the surfboard along in front of it, and believe me, you travel some, too.”

“Well, that listens all right,” said Jimmy dubiously. “But since you know all about it, it’s up to you to try it out, Bob.”

“Surest thing you know, I’ll try it out,” returned Bob. “I suppose we’ll get plenty of duckings while we’re learning how, but we’ll be out for a swim, anyway, so what’s the difference?”

On the morning following they sallied out bright and early, eager to experiment with this latest means of amusement.

“I only hope there’s a good surf running,” said Bob. “I suppose now that we want it to be a little rough, the sea will be as smooth as a mill pond.”

“Well, I hope not,” said Jimmy. “I’ve never seen a mill pond myself, but according to all the dope they must be about the stillest things that ever happened. I wonder if there is such a thing as a rough mill pond. If there is, I’d be willing to go a long way to see it.”

“Oh, there are lots of things like that,” said Herb, laughing. “For instance, whoever saw an aspen leaf that didn’t quiver?”

“Yes, or a terrier that didn’t shake a rat,” said Joe.

“Or a pirate that didn’t swagger,” said Jimmy.

“Or even a pancake that wasn’t flat,” added Bob.

“Good night!” laughed Herb. “What have I started here, anyway? We’ll all be candidates for the lunatic asylum if we keep this up very long.”

“Oh, well, after being around with you so long, we’d feel right at home,” said Jimmy sarcastically.

“I haven’t any doubt you’d feel at home, all right,” retorted Herb. “I’ll bet you’d feel at home right away.”

“You bet I would,” said Jimmy. “All I’d have to do would be to tell them some of your bum jokes, and they’d elect me a charter member right off the bat.”

“I think Jimmy would show up even better as a member of the Pie-eater’s Union,” said Joe. “He has such a special gift in that direction that he’d soon be champion of the whole outfit.”

“Well, it’s something to be a champion of anything in these days of competition in sports,” said Jimmy. “But here we are, Bob, and here’s yourchance to demonstrate how to become a champion surfboard artist.”

“All right, I’m game,” said Bob. “Hand over that instrument of torture, and I’ll be the goat and give you fellows a good chance to laugh at me.”

The surfboard was about the shape and size of a small ironing board, although much lighter. Equipped with this device, Bob waded into the surf, holding the surfboard over his head until he got into water as deep as his shoulders. There was a fairly high surf running, in spite of his pessimistic prophecy to the contrary. Bob waited until an unusually high breaker came curling in, and then launched himself and the surfboard against the green wall of water.

More by good luck than anything else he caught it at the right angle, and went whirling toward the shore at breath-taking speed. For perhaps a hundred feet he held his position, but then tilted to one side, and in a moment he and the surfboard disappeared in a smother of foam and spray. Tumbled over and over, he finally got to his feet, after the force of the wave had spent itself, and waded into shore, puffing and blowing.

“I got a good start, anyway,” he panted. “I guess it takes practice to keep your balance and come all the way in, but it’s a great sensation. I’m going to try it again.” Suiting the action to the word, Bob waded valiantly in again. After several attempts he finally caught a big wave just right, and by frantic balancing rode all the way in to shallow water. “There you are!” exclaimed Bob triumphantly. “Say, when we once get on to this, it ought to be barrels of fun. Who’s going to be the next one to try it?”

“I’ll take a whirl at it,” said Joe. “It looked easy enough the way you rode in the last time.”

“Sure it’s easy,” grinned Bob, shaking the water out of his ears. “Go to it, Joe. I’ll stand by to rescue you if you need it.”

Joe made several attempts, and received some rough handling from some big breakers before he finally contrived to make a fairly successful trip.

“Wow!” he exclaimed, scrambling to shore and throwing the surfboard at Jimmy. “It’s fun if you have luck, but I thought I was going to drink the whole Atlantic Ocean once or twice. You try it, Jimmy. It’s your board, anyway.”

“Yes, I know it’s my board,” said Jimmy. “Don’t you want to try it next, Herb?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of using it before you,” said Herb. “I want to have the fun of seeing you get drowned before me, Doughnuts.”

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t refuse to give you that pleasure, so here goes,” returned Jimmy, and he waded manfully into the surf, the board poised above his head.

He made a lunge at the first big breaker that came along, but instead of planting the board at an angle, he slapped it against the wave in a vertical position, and the next second he was underneath the board and was being ignominiously rolled and tumbled along the sandy bottom. When the wave finally left him, he staggered to his feet and found the treacherous surfboard floating within a yard of him.

His companions, seeing him safe, laughed heartily at his woebegone and bedraggled appearance.

“It’s great sport, isn’t it, Jimmy?” chaffed Bob.

“Sure it is, when you do it right,” sputtered Jimmy. “I’m going to try it again, if it kills me,” and he seized the recalcitrant surfboard and waded doggedly out again. This time his persistence met with a better reward, for, warned by his previous experience, he placed the board flatter this time, and rode in almost to shore before getting upset.

“That’s enough for a starter,” he gasped. “There certainly is plenty of excitement to it. Go ahead and try it, Herb, with my blessing.”

Herb did not seem any too anxious to follow his friend’s bidding, but nevertheless he took the board, and after several attempts got the hang of it well enough to get enthusiastic over it.

“It’s simply great when you get started right!” he exclaimed. “We’ll each have to get one, and we’ll have more sport than a little with them.”

For the rest of the morning the boys took turns with the contrivance, and by the time they stopped to go home for lunch had gotten quite expert. That afternoon they got their tools, and by evening had fashioned three duplicates of Jimmy’s board. On following days they used them to good effect, and before they left Ocean Point that summer they were all adepts at this new form of sport.

CHAPTER XVIII – IN THE WIRELESS ROOM

“SAY, Bob,” said Joe, as the four radio boys were walking briskly in the direction of the wireless station the following morning, “we must get Mr. Harvey to give us lessons in sending. That must be half the fun of radiophony, and we might as well do all there is to do. What do you say?”

“I think you’re dead right,” said Bob heartily. “We’ll speak to him about it to-day, and I guess he’ll show us how all right. In fact, he offered to do that very thing the first time we were there, if you remember.”

“I know he did,” said Joe. “And I’m going to remind him of it as soon as I get a chance.”

The chance was not long in coming, for that was one of the first things Mr. Harvey spoke of after their arrival at the station.

“You fellows ought to practice up on receiving and sending,” he said. “You can’t really claim to be full-fledged radio fans until you can do that.”

“That’s just what we were speaking of on our way here,” said Bob. “If it wouldn’t be asking too much of you, we’d like nothing better than to have you show us how.”

“Well, of course, it doesn’t take very long to learn the international code, and after that it’s chiefly a matter of practice,” said the radio man. “I have a practice sending set here now, and if you like I’ll give you your first lesson.”

The boys were only too glad to take advantage of this friendly offer. Harvey had a simple telegraph key, connected up to a buzzer and a couple of dry cells. The buzzer was tuned to give a sound very much like an actual buzz in an ear-phone. In addition he had a metal plate on which all the letters of the alphabet were represented by raised surfaces, a short surface for a dot, and a long one for a dash. The low spaces in between were insulated with enamel. In this way, if one wire was attached to the brass plate and the other brushed over the raised contact surfaces, each letter would be reproduced in the buzzer with the proper dots and dashes.

The boys found this device a big help, as they could memorize the proper dots and dashes for each letter, and then by moving the wire along the plate could hear the letter in the buzzer just as it should sound.

“But with this thing, it seems to me you don’t need to take the trouble to memorize the code,” said Herb. “Why, I could send a message with it right now.”

“You could, but it would be a mighty slow one,” replied Brandon Harvey. “That thing is useful to a beginner, but it wouldn’t work out very well for actual sending. It’s too clumsy.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s so,” admitted Herb.

“You fellows can take that along with you when you go,” said the radio man. “You can dope out the code from that, but you’ll need a key to practice with, too. If you like, I’ll lend you this whole practice set until you get a chance to buy one yourselves.”

“You bet we’ll take it, and many thanks!” exclaimed Bob. “We should have brought something of the kind down with us, but we didn’t, so your set will be just the thing for us.”

“It’s been some time since I’ve had any use for it,” said Harvey. “But I came across it the other day, and it occurred to me that maybe you fellows could use it, as you told me the first time you were here that you intended to take up sending.”

“It was mighty nice of you to think of us,” said Joe, his face beaming.

“Oh, well, we radio fans have to stick together,” returned Harvey, with a smile. “There’s some extra head sets lying around here somewhere, and, if you like, you can listen in on some of the messages coming in. Things were pretty lively just before you fellows came in.”

The boys lost no time in taking advantage of this offer, and were soon absorbed in listening to the reports of shipping, weather conditions, and occasional snatches of conversation that came drifting in over the antenna. Harvey’s pencil was busy as he jotted down reports and memoranda. The boys felt that they were in intimate touch with the whole wide world, and the morning flew by so fast that they were all astonished when Harvey announced that it was lunch time.

“Say, but you certainly have an interesting job, Mr. Harvey,” said Bob. “I only wish I were a regular radio man, too.”

“So do I,” said Joe. “It’s about the most fascinating work I can think of.”

“You might not like it so much if you were doing it every day,” said Brandon Harvey. “But it’s a big field, and getting bigger every day, so maybe a few years from now you may join the brotherhood. If you ever do, why, all the experience you’re getting now will come in mighty handy.”

“Yes, but I know something else that might come in pretty handy, too,” put in Jimmy, “and that’s a little lunch. I think we’d better make tracks toward home mighty soon.”

“Nothing doing!” protested Harvey. “You’re going to stay here and have lunch with me. I can’t give you much, but it will probably enable you to totter along until this evening, anyway.”

The boys protested against putting the radio man to so much trouble, but he would not take no for an answer, so they allowed themselves to be persuaded, gladly enough, in truth.

It did not take the radio man long to prepare a simple but nourishing meal, all the cooking being done on an electric stove he had rigged up himself. While they ate they talked, and Brandon Harvey told them something about himself. It seemed that he had formerly been an accountant, having taken up radio as a hobby at first, but then, finding himself deeply interested in it, had resolved to make it his life work.

“I still do a little at my old trade, though,” Harvey told them. “I’m treasurer of the Ocean Point Building and Loan Association, and that sometimes keeps me pretty busy in the evenings after I’m off duty here.”

“I should think it would,” commented Bob. “What do you have to do, anyway?”

“Oh, I keep the books straightened out, and occasionally I make collections of cash,” answered Harvey. “I’ll probably get knocked on the head sometime when I’m carrying the money around with me. I always feel rather uneasy when I have any large sum about, there seem to be so many holdups these days.”

“Have you a good safe place here to keep the money?” asked Joe.

“Yes, fairly safe,” responded Harvey. “I put it in the Company’s safe here, and I don’t suppose anybody would bother about it. But just the same, I don’t leave it here unless I simply haven’t had time to deposit it in the bank.”

The talk drifted into other channels, and the boys thought little more of what he had told them at that time. After lunch they practiced sending with the buzzer set, and got so that they could recognize some of the letters when they were sent very slowly.

“Huh,” said Jimmy, elated at his success in making out two letters in succession, “I’ll be sending and receiving thirty words a minute in a little while.”

“How little?” grinned Bob.

“Just about a hundred years or so,” put in Herb, before Jimmy could answer.

“Hundred nothing!” said Jimmy indignantly. “Don’t think because it will take you that long that I’ll be just as slow. I’m going to show you some speed.”

“Go on!” chaffed Herb. “Who ever heard of anybody as fat as you showing speed? You don’t know what that word means.”

“Just the same, I haven’t seen you read anywords yet,” retorted Jimmy. “About the only one you know is E, and that’s because it’s only one dot.”

“Well, I’ll know the whole blamed thing pretty soon,” said Herb. “You see if I don’t.”

“I’ve no doubt you’ll all be experts in a little while,” laughed Harvey. “‘Practice makes perfect’ in that as in most other things.”

The boys remained at the big station until late in the afternoon, and then, with many thanks to their friend for his assistance, they started back home.

“Mr. Harvey is one of the finest men I’ve ever met,” said Bob, as they walked briskly along. “He and his cousin are a good deal alike. They both know a lot, and they’re both willing to help other people understand the things they’re interested in.”

“Yes, we couldn’t have made a better friend,” said Joe. “I only hope we have the chance to do something for him some day. I feel as though I’d learned a lot about radio just since we came to Ocean Point.”

Jimmy and Herb warmly indorsed this statement, and had the radio man been able to hear them, he would probably have felt fully repaid for his efforts in their behalf.

He, for his part, felt indebted to the boys. Their eager enthusiasm had stirred him deeply, and their laughter and good fellowship had come like a fresh breeze into the routine of his daily life. He was still young enough himself to feel in perfect touch with them, and he welcomed their coming and regretted their departure.

He sat for some time musing, with a smile on his lips after they had left him. Then the conversation he had with them about the money he held in trust recurred to him, and he stepped over to the safe, took out the funds and counted them.

He gave a whistle of surprise when he realized how much had accumulated.

“Too much to have on hand at one time,” he said to himself, as he closed the safe. “I must get that over to the bank!”

CHAPTER XIX – DANCING TO RADIO

“That talk with Mr. Harvey has certainly made me ambitious,” remarked Bob that evening, as the boys were tinkering with their radio set.

“Who was that poet who said:

‘I charge thee, fling away ambition,’Twas through ambition that the angels fell,’

quoted Joe.

“Pretty good dope, too, if you ask me,” said Jimmy.

“I might have expected that that would hit you pretty hard,” replied Bob, with what was meant to be withering sarcasm, though Jimmy did not “bat an eyelash.” “But it doesn’t apply to me at all. In the first place, I’m not an angel – ”

“How you surprise us,” murmured Herb.

“So that what happened to angels needn’t necessarily happen to me,” continued Bob.

“I prithee, gentle stranger, in what direction doth thy ambition lead?” asked Herb, at the same time looking around at the others and tapping his forehead significantly.

“In the direction of that loop aerial that we were talking about before we left Clintonia,” answered Bob. “You know Mr. Brandon said it was good, and you remember what he told us about the way the British used it to trap the German fleet. That’s been running in my head ever since. What do you say to rigging one up and seeing just what it will do? If we find it better than our present aerial, we’ll use it altogether.”

“Well, I’m ready to try anything once,” chimed in Joe.

“I suppose here’s where Jimmy gets busy in making a frame for it?” suggested Jimmy, in an aggrieved tone.

“Likely enough,” replied Bob heartlessly. “You need a little work to get some of that fat off of you, anyway. But after you get the frame and the pivot made – ”

“Oh, yes, the pivot, too!” said Jimmy. “All right, go ahead. Be sure you don’t overlook anything.”

“The rest of us will pitch in and wind the wire,” finished Bob.

Jimmy heaved a long sigh, and to revive his drooping spirits, produced a pound box of assorted chocolates that an aunt in Clintonia had sent him.

But Jimmy chose an unfortunate moment to exhibit these delicacies, for at that moment Herb’s sisters, Amy and Agnes, entered the room and immediately espied the box of tempting confections.

“Oh, isn’t that nice!” exclaimed Agnes. “Did you bring these just for Amy and me, Jimmy?”

“Well – er – not exactly,” stammered Jimmy. “I was figuring that we’d all have a hack at them, I guess.”

“But I thought boys didn’t care for chocolate creams,” said Agnes. “They’re just for girls, aren’t they?”

Jimmy fidgeted uncomfortably, but before he could think of anything to say, Herb came to his rescue.

“You’d better act nicely or you won’t get any,” he said with true brotherly frankness. “If you’re real good we may let you have one or two, though, just as a special favor.”

“I thought those candies belonged to Jimmy,” said Amy quickly. “I don’t see what you’ve got to say about them, anyway, Herbert darling.”

“I guess we’d better compromise,” suggested Bob, laughing. “Suppose we set them on the center table, and then we can all help ourselves. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is not!” exclaimed Herb. “The girls’ll eat them all while we boys are fooling with the radio. But I suppose we might as well let them have the things that way as any other. They’ll get them some way, you can bet on that.”

“You’re just mad because you can’t have them all yourself,” said Agnes serenely, as she nibbled at a chocolate. “You boys go ahead with your radio. We’ll take care of the candies.”

“What did I tell you?” said Herb disdainfully. “That’s about all girls think of anyway – eating candy.”

“Oh, go on,” said Amy. “We don’t like them a bit better than you boys do, only you won’t admit it.”

“They couldn’t like them much better than Jimmy does, that’s a fact,” said Joe.

“Aw, forget it,” said Jimmy. “We’re all in the same boat when it comes to that. Let’s get busy with the radio.”

The candy incident was soon forgotten in the interest of the concert they heard that evening. There was an unusually fine program, one of the features of which was a lecture on radiophony. The boys listened attentively to this, and got some valuable information in regard to the latest developments of the science. After this was over there were a number of band and orchestral selections. The girls listened to these, too, and when they were over, Agnes made a suggestion.

“Since your set works so well, why couldn’t we give a dance?” she asked. “You can always find a station that is sending out dance music, can’t you?”

“Say, that’s a pretty good idea!” exclaimed Bob. “There are plenty of other young people in the bungalows around here, and I don’t think we’d have any trouble in getting a good crowd.”

“Fine and dandy!” exclaimed Joe. “By that time we may have our loop aerial finished, and it will be a good chance to try it out.”

“Suits me all right, provided I can work the set and don’t have to dance,” stipulated Jimmy. “If I try to dance these hot nights, I’ll just melt away like a snowball in front of the fire.”

“Maybe when some of the pretty girls around here come in you’ll change your mind,” said Agnes.

“Well, we ought to have lots of fun, anyway,” said Bob. “We’ll leave it to the girls to give the invitations, and we’ll guarantee to furnish all the music you want. We’ll make Ocean Point sit up and take notice.”

“You’ve got to ask some of the younger girls, too, and not just your own set,” put in Herb quickly, for his sisters were both older than he was by a few years.

“Oh, of course,” promised Agnes. “This will be a free for all.”

The rest of the evening they spent in making plans for the forthcoming party, and the next morning the boys set to work like beavers on the loop aerial. They hardly paused for meals, and before the day was over they had it completely made and set up. The girls, as well as the boys, were greatly interested in the first test, and they all waited breathlessly for the sounds that should issue from the throat of the horn. It was not long before the boys picked up a concert that was going on in Boston, and the effect was startling. After they had tuned out all interferences the music came in sweet and full and in such volume that they even had to tone it down a little. Mrs. Fennington, seated on the porch, could hear everything distinctly, and applauded each number.