Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/115

 It was nearly time for the Delphian, also, to be gone. While Mark was changing into dungaree in his quarters and Alan stood beside the young chief Marconi man in the wireless-room, there came a premonitory shiver and a throbbing throughout the ship, and a rushing of steam and shouting from the dock, and she thrashed a great seething mass of lemon-green water astern. A tug was helping her into the river, fussing very close to her with tremendous puffings and sizzlings. At last she floated out, heading down-stream, and passed gravely across the harbor, and New York lost her as she steamed slowly into the Narrows with her nose seaward.

Mark's first watch was not until midnight, but he went to the engine-room at once to report, and then to listen and look and learn. Up in the wireless-room, perched above the bridge-deck, Alan was having his first practical experience. He had caught many a flying message before this, but he suddenly felt hugely responsible and rather frightened as he fastened the microphone over his head and realized that he was, for the time, the ears of the ship. And then came her code-call. The blue sparks leapt,