Buch lesen: «The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht», Seite 8

CHAPTER XXI – WORK FOR ALL

The skipper looked rather queerly at the two excited girls, but he went below with them without further objection. In fact, Skipper Pandrick was a man of very few words; he proved this when Nell opened the stateroom door and he saw the smoke swirling about the apartment.

“I reckon you girls ain’t been smoking in here,” he said grimly. “Then I reckon that smoke comes from below.”

“Is the ship really on fire?” gasped Jessie.

“Something’s afire, sure as you’re a foot high,” said the skipper vigorously, and stormed out of the stateroom and out of the cabin.

There was a hatch in the main deck amidships. He called two of the men and had it raised. The passengers as yet had no idea that anything was wrong, for Jessie and Nell kept away from them.

But they watched what the skipper did. He had brought an electric pocket torch from below and he flashed this before him as he descended the iron ladder into the hold. Almost at once, however, a whiff of smoke rose through the open hatchway.

“Glory be, Tom!” said one sailor to his mate. “What do you make of that?”

“You can’t make nothing of smoke, but smoke,” returned the other man. “It’s just as useless as a pig’s squeal is to the butcher.”

But Jessie believed that the incident called for no humor. If there was a fire below —

“Hi, you boys!” came the muffled voice of Skipper Pandrick from below, “couple on the pump-line and send the nozzle end below. There’s something here, sure enough.”

As he said this another balloon of smoke floated up through the open hatch. It was seen from the station of the passengers. Darry jumped up and ran to the hatchway.

“What’s he doing? Smoking down there?” he demanded.

“It’s sure a bad cigar, boss, if he’s smoking it,” said one of the men, grinning.

“Oh, Darry!” gasped Jessie. “The yacht is on fire!”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the young man, rather impolitely it must be confessed.

He started to descend into the hold. The skipper’s voice rose out of it:

“Get away from there! This ain’t any place for you, Mr. Darry. Hustle that pipe-line.”

“Is it serious, Skipper?” demanded the young collegian, anxiously.

“I don’t know how bad it is yet. Tell the helmsman to head nor’east. Maybe we’d better make for some anchorage, after all.”

Darry ran to the wheelhouse. The other passengers began to get excited. Nell ran to her father and told him what she had first discovered.

“Well, having discovered the fire in time, undoubtedly they will be able to put it out,” said Dr. Stanley, comfortingly.

But this did not prove to be easy. Skipper Pandrick had to come up after a while for a breath of cool air and to remove his oilskins. Darry and Burd got into overalls and helped in handling the hose. The steam needed to work the pump, however, brought the engines down to a very slow movement. The Marigold scarcely kept her headway.

The fire, which had undoubtedly been smouldering a long time, was obstinate. The water the skipper and his helpers poured upon it raised the level of water in the bilge until Darry declared he feared the yacht would be water-logged.

Meanwhile the wind grew in savageness. Instead of being gusty, it blew more and more violently out of the northeast. When the helmsman tried to head into it, under the skipper’s relayed instructions by Darry, the lack of steam kept the old Marigold marking time instead of forging ahead.

“If we have to put the steam to the pump to clear the bilge after this,” grumbled the pessimistic Burd, “we’ll never reach any shelter. Might as well run for the Bermudas.”

“Won’t that be fine!” cried Amy. “I have always wanted to go to the Bermudas, and we’ve never gone.”

“Fine girl, you,” retorted Burd. “You don’t know when you are in danger.”

“Fire’s out!” announced Amy. “The skipper says so. And I am not afraid of a capful of wind.”

There was more danger, however, than the girls imagined. The water that had been poured into the yacht’s hold did not make her any more seaworthy. It was necessary to start the pump to try to clear the hold.

The clapperty-clap; clapperty-clap! of the pump and the water swishing across the deck to be vomited out of the hawse holes was nothing to add to the passengers’ feelings of confidence. Besides, the water came very clear, and at its appearance the skipper looked doleful.

“What’s the matter, Skipper?” asked Darry, seeing quickly that something was still troubling the old man.

“Why, Mr. Darry, that don’t look good to me, and that’s a fact,” the sailing master said.

“Why not? The pump is clearing her fast.”

“Is it?” grumbled Pandrick, shaking his head.

“Of course it is!” exclaimed Darry, with some exasperation. “Don’t be an Old Man of the Sea.”

“That’s exactly what I am, Mr. Darry,” said the skipper. “I’m so old a hand at sea that I’m always looking for trouble. I confess it. And I see trouble – and work for all hands – right here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jessie, who chanced to be by. “The pump works all right just as Darry says, doesn’t it?”

“But, by gorry!” ejaculated the skipper, “it looks as though we were just pumping the whole Atlantic through her seams.”

“Goodness! What do you mean?” Jessie demanded.

“You think she is leaking?” asked Darry, in some trouble.

“Bilge ain’t clean water like that,” answered Pandrick. “That’s as clear as the sea itself. Mind you! I don’t say she leaks more’n enough to keep her sweet. But if those pumps don’t suck purt’ soon, I shall have my suspicions.”

“Darry!” ejaculated Jessie, “your yacht is falling apart. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t believe it,” muttered Darry.

He had, however, to admit it after a time. It seemed as though the Marigold were suffering one misfortune after another. The fire, which might have been very serious, was extinguished; but the yacht lay deep in the troubled sea, rolling heavily, and the water pumped through the pipe was plainly seeping in through the seams of her hull.

“Goodness me! shall we have to take to the boat and the life raft?” demanded Amy.

It was scarcely possible to joke much about the situation. Even Amy Drew’s “famous line of light conversation” could not keep up their spirits.

The wind continued to blow harder and harder. The yacht could no longer head into it. Dr. Stanley looked grave. Nell, first frightened by her discovery of the fire in the hold, was now in tears.

To add to the seriousness of the situation, there was not another vessel in sight.

CHAPTER XXII – A RADIO CALL THAT FAILED

“Of course,” Amy said composedly, “if worse comes to worst, we can send the news by radio that the yacht is sinking and bring to our rescue somebody – somebody – ”

“Yes, we can!” exclaimed Burd Alling. “A revenue cutter, I suppose? Don’t you suppose the United States Government has anything better to do than to look out for people who don’t know enough to look out for themselves?”

“That seems to be the Government’s mission a good deal of the time,” replied Dr. Stanley, with a smile. “But you don’t think it will be necessary to call for help, do you, Darrington?” he asked the sober-looking owner of the yacht.

“Well, the fire’s out, that’s sure – ”

“You bet it is!” growled Burd. “It had to be out, there’s so much water in the hold.”

“But we are not sinking!” cried Amy.

“Lucky we’re not,” said Burd. “The radio doesn’t work.”

“Why, how you talk,” Nell said admonishingly. “You would scare us if we did not know you so well, Burd.”

“You don’t know the half of it!” exclaimed the young fellow. “Fuel is getting low, too. Skipper wants us to work the pump by hand. That means Darry and me to ‘man the pumps.’”

“And we can help,” said Jessie, cheerfully. “If the skipper thinks he needs to make more steam for the engines, why can’t we all take turns at the pump?”

“Sounds like a real shipwreck story,” her chum observed, but doubtfully.

“It will cause a mutiny,” declared Burd. “I didn’t ship on the Marigold to work like Old Bowser on the treadmill. And that is about how I feel.”

“You can get out and walk if you don’t like it,” Darry reminded him.

“And I suppose you think I wouldn’t. For two cents – ”

Just then the yacht pitched sharply and Burd almost lost his footing. The waves were really boisterous and occasionally a squall of rain swooped down and, with the spray, wet the entire deck and those upon it.

Jessie was not greatly afraid of the elements or of what they could do to the yacht. But she was made anxious by the repetition of the statement that the radio was out of order. Originally the Marigold had had a small wireless plant, with storage batteries. Signals by Morse could be exchanged with other ships and with stations ashore within a limited distance.

But when Darry had bought the radio receiving set he had disconnected the broadcasting machine and linked up the regenerative circuit with the stationary batteries. As he had explained to Jessie, both systems could not be used at once.

They had found that neither the receiving set nor the old wireless set worked well. It looked as though the boys had overlooked something in rigging the new set and the radio girls quite realized that in this emergency a general and perhaps a thorough overhauling of the wires and connections would be necessary to discover just where the fault lay.

Jessie called Amy, and they went up into the little wireless room behind the wheelhouse where everything about the plant but the batteries were in place. This was a very different outfit from that in the great station at the old lighthouse on Station Island, which they had visited several days before.

“If we only knew as much as that operator does about wireless,” sighed Jessie to her chum, “there might be some hope of our untangling all this and finding out the trouble.”

“He said he had been five years at it and didn’t know so very much,” Amy reminded her dryly.

“Oh, there will always be something new to learn about radio, of course,” her chum agreed. “But if we had his training in the fundamentals of radio, we would be equipped to handle such a mess as this. To tell you the truth, Amy, I think these two boys have made a cat’s cradle of this thing.”

“And Darry spent more than a year aboard a destroyer and was trained to ‘listen in’ for submarines and all that!”

“An entirely different thing from knowing how to rig wireless,” commented Jessie, getting down on her knees to look under the shelf to which the posts were screwed. “Oh, dear!” she added, as she bumped her head. “I wish this boat wouldn’t pitch so.”

“So say we all of us. What can I do, Jess?”

“Not a thing – for a moment. Let me see: The general rules of radio are easily remembered. The incoming oscillations that have been intercepted by the antenna above the roof of the house are applied across the grid and filament of the detector tube – ”

“That’s this jigger here,” put in Amy, as Jessie struggled up again.

“Yes. That is the tube. Through the relay action of the tube, an amplified current flows through the plate circuit —here. Now,” added Jessie thoughtfully, “if we couple this plate circuit back – No! This is a simple circuit. It is like our old one, Amy. We can’t get much action out of this set. It is not like the new one we are putting in the bungalow.“

“Well, the thing is, can we use it?” Amy demanded. “Can you link the power, or whatever you call it, up with the sending paraphernalia and get an S O S over the water?”

“Goodness, Amy! Don’t talk as though you thought we were really in danger.”

“Humph! I see the Reverend, as Nell calls him, out there with his coat off, in his shirt-sleeves, taking a turn with Burd at the pumps. They have rigged it for man power and are saving steam for the engines.”

“Let me see!” cried Jessie, peering out of the clouded window too. “You’d never think he was a minister. Isn’t he nice?”

Amy began to laugh. “Are all ministers supposed to be such terrible people?”

“No-o,” admitted Jessie, going back to the radio set. “But good as they usually are, we have the very best minister at the Roselawn Church, of any.”

“Yep. So we must plan to save him if anything happens,” giggled Amy.

“Let’s open the switch and see if we can get anything,” her chum said reflectively, picking up the head harness.

“You mean hear if we can get anything,” corrected Amy.

“Never mind splitting hairs, my dear. Is that the switch? Yes. Now!”

She put on the rigging, but all she got out of the air, as she sadly confessed, were sounds like an angry cat spitting at a puppydog.

“It isn’t just static,” she told Amy. “You try it. There is something absolutely wrong with this thing. See! We don’t get a spark.”

“If we did we couldn’t read the letters.”

“I believe I could read some Morse if it came slowly enough,” said Jessie, nodding. “But it is sending, not receiving, I am thinking of, Amy Drew.”

Amy began to look more serious. Jessie was harping on a possibility she did not wish to admit was probable. She went out and, hunting up Darry, demanded to know just how bad he thought they were off, anyway.

“Well, Sis, there is no use making a wry face about it,” the collegian said. “But you see how hard the Reverend and Burd are working, and they can’t keep ahead of the water. The poor old Marigold really is leaking.”

“Is she going to sink? Can’t we get to land – somewhere? Can’t we go back to the island?”

“Shucks, Sis! You know we are miles from Station Island. We are off Montauk – or we were this morning. But we are heading out to sea now – sou’-sou’east. Can’t head into this gale. She pitches too much.”

“And – and isn’t there any help for us, Darry Drew?”

“We don’t need any help yet, do we?” he demanded pluckily. “She is making good weather of it – ”

Just then the yacht rolled so that he had to grab the rail with one hand and Amy with the other, and both of them were well shaken up.

“Woof!” gasped Darry, as they came out of the smother of spray.

“Oh!” exploded Amy. “I swallowed a pail of water that time. Ugh! How bitter the sea is. Now, Darry, I guess we’ll have to send out signals, sha’n’t we?”

“How can we? I’ve tried the old radio already. She is as dumb as the proverbial oyster with the lockjaw.”

“Jessie is going to fix it,” said Amy, with some confidence.

“Yes she is! She’s some smart girl, I admit,” her brother observed. “But I guess that is a job that will take an expert.”

“You just see!” cried Amy. “You think she can’t do anything because she’s a girl.”

“Bless you! Girls equal the men nowadays. I hold Jessie as little less than a wonder. But if a thing can’t be done – ”

“That is what you think because you tried it and failed.”

“Huh!”

“We radio girls will show you!” declared Amy, her head up and preparing to march back to her chum the next time the deck became steady.

But when she started so proudly the yacht rolled unexpectedly and Amy, screaming for help, went sliding along the deck to where Dr. Stanley and Burd were pumping away to clear the bilge. She was saturated – and much meeker in deportment – when Burd fished her out of the scuppers.

CHAPTER XXIII – ONLY HOPE

The condition of the Marigold was actually much more serious than the Roselawn girls at first supposed. Jessie and Amy were so busy in the radio house for a couple of hours and were so interested in what they were doing that they failed to observe that the hull of the yacht was slowly sinking.

Fortunately the wind decreased after a while; but by that time it was scarcely safe to head the yacht into the wind’s eye, as the skipper called it. She wallowed in the big seas in a most unpleasant way and it was fortunate indeed that all the passengers were good sailors.

Nell came and looked into the radio room once or twice; then she felt so bad that she went below to lie down. The doctor worked as hard as any man aboard. And his cheerfulness was always infectious.

The minister knew that they were in peril. He would have been glad to see a rescuing vessel heave into sight. But he gave no sign that he considered the situation at all uncertain or perilous in the least.

The afternoon was passing. Another night on the open sea without knowing if the yacht would weather the conditions, was a matter for grave consideration. The doctor and Darry conferred with Skipper Pandrick.

“’Tis hard to say,” the sailing master observed. “There is no knowing what may happen. If the yacht was not so water-logged we might get in under our own steam – ”

“But we can’t make steam enough!” cried Darry.

“Well, no, we don’t seem to,” admitted the skipper.

“And to what port would you sail?” asked Dr. Stanley.

“Well, now, there’s not any handy just now, I admit. If we head back for the land we may be thrown on our beam-ends, I will say. The waves are big ones, as you see.”

“You are not very encouraging, Skipper,” said the minister.

“I wouldn’t be raising any false hopes in your mind, sir,” said Pandrick.

“You’re a jolly old wet blanket, you are,” declared Darry to the sailing master. “What shall we do?”

“We’ll have to take what comes to us,” declared the skipper.

“You are a fatalist, Mr. Pandrick,” said the minister, and Darry was glad to hear him laugh cheerily.

“No, sir. I’m a Universalist,” declared the seaman. “And I’ve all the hope in the world that we’ll come out of this all right.”

“But can’t we do something to help ourselves?” demanded the exasperated Darry.

“Not much that I know of. Here’s hoping the wind goes down and we have calm weather and see the sun again.”

“Hope all you like,” growled the young fellow. “I am going to see if the girls aren’t able to bring something to pass with that radio.”

He found his sister and Jessie rearranging a part of the circuit on the set-board. They were very much in earnest. Thus far, however, they had been unable to get a clear signal out of the air, nor could they send one.

“If we could reach another vessel, or a shore station, and tell them where the yacht is and that she is leaking, we’d be all right, shouldn’t we, Darry?” Jessie asked earnestly.

“But I am not at all sure we need help,” he said, in doubt.

“We may need it!” exclaimed his sister.

“Why – yes, we may,” he admitted, though rather grudgingly.

“Then we want to get this fixed,” Jessie declared. “But there is something wrong here. Do you see this Darry? It seems to me that there must be a part missing. When you and Burd set this up are you sure you followed the instructions of the book in every particular?”

“Of course we did,” Darry said.

“Of course we didn’t!” exclaimed Burd’s voice from the doorway.

“What are you saying?” demanded his friend, promptly.

“What I know. Don’t you remember that you lost the instruction book overboard sometime there, when we were getting the bothersome thing fixed?”

“So I did,” confessed Darry. “But, say! she was all right then.”

“She hasn’t ever been all right,” accused his chum, “and you know it.”

“We sent code signals by the old machine, all right.”

“But we’ve never been able to since we linked it up with this receiving set, and you know it,” said Burd.

“It sounds to me,” said Amy, “as though neither one of you boys knew so awfully much about it.”

“I know one thing,” said Jessie, with determination. “All the parts are not here. These connections are not like any I ever saw before. It is a mystery to me – ”

“Hold on!” exclaimed Darry Drew suddenly. “What did we do with all those little cardboard boxes and paper tubes the parts came in? Couldn’t be we overlooked anything, Burd?”

“Don’t try to hang it on me!” exclaimed his chum. “I never claimed to know a thing about radio. You were the Big Noise when we put the contraption together.”

“Aw, you! Where did we put the things left over?”

“There he goes!” exclaimed the confirmed joker. “He’s like the fellow who took the automobile apart to fix it and had a bushel of parts left over when he was done. He doesn’t know – ”

“Beat it out of here,” roared Darry, “and find that box we put the stuff into. You know.”

Dr. Stanley came up to the radio room while Burd was searching for the rubbish box. The clergyman spoke cheerfully, but he looked very grave.

“Is there any likelihood of our being able to send out a call for assistance, Jessie?” he asked, quietly.

“I don’t see how we can, Doctor Stanley, until we fix this radio set. We can’t get any spark. We have to be able to get a spark to send a message. The message will be stumbling enough, I am afraid, even if we fix the thing, for none of us understands Morse very well. Unless Darry – ”

“Don’t look to me for help,” declared the collegian. “I haven’t sent a message since we put the yacht in commission. We had a fellow aboard here until the other day who knew something about wireless and he was the operator. Not me.”

“Amy and I have a code book with the alphabet in it,” said Jessie slowly. “I think if somebody read the dots and dashes to me I could send a short message. But there is something wrong with this circuit.”

Just then Burd Alling came back. He brought with him a big corrugated cardboard container. In that the various parts of the radio outfit had been packed.

“What do you think about it?” he asked. “There is something here that I never saw before. See this jigamarig, Jess? Think it belongs on the contraption?”

“Oh!” cried Jessie, eagerly, pouncing on the small object that Burd held out to her. “I know what that is.”

“Then you beat me. I don’t,” declared Burd.

“Let’s see what else there is,” said Darry, diving into the box. “I left you to get out the parts, Burd; you know I did.”

“Oh, splash!” exclaimed his friend. “We might as well admit that we don’t know as much about radio as these girls. They leave us lashed to the post.”

But Jessie and Amy did not even feel what at another time Amy would have called “augmented ego.” The occasion was too serious.

The day was passing into evening, and a very solemn evening it was. The wind whined through the strands of the wire rigging. The waves knocked the yacht about. The passengers all felt weary and forlorn.

The two girl chums felt the situation less acutely than anybody else, perhaps, because they were so busy. That radio had to be repaired. That is what Jessie told Amy, and Amy agreed. The safety of the whole yacht’s company seemed dependent upon what the two radio girls could do.

“And we must not fall down on it, Jess,” Amy said vigorously. “How goes it now?”

“This thing that Burd found goes right in here. We have got to reset a good part of the circuit to do it. I don’t see how the boys could have made such a mistake.”

“Proves what I have always maintained,” declared Amy Drew. “We girls are smarter than those boys, even if the said boys do go to college. Bah! What is college, anyway?”

“Just a prison,” said Burd sepulchrally from the doorway.

“Close that door!” exclaimed Jessie. “Don’t let that spray drift in here.”

“Yes. Do go away, Burd, and see if the yacht is sinking any more. Don’t bother us,” commanded Amy.

The men were keeping the pumps at work, but it was an anxious time. It was long dark and the lamps were lighted when Jessie pronounced the set complete. Darry and Burd came in again and asked what they could do?

“Root for us. Nothing more,” said Amy. “Jessie has fixed this thing and she is going to have the honor of sending the message – if a message can be sent.“

“Well,” remarked Burd Alling, “I guess it is up to you girls to save the situation. I have just found out that there isn’t as much provender as I was given reason to believe when we started. We ought to be in Boston right now. And see where we are!”

“That is exactly what we can’t see,” said Jessie. “But we must know. Did you get the latitude and longitude from the skipper, Darry?”

“Yes. Here it is, approximately. He got a chance to shoot the sun this noon.”

“The cruel thing!” gibed his sister. “But anyway, I hope he has got the situation near enough so some vessel can find us.”

“Let us see, first, if we can send a message intelligibly,” said Jessie, putting on the head harness, and speaking seriously. “It will be awful, perhaps, if we can’t. I know that the yacht is almost unmanageable.”

“You’ve said something,” returned Burd. “The fuel is low, as well as the supplies in the galley. We haven’t got much left – ”

“But hope,” said Jessie, softly.