Kitabı oku: «The Radio Boys at Ocean Point: or, The Message that Saved the Ship», sayfa 7
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.
The evening of the party arrived in due course, and the guests all arrived early, many of them curious and somewhat sceptical about hearing dance music by radio. Agnes and Amy had told them about the loud-speaking apparatus, and they were all prepared for something novel.
But it is safe to say that few of them were prepared for as pleasant an evening as this one turned out to be. Receiving conditions had never been better, and the boys had no trouble in picking up fox trots, waltzes, or any other style of dance music. Between the dances they got some more serious music that happened to be “in the air” from some other station than that sending out the dance music, and their entire apparatus worked like a charm all through the evening.
The radio boys did not spend all their time over the radio set, either. They found plenty of opportunity to dance and laugh with the many pretty girls who had been invited, and everybody concerned enjoyed the evening hugely. Mrs. Fennington had provided plenty of ice-cream, cake, and lemonade, articles which did not lack appreciation among the youthful company.
When the party finally broke up all who had been present expressed themselves as having had a wonderful evening.
“I think we just had a perfectly spiffy time,” said Agnes, somewhat slangily but with undoubted feeling. “I think I’ll be as crazy about radio as you boys are, pretty soon.”
“It’s about time,” commented Herb. “You never cared so much about it before, but now that you can dance to it, you think it’s fine.”
“Well, she’s right,” said Amy, coming to the defense of her sister. “What is there that’s better than dancing?”
“Oh, the world’s full of better things,” declared Herb. “But there’s no use my trying to tell you what they are, I suppose.”
“You can’t tell ’em anything,” chuckled Jimmy. “They won’t believe you if you do.”
“If we believed all the fairy stories Herb has told us, we’d have to be pretty silly,” said Agnes.
“Well, you’re both pretty, anyway,” said Joe gallantly.
“Thank you,” said Agnes. “That’s more than Herb would say in a hundred years.”
“I heard him saying that to one of the girls he was dancing with this evening,” said Bob slyly. “How about it, Herb?”
“Aw, you didn’t anything of the kind,” declared Herb, but he betrayed himself by blushing furiously.
“Poor old Herb,” said Joe. “He must be pretty hard hit. What do you think, Bob?”
“Looks that way to me,” answered Bob. “He sounded as though he meant it, anyway.”
“Well, so I did,” said Herb. “If she hadn’t been pretty, I shouldn’t have been dancing with her.”
“Gracious! how my young brother hates himself,” exclaimed Agnes.
“How can I hate myself, when all the girls fall for me so?” asked Herb brazenly.
“Oh, you’re a hopeless kid,” said Agnes, laughing. “Come, Amy, I’m going to bed,” and the two girls said good-night and left the room.
“I guess it’s about time we all turned in,” said Bob. “We’ve had a mighty fine evening, though, and I’m proud of the way our outfit showed up.”
The others felt the same way. They were just about to disperse when Mrs. Fennington entered the room.
“This evening has been so successful,” she said, “that I was wondering if we couldn’t give a concert in aid of the new sanitarium that is being built here. They are greatly in need of money to carry the project on, and I’m sure you would be doing a wonderful thing if you could help it along.”
The boys were for the project at once, and said so.
“But do you think people will pay to hear a radio concert?” asked Herbert.
“Of course they will!” exclaimed his mother. “They pay to hear every other kind of a concert, don’t they? And when they know it is to aid the new sanitarium they will be all the more anxious to come.”
“I’m sure we’ll do our share,” said Bob. “We’ll be glad to give the concert, and if people shouldn’t come to it, that wouldn’t be our fault.”
“That will be excellent then,” said Mrs. Fennington. “I’ll speak to some of the other ladies about it, and we’ll set a date and make all the arrangements.”
“That plan of mother’s reminds me of something I was reading about the other day,” said Herb, after Mrs. Fennington had left the room. “It was in connection with that drive they were making for the disabled war veterans. Do you remember the ‘flying parson’ that won the transcontinental air race a couple of years ago? Well, he has a radio attached to his airplane and he arranged to have an opera singer give a concert over it. She sat in the plane and sang, and her voice was heard over a radius of five hundred miles. Then the parson gave a short, red-hot talk in behalf of the soldiers, and thousands of people heard about the drive that wouldn’t have known of it otherwise. They say that money poured into headquarters by mail during the next few days.”
“Good stuff!” exclaimed Bob. “Our work will be on a smaller scale, but the spirit will be there just the same, and I bet our old radio will rake in a heap of coin for the sanitarium.”
