CHAPTER I
A SPARK PUTS THREE BOYS AND A BOAT ON THE JUMP
“Ho, ho, ho – hum!” grumbled Hank Butts, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn. “This may be what Mr. Seaton calls a vacation on full pay, but I’d rather work.”
“It is fearfully dull, loafing around, in this fashion, on a lonely island, yet in plain sight of the sea that we long to rove over,” nodded Captain Tom Halstead of the motor yacht “Restless.”
“Yet Hank just put us in mind of the fact that we’re getting paid for our time,” laughed Joe Dawson, the least restless of the trio of young Motor Boat Club boys.
“Oh it’s all right on the pay end,” agreed Hank, readily. “But just think of a young fellow, full of life and hope, with a dozen ambitions and a hustling nature, taking up with a job of this kind!”
“What kind of job?” inquired Captain Tom.
“The job of being bored,” answered Butts, solemnly. “I could have had that kind of job back on Long Island.”
“Without the pay,” amended Joe Dawson, with another quiet smile.
“But ten days of being bored does grow rather wearisome, even with the pay for a solace,” agreed Tom Halstead.
Ting-ling-ling! The soft jangling of a bell from one of the rooms of the seashore bungalow, on the porch of which the boys sat, broke in on them.
“Hurrah, Joe! Hustle and get that message,” begged Hank, almost sitting up straight in the porch chair, with a comical pretense of excitement. “It’s sure to be from Mr. Seaton this time.”
“Likely,” grinned Joe, as he rose and crossed the porch in leisurely fashion. The jangling of the bell continued. The bell was a rather clumsy, yet sufficing device that young Dawson had attached to the wireless telegraph apparatus.
For, though this bungalow on a little island southwest of Beaufort, North Carolina, had an appearance of being wholly out of the world, yet the absent owner, Mr. Powell Seaton, had contrived to put his place very much “in the world” by installing wireless telegraphy at the bungalow. On the premises was operated a complete electrical plant that furnished energy enough to send messages for hundreds of miles along the coast.
For Joe, the mechanical genius of the Motor Boat Club, had always had a passion for telegraphy. Of late he had gone in in earnest for the wireless kind, and had rapidly mastered its most essential details.
The bell told when electrical waves were rushing through the air at marvelous speed, though it did not distinguish between any general wave and the special call for this bungalow station, which was by the letters “CBA.”
When Joe Dawson went into the room under the tall aerials that hung from the mast, he expected to listen only to some message not in the least intended for this station.
Seating himself by the relay, with its Morse register close at hand, Joe Dawson picked up and adjusted the head-band with its pair of watch-case receivers. He then hastily picked up a pencil, shoved a pad of paper close under his hand and listened.
All this he did with a dull, listless air. He had not the slightest forewarning of the great jolt that was soon to come to himself and his comrades out of the atmosphere.
The call, whatever it was, had ended. Yet, after a pause of a few seconds, it began to sound again. Joe’s listless air vanished as the new set of dots and dashes came in, clamoring in clicking haste against his ear drums.
“To Every Wireless Station – Urgent!” ran the first few words. Joe’s nimble fingers pushed his pencil, recording letter after letter until these words were down. Then, dropping his pencil for the sending key, young Dawson transmitted a crashing electric impulse into the air, flashing through space over hundreds of miles the station signal, “CBA.”
“Have you a fast, seaworthy boat within immediate call?” came back out of the invisible distance over the ocean.
“A twenty-six-mile sea-going motor boat right at the pier here,” Joe flashed back, again adding his signature, “CBA.”
“Good!” came back the answer. “Then listen hard – act quick – life at stake!”
Joe Dawson not only listened. His thoughts flew with the dots and dashes of the wireless message; his right hand rushed the pencil in recording all of that wonderful message as it came to him. It was tragedy that Dawson wrote down at the dictation of this impatient operator far out on the Atlantic highways. Almost in the midst of it came a feverish break-in from land, and another hand was playing in the great game of life and death, fame and dishonor, riches and intrigue. All was being unfolded by means of the unseen, far-reaching wireless telegraph.
As Joe listened, wrote, and occasionally broke in to send a few words, the dew of cold perspiration stood out on his brow. His fingers trembled. With a great effort of the will this motor boat boy steadied his nerves and muscles in order to see through to the end this mysterious thing coming out of space.
While this was going on, Joe Dawson did not call out to either of his comrades. With an instinct that worked as fast as the wireless messages themselves, young Dawson chose to put off calling the other motor boat boys until he had the whole startling tale to tell them – until he had in complete form the coming orders that would send all three of them and the “Restless” on a tireless sea-chase.
