The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic

“Phew!” exclaimed Jack, mopping his forehead, not altogether on account of the warmth of the night, “what do you know about that?”

“Nothing,” exclaimed Raynor, “nothing at all! Aren’t they bully! But let’s see what is in these two flat pocket-books.” In the excitement of finding the watches, they had not paid much attention to two flat cases of dark leather enclosed in each package. The books were opened and found to contain, under isinglass, like a commuter’s ticket in America, two passes on the government railways, signed by M. La Farge and good all over the Netherlands.

The boys’ cup of happiness was pressed down and running over.

“Just to think that only a few minutes before we ran into our big adventure, we were kicking because we had no money to travel,” cried Jack, as he eyed his engraved pass lovingly. “Now for a few trips!”

CHAPTER XIX

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO

The Ajax was to remain two days or so longer in Antwerp, and the boys readily obtained permission from the captain to make all the use they could of their passes. They had already exhausted what they wished to see of Antwerp, including the famous fort on the Tête de Flandre on the opposite bank of the river, the great cathedral, the home of Rubens’ parents, and the magnificent picture gallery.

Now they could enlarge their opportunities, and they decided to take a trip to Brussels and from there to the field of Waterloo. Accordingly, they started in high spirits on their tour as soon as they could get a train. Their passes were marked “first-class,” so they soon ensconced themselves in a leather-lined compartment, while their less fortunate fellow passengers had to be content with “second” and “third.”

“I wonder how this arrangement would go in America?” asked Jack as they sank back in the soft-padded cushions.

“I guess everybody would go first-class,” laughed Raynor. “We haven’t anyone at home willing to brand himself ‘second’ or ‘third’ in the race.”

“Now who on earth is this?” wondered Jack presently, as a brightly uniformed official entered the compartment which they had to themselves.

“Conductor, I guess,” hazarded Raynor.

The official removed his cap and bowed low.

“Bonjours, messieurs,” said he; “les billets, si vous plait.”

“I guess he wants our tickets,” said Jack, fishing for his. This surmise proved to be correct.

The politeness of the official was more marked, if it could be possible, when he saw, from the signature on the passes, that the boys were traveling under “royal auspices.” He raised his cap and bowed again. Not to be outdone, the boys bowed back with equal suavity.

“Merci bien,” he said.

“Merci bien,” responded Jack, who had acquired some French at high school.

“Mercy beans, too,” sputtered young Raynor, thinking that Jack was giving an order for a Boston lunch. The conductor bowed again and vanished, a bell rang and they were off. The ride lay through a farming region and the road was cool, clean and smooth.

On their arrival in Brussels, they found accommodation at a hotel overlooking the public square. The windows, although the maître de hotel had assured them that it was one of the best rooms in the house, were only four feet high.

“Gee, we have to lie down to look out!” exclaimed Raynor.

“On the square?” asked Jack with a grin.

“No; on the level; that’s the way I lie,” chuckled Raynor. Both lads were in high spirits. Their unexpected stroke of luck had surely proved a windfall.

In the center of the Place Royale, the first place the boys explored, stands an equestrian figure of Godfrey of Bouillon.

“It was on that spot that he first assembled his crusaders who won back Jerusalem to the Christians,” said Jack, wise with guide-book knowledge.

“And to think that up to now I always thought Bouillon was a soup,” remarked Raynor dryly.

Before the train left for Waterloo, they had time to visit the Royal Museum, walking down the Rue de La Régence. The Royal Museum was filled with fine pictures and statuary, but, to tell the truth, the boys had become a little bit cloyed with art at Antwerp. It takes some experience and training to be interested in, and gauge properly, such things, although both felt that what they had seen had done them permanent good.

Several times during their walk to the railroad station where they were to take a train for Waterloo, the boys were much amused and interested by the working dogs hitched to small carts. Sometimes the working dogs got into a fight with the leisure-class canines, and then there was a fine racket among the owners and the dogs, till things were straightened out and humans and canines, both growling, went on their way.

“Almost all the shops say they cater to the King or the Court of Flanders,” commented Raynor as they strolled along.

“I guess they get most of their real money from Americans, at that,” was Jack’s comment.

The Gare du Midi, or Central Station, they found surrounded by a crowd of shouting, noisy, officious guides, and also several individuals who looked none too honest. They buttonholed every arrival, volunteering all sorts of information in bad English. This, despite the fact that there were plenty of signs in plain view.

It was half an hour’s ride to Braine-l’Alleud, for the most famous battle of modern history was fought several miles from the village whose name it bears. This is because Wellington sent his victorious despatches from Waterloo, which has ever since claimed the honor of naming the place of Napoleon’s downfall.

They took a small, rickety carriage at the station, and before long Raynor was pointing to a mound with an ugly, clumsy-looking lion on it.

“Zat is zee Lion of Belgium,” volunteered the driver. “Eet ees model from French cannon and mark zee spot where zee Prance of Orange was wounded.”

“Is that so?” muttered Raynor. “Well, it looks more like a Newfoundland dog than a lion to me.”

“Eet weigh twenty-eight ton,” volunteered the driver again, pointing with his whip to the lion, close access to which was gained by a steep flight of steps. There are two hundred and twenty-six of these steps, and the boys, on climbing them, were considerably out of breath when they reached the summit and saw the historic plain spread out under their feet.

“I’m disappointed,” confessed Jack frankly. “I thought it was much larger. Why, it doesn’t look like much more than a parade ground!”

“Well, it wasn’t much of a ‘parade’ at the time of the battle, with three hundred thousand men tearing at each other’s throats for five or six hours and leaving fifty thousand dead and wounded on the field,” commented Raynor, who was well up in history.

Then they drove over the road built by Napoleon fifteen years before the battle.

“Might have been a good cavalry road, but it sure is a bone-shaker in this rig,” remarked Jack, and his companion agreed with him. They were much interested in the farm house of Hougomont, or rather its shell-battered ruins. This was the hottest point of the battle. The French assaulted it for hours, but did not succeed in taking it.

The family, who own the house, make a good living selling souvenirs to visitors.

“I’ve been told,” said Jack, with a smile, “that every fall they plant little bullets and souvenirs. The winter snow and spring rains make the crop ready to be plowed up.”

“Profitable farming,” laughed Raynor. However, the boys bought a grape shot and what purported to be an insignia from an artilleryman’s cap.

“It must have been a great battle,” said Raynor as they paid off their hack bill, the size of which made them raise their eyebrows.

“Yes, and the Belgians are still able to charge,” remarked Jack dryly.

In the railroad carriage on the way back a self-assertive Englishman was holding forth on what a great victory Wellington had achieved. “Which,” he added, turning to the boys, “was all the more creditable because he fought with raw recruits. Most of our seasoned soldiers were in your country at the time.”

“And most of them are planted there yet,” remarked Raynor.

The Englishman glared at him; but Jack smoothed things over and everything was amiable till Raynor again disrupted international peace.

“Deuced funny clothes those beggars wear,” remarked the son of Britain, gazing out at a wooden-shoed, baggy-breeched peasant.

“Oh, I don’t know. Not so much funnier than an Englishman’s,” said the American lad; after which there ensued a silence lasting till the train rolled into Brussels.

CHAPTER XX

HOMEWARD BOUND

The boys thought they had never seen so many vari-colored uniforms as were on parade in Brussels. They passed a fresh one every minute.

“I guess every soldier designs his own,” said Raynor.

“Well, some of them certainly look it,” agreed Jack as a dapper little man with a bottle green uniform with yellow stripes and facings and a cap without a peak swung by.

They went to the Church of St. Gudule, an old Gothic structure on the top of a hill, which Jack wished to see. Raynor came along for company.

“I’ve seen enough ruins,” he declared.

“Well, this will be the last one,” promised Jack.

In the church they found many people at prayer, especially in front of an altar on which were hung models of arms, legs and every portion of the human anatomy, as a reminder to the saint of what part of the body needs help.

“There’s Adam and Eve,” exclaimed Raynor in low tones, motioning to the figures of the father and mother of the race carved under a fine pulpit. Some American tourists were admiring these figures at the same time as the boys.

“Oh, look!” cried one of the lady tourists. “Wasn’t that sculptor a mean thing?”

“Why?” asked her companion innocently.

“Just look! He’s put all the lions and tigers around Adam and given poor Eve nothing but peacocks, monkeys and parrots. It’s a shame!”

The boys had dinner at a side-walk café. They found it very amusing to watch the various types of Belgians who went strolling by, enjoying the evening air. More uniforms than ever seemed to be out. To their surprise the bill for their meal was moderate, although the café declared that it “Catered to the King.”

“Well, if this is all he pays for his meals I wonder what he does with the rest of his money,” was Raynor’s comment.

After dinner the boys went out to the “Kirmess,” which lasts six weeks each summer.

“Like a cheap Coney Island,” was their verdict as, not much impressed, they sought a theater. Here they found that they might as well have saved their money – almost their last – for nearly every act they saw was American.

Early the next day they had to return to Antwerp, tired out but happy from sight-seeing and conscious of exceedingly light pockets.

“Anyhow, we’ve had our money’s worth,” declared Jack.

“Yes; both in adventure and sight-seeing,” added Raynor, as they returned to the ship.

They found a warm invitation from the La Farge family awaiting them; but had to decline it, with sincere regrets, for there were minor repairs to be made on the wireless and, besides, Raynor was on duty in the fire room.

The next day the Ajax was ready for sea. She was to sail “in ballast,” that is, without cargo. Jack thought her uglier than ever as she lay at the dock with steam up, as a white plume from her scape pipe testified, and with big patches of rust on her black sides; for the work of repairing these ugly patches would not be done till a few days before she arrived in New York.

Now that she was so high out of the water, the “tanker” looked like a big black cigar with a miniature turret on either end.

“She’ll roll like a bottle going over,” the crew prophesied; a prophesy, by the way, which was to be fulfilled.

But Jack forgot all this when at last the orders to sail came from the agent’s office and, with a roaring of the whistle, the “tanker” started on the voyage home.

Raynor came up to Jack as he stood gazing down at the puffing tugs which were helping the marine monster clear.

“Glad to be going home, Jack?” he asked.

“What a question! Glad? I should say so! Of course I love my work and all that, but after all there’s no place like home, you know.”

“That’s so,” assented Raynor, “although I haven’t much of a home. Both my parents died when I was a kid, and except for a sister who lives way up New York state, I haven’t a relative in the world that I know of.”

“I am almost as badly off,” confessed Jack, and he went on to tell Raynor about his home life.

“What a jolly way to live,” cried the young engineer, “on a flower-garden schooner! That’s the greatest ever!”

“I didn’t think so all the time, I can assure you,” said Jack with a laugh, “but I guess the wireless I rigged up there made me think of this way of life.”

The ship was in the stream by this time and it was Raynor’s turn on watch. As he dived below, he took occasion to turn and grin at Jack.

“We ought to make a good run home,” said he.

“How is that?” asked Jack innocently.

“Oh, maybe a certain young lady has hold of the tow rope,” and, before Jack could reply, he had dived below.

The Ajax made the run through the Channel and out on to the broad Atlantic without incident. Coming through the Channel, they encountered fog and some bad weather, but on the whole the skipper was pleased with the conditions and the ship’s behavior.

They had been two days on the ocean and a fairly high sea was running one night, when Jack, who was seated in the wireless room, where he had been exchanging information and wireless small-talk with half a dozen other operators, noticed a sudden bustle on the deck outside.

A grimy fireman had run forward from the fire-room companionway and then the captain had hastened aft. He went to the door and looked out. He was just in time to see several men carrying up a limp form from the engine-room and taking it into the captain’s cabin.

“An accident!” exclaimed the boy. “Somebody hurt! I wonder who it can be?”

He hailed a passing fireman who was coming off watch and going forward.

“What has happened below?” he asked.

“An accident. Someone hurt.”

“Do you know who it is?”

The fireman shook his head.

“I was just coming off watch and didn’t stop to inquire.”

He made off and then Jack saw the captain hasten past and come hurrying back with his surgical case. Jack would have asked him, if he had dared. As it was, he buttonholed another grimy stoker on his way to the forecastle and put his question again.

“Sure I know,” was the reply, “one of the engineers hurt.”

“Badly?”

“I dunno.”

“Who was it?”

“The third. Name’s Raynor, I guess.” And the man hurried on, leaving Jack standing there aghast.

CHAPTER XXI

SURGERY BY WIRELESS

While he still stood there, the captain emerged from his cabin and, to Jack’s surprise, came up to him.

“Know anything about surgery, Ready?” he asked.

“Why, no, sir. I heard there had been an accident. My friend Raynor. Is he badly injured, sir?”

The question was put with painful eagerness.

“Not necessarily, my lad. His arm was crushed in a shaft while he was oiling it. The deuce of it is, we’ve no doctor on board and I don’t know how to care for it. I may have to amputate it. I did that once on a sailing ship; and in that case, I’ll need assistants. That is why I asked you if you knew anything of surgery.”

“You’ll have to amputate it? Oh, sir! Poor Raynor!”

“I don’t want to do it if I can help it, but I don’t want to run the risk of blood poisoning. If only we had a doctor! It would go to my heart to deprive the boy of an arm, but what am I to do?”

Never had the captain seemed so human, so sympathetic to the young wireless man. He looked genuinely distressed.

“They ought to compel every ship to carry a doctor,” he said. “Accidents are always happening, and – strike my topsails! What’s the matter with the boy?”

For Jack’s eyes had suddenly begun to dance. He gave a sudden caper and snapped his fingers.

“I’ve got it, sir! I’ve got it!” he cried.

“What, in the name of Neptune? St. Vitus’s dance?”

“No, sir. A doctor. I can get you a doctor, sir.”

“Have you suddenly gone mad?” demanded the captain. “We’re a thousand miles out at sea.”

“I can get one by wireless, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the big liners carry doctors, sir. I was in communication with one only a few minutes ago. The Parisian of the Ocean Line.”

“Where is she?”

“About three hundred miles to the west of us on the Atlantic track, sir.”

“Three hundred miles away! Then how can we get a doctor from her?”

“Very simply, sir, I think, as you say it may not be necessary to amputate. Have Raynor brought in here and laid on my cot. I’ll raise the Parisian and get her doctor on the wire. Then I can flash a full description of the case and the doctor can flash back to us, through the Parisian’s operator, full directions how to proceed!”

“Jove, boy! You have got a head on your shoulders, after all. It sounds extraordinary, but why shouldn’t it be done?”

“It is worth trying, anyhow, sir,” said Jack, his face radiant at the idea that he might be the means of saving his poor chum’s arm. The captain hastened off to give the necessary orders, while Jack raised the Parisian once more.

In crisp, flashing sentences he sent, volleying through the air, an explanation of the case. By the time poor Raynor, white and unconscious, was carried to the bunk and laid out there, while the open-eyed sailors looked on, the Parisian’s doctor was standing by the side of the liner’s operator listening gravely to the symptoms of the case as they came pulsing through space.

The captain, with bandages, instruments, antiseptics and so forth, sat by Raynor’s side, anxiously awaiting Jack’s first bulletin.

“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than once as Jack sat alert, waiting for the first word from the doctor who was to treat a surgical case across three hundred miles of ocean.

The silence was tense and taut, and broken only by the heavy breathing of the injured engineer.

“What is the man doing?” said the captain impatiently at length.

“It takes even shore doctors time to give a correct diagnosis in some cases, sir,” ventured Jack gravely. “I suppose he is considering the conditions.”

“Absent treatment at three hundred miles,” muttered the captain. “Ready, I begin to believe that this is a crack-brained bit of business, after all.”

“Wait a minute,” warned Jack, holding up his hand to command attention, “here is something coming now!”

His pencil flew over the pad and then stopped while he flashed back:

“Thanks, that’s all for now. I’ll cut in again when we are ready for the next step.”

He turned to the captain and read slowly from his pad the doctor’s directions for treating the injury.

“He says that, from your description, there are no bones broken. The arm is merely crushed,” said the boy; and then, bit by bit, he read off the far-distant surgeon’s directions for treating the injured member. As he read, the captain and his assistant amateur surgeons plied dressings and antiseptics with diligent care.

At last the doctor of the Parisian said that he had no more advice to give that night, but flashed a prescription for a soothing draught to be compounded from the ship’s medicine chest.

By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully without any symptoms of fever, and Jack cut off communication with the distant liner after promising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”

CHAPTER XXII

“YOU SAVED MY ARM.”

It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured arm in a sling, sat on the edge of Jack’s bunk. They had passed out of range of the Parisian, but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the crushed arm was getting along well, and the “wireless doctor” had left instructions for the treatment of the case as it progressed.

“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for me, all right, with those Hertzian waves of yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I feel about it. But how in the world did you ever come to think of such a stunt?”

“I can’t claim that it was very original,” was Jack’s rejoinder; “in fact, it has been done two or three times before on freight ships that carry no doctors.”

“Tell us about it,” urged the invalid.

“Well,” was the answer, “one case I heard about occurred on board the S. S. Parismina, while she was crossing the Gulf of Mexico. A sudden call came to her from a small island out of the path of regular ships called Suma. A small colony lived there like so many Robinson Crusoes, mining phosphates.

“A tramp steamer happened along once in a while, and they could sail to the mainland, but those were their only links with civilization. To carry the phosphates from the mines to the coast, they had a narrow gauge railway. One day this railway cut up didoes; a train ran away and crushed a workman’s foot.

“Luckily, the island had a wireless station with a powerful equipment. There was no doctor and the man was so badly injured that it was feared he would die before they could get one. Well, what did the bright young wireless man do but get busy and start sending out calls broadcast for a doctor.

“At last the Parismina picked up his message, and Dr. C. S. Carter of the ship volunteered his services. The Parismina was then just two hundred miles away from the island. The doctor transferred his office to the liner’s wireless room and took the patient’s pulse and temperature, via the air line. Then he told them just how to prepare a strong antiseptic and how to fix up the broken ligaments.

“The wireless treatment was kept up till the Parismina was four hundred and twenty miles away, when the doctor was able to dismiss the case.”

“Some class to that,” said Raynor admiringly. “Do you know any more like that?”

“Yes, there is one other I can recall, so you see that I can’t claim the credit for any originality in the idea.”

“Tell us about that other one,” urged Raynor.

Jack paused a moment to adjust his instruments and send a message to another ship, giving their position and the weather. Then he shut off the connection and turned to his chum.

“This other one, as you call it, occurred on the freighter Herman Frasch, while she was well out at sea. Captain McGray of the ship was seized with a bad attack of ptomaine poisoning. He grew worse, although they did all they could for him with the help of the ship’s medicine chest and the book of directions that goes with it.

“The ship was out in the Atlantic off the Florida coast. The captain suddenly thought of a plan by which his case might be treated intelligently. He knew there was a government station at Dry Tortugas, Florida, one hundred miles off. He ordered a despatch sent there.

“As it so chanced, the despatch was not picked up by the government station, but by the operator of the Ward Liner Merida, which was just leaving Progresso, Yucatan.

“‘Doc!’ he exclaimed, rushing into the cabin of the Merida’s doctor, ‘there’s a man awful sick with ptomaine poisoning.’

“The doctor lost no time in grabbing up his medicine case.

“‘Where is he, my man? What stateroom?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to lose any time on such a case.’

“‘Well, he’s about eight hundred miles to the west of us, Doc,’ said the operator dryly, ‘but here is the diagnosis,’ and he handed the doctor a long aerogram.

“The doctor whistled.

“‘Pretty bad,’ said he, ‘temperature 104, nausea, rash on face and neck.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Give me an aerogram blank quickly.’

“He wrote out a prescription and a few minutes later it was being flashed across the sea to the Frasch. The medicine was prepared, and not long after the wireless reported that the captain was ‘Resting easily.’

“The following morning the captain’s temperature was sent and he was reported ‘a little better.’ The prescription was changed and the captain improved rapidly. By this time a number of other ships had picked up the messages, and the stricken skipper might have had a consultation of physicians if his case had demanded it.

“So you see I did nothing very wonderful,” concluded Jack with a smile, turning once more to his key.