CHAPTER XI

DRIFTING

There is, perhaps, no greater strain to be endured than waiting--waiting for some certain time to come, waiting for an event to pass, waiting for a letter or a message. And when this nervous strain is multiplied several thousand times, and when the waiting has to do with perhaps the very continuation of life itself, it becomes at last almost unendurable.

That is what Ned, Bob, and Jerry, and their thousands of comrades on board the _Sherman_, found as they waited for some reply to come to the wireless calls. As has been related, the dynamo that sent out the impulses, controlled by the operators’ keys, had been patched up so that it revolved. Steam was generated for a small engine.

“But how long she’ll work no one knows,” confided an operator to Jerry, coming off duty after several anxious hours in the little deck house. “The repairs are only temporary, the engineer tells me, and she may break down again any minute.”

“But you’ll keep on sending out calls as long as you can, won’t you?” asked Ned.

“Oh, sure,” was the answer.

“How do you account for not getting replies to the wireless calls? You’re sending them out broadcast, aren’t you?”

“That’s it. They can be picked up by any number of shore stations, to say nothing of ships at sea.”

“Then why aren’t our calls picked up and answered?” Bob queried.

“Well, there are two reasons that may possibly explain it,” answered the operator. “One is that we’re having a great deal of trouble with static. That’s the electricity that’s always more or less in the air, you know. It interferes with our wireless waves.”

“I thought some fellow got up a patent apparatus to overcome that trouble,” ventured Ned.

“He claimed to,” answered the operator; “but I haven’t yet seen any device that will turn the trick. And believe me, when Old Man Static gets in his fine work you might as well close your switch, take off your headpiece, and read a book. When the static gets ready to quiet down and stop cutting up high jinks it’ll do it, and not before.

“Of course I don’t mean to say,” he went on, “that it’s as bad as when wireless was first invented. A good deal of the trouble has been overcome. But to-day it’s very bad.

“Then, too, our apparatus isn’t working right. She got a jolt when that midnight explosion took place, and the operator who was on duty then slammed in a high-powered current and burned out some of the fuses. Since then it’s been on the floo, and, though we’ve been pounding the keys for all we’re worth, we don’t know whether our messages are getting anywhere or not. Evidently they aren’t, for we haven’t had any replies, and in the natural course of things we would, as we ought to be in the track of many ships going and coming.”

“Just how far do you think the wireless message calls you’ve sent out have gone?” asked Ned.

“Hard to tell,” was the answer. “They may shoot off for a thousand miles--our range is fully that when the machinery is in good condition--and again they may not get a mile away from the ship. I’m inclined to think, though, that the messages leave here all right, but are all balled up by static, or else by other messages jamming them, after they get up in the air.

“You know,” the operator went on, “we work according to different wave lengths. That is, the electrical impulses we send out are so many meters in length. Now then, if we send out messages of one certain wave length, and some other ship, within the prescribed distance, sends out messages at the same time, tuned as ours are, but of a more powerful wave length, ours get all jammed to pieces, so to speak. And all the receiver hears is a jumble of dots and dashes in his earpiece. Naturally he tunes out of that clashing, and listens to what he can hear; to wave lengths that are just right.”

“So, as far as you can tell,” observed Jerry, “it’s just as if a man wrote a lot of telegrams, asking for help, and then, somehow, they got tossed into the waste-paper basket before any one who could give the help read them, is it?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” conceded the operator. “But there is one hope.”

“What’s that?” asked Bob.

“The static disturbance may clear off at any time, or some fellow listening in may catch our call and then send it to the proper place. If that’s done, help will be rushed to us. But I must admit there’s no telling when this will happen.”

“What can we do if we don’t get any reply?” asked Bob.

“Well, we’ll have to drift on until they can patch up the machinery, I suppose,” the operator replied.

“Can they do that?” Ned questioned.

“I believe they’re going to try,” was the answer. “Anything is better than just drifting around.”

“And yet some ship may sight us at any time,” ventured Bob.

“Yes, that’s true,” was the tired wireless man’s remark. “I’ve been torpedoed twice, and I know what it means to be drifting about waiting for the chance of being picked up. I had hoped I shouldn’t have to go through with it again, but it seems I may have to. Well, the boys are going to keep on trying, and I’ll do my share when I go on duty again.

“I don’t mind the sending off of messages so much,” he concluded, as he continued on his way to the cabin set apart for the use of himself and his companions. “It’s the strain of listening for a reply that gets on my nerves. You hear a click in the earpiece, and you think surely it’s coming. Then it turns out to be just Old Man Static getting in his fine work, or else a jumble of dots and dashes from no one knows where--out of the sky, you might say--and there you are. Four hours of that are enough to wear any one’s nerves to a thread.”

“You said it!” commented Jerry. “Well, good luck to you!”

Interest in the reëstablishment of the wireless apparatus, even though it was only temporarily repaired, and anxiety to know when some of the messages sent off into space would be answered kept every one on board the _Sherman_ keyed up to the highest pitch. They were all under a heavy strain.

But as hour after hour passed, and no good news came, faces that had taken on looks of hope began to lose them. The time came for the man who had talked to the Motor Boys to go back on duty.

“Well, here’s for another try,” he said, with a weary smile, as he entered the cabin.

Having nothing better to do, Ned, Bob, and Jerry remained as close as possible to the wireless room. They wanted to know, as soon as might be, if any help was on the way.

It was about an hour after George Hardy, the wireless man who had talked to the three friends, had gone on duty for his second shift since the repair of the apparatus, that he came out of the wireless room with a despairing look on his face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jerry quickly.

“It’s all up!” was the answer.

“All up! What do you mean?”

“Apparatus all burned out,” Hardy went on. “We tried to the limit of the power, and the whole business has gone bluey. Can’t get another spark out of her.”

“Whew!” whistled Ned, and the faces of Bob and Jerry, as well as those of others who heard the bad news, took on an added look of care and anxiety.

“But you can still listen in, can’t you?” asked Ned, after a pause. “Is the receiving apparatus damaged?”

“No, that’s still in good shape,” Hardy answered. “If, by any chance, some of our messages reached some station, and they can tell where to reply to us, and how, we may get an answer. We’re going to listen in from now on.”

“Well, let us hope that you hear something,” murmured Jerry.

“And all we can do is drift on,” said Ned drearily.

The day passed without anything happening. So many thoughts occupied the minds of the three Cresville boys that they almost forgot to speculate on the outcome of the information they had given their captain. They did not cease to wonder at times, though, as to who occupied the mysteriously guarded cabin, and they also tried to guess the reason for the peculiar actions of _le cochon_.

“Maybe he’s locked up there as a bomb-planter,” suggested Bob.

“It’s possible,” assented Ned.

“I wish Professor Snodgrass were here,” Bob went on.

“Why?” asked Jerry. “Do you think he could fix up the wireless, mend the broken boiler, or help us in any way?”

“Not exactly,” was the answer from the stout youth. “But he’s better fun than just standing about, waiting for something to happen.”

“Yes, I’d like to see him, too,” agreed Ned.

The night passed without incident, save that word went about the ship now and then that the engine-room force was working desperately to make repairs which would enable the transport to proceed, however lamely.

But when the sun rose, a red ball of fire in the morning, it saw the _Sherman_ still drifting.

“We’re in for some change of weather,” remarked a sailor in the hearing of the chums.

“A storm?” asked Jerry.

“Can’t say, but looks like it.”

And the disabled troopship kept on drifting--drifting--drifting.