Page:Editor and Publisher, November 27, 1909.djvu/5



Here is the unvarnished tale of Tomlinson, the cub. Tomlinson is not his name, but a certain modern English poet wrote about a Tomlinson who was just such a one as this rosy-cheeked young newspaper man who wot that he scale the midnight cliffs of Labrador even to the fringe of the aurora and who yammered at those malignantly adverse currents oS St. Paul’s isle in the cruel gateway of St. Lawrence gulf.

There was that air of mystery about Tomlinson evidenced even before the Dominion steamer sailed from her berth at Sydney, X. S., with her top-heavy supercargo of wild correspondents from the cities of the .Atlantic coast. Tomlin- s< n wore gumshoes even in bed and in¬ stinctively his forefinger would rise to his lips and he would say H-shsh 1 over his mufhns and orange marmalade in the Sydney hotel. Tomlinson was out to heat the world on the first authentic interview with Peary, the pole finder, and he did not care if the other correspondents had an inkling of their confusion to come before the time when they should awake to find that the Han¬ over Blade had scooped them all.

That was the reason why during those long, delicious days of steaming up from Sydney to HattL' Harbor where the Roosevelt and her commander lay hidden in a cranny of the rocks, Tomlinson had long conferences with the cook in his cubby and waylaid the cabin lioy with a mysterious crooked finger, pored over the map of the labrador coa.st in the secrecy of his cabin and never distracted his mind so much as to trail on two kings when the fellow next to the dealer opened with three of a kind. He was much alone with his rapturous thoughts and his plans for getting that beat from Peary. He saw in his mind’s eye the Hanover Blade, with a three column cut of himself on the first page and beneath that in wood type the words “First exclusive inter¬ view with Commander Peary by Tom¬ linson. our staff correspondent.”

Everything favored Tomlinson’s plans during those three days of steaming past the rugged Newfoundland coast and up to the desolate land the fisher¬ man call “The” Labrador; that is to say, he was drawing nearer to Peary

with every revolution of the screw, but the other seventeen correspondents aboard were also drawing nearer. He might have formed some desperate scheme of weaving each of the other seventeen into the log line astern and thus beating them by the length of fifteen fathoms into Battle Harbor, ihat was impractical, inasmuch as kind hearted Captain Dickson might have ob¬ jected and Djckson was still master of the ship, even though Tomlinson was aboard.

It was on the third night out that the cubby heart of Tomlinson beat high. The Tyrian had been making excellent time, what with the twenty-five knot gale that was lifting her along from astern; but her time had not been quite good enough to boost her into Battle Harbor before real darkness fell. The master was not going to take any chances with icebergs, so with the red beacon that lifts from Caribou island, just in front of Battle Harbor, blinking tantalizingly over the wind blown crests of the waves, the Tyrian turned her nose into a black fiord five miles below the spot where Peary and the news lay, and dropped anchor in a thin ribbon of water as black as Jack’s hatband.

There was no telling what that fiord was like e.xccpt by the feel of the cliffs nearby and the saw. tooth outline of them that showed against the green fires of the aurora as they lifted and dropped over the northern horizon. All of the seventeen correspondents save Tomlin¬ son, the undaunted, felt that they were mewed up in some sort of giant’s sarcophagus, so compelling was the sense of the encircling walls of granite.

Tomlinson went right up to the Captain the minute the anchor chains ceased rattling.

"Captain,” said he, “how far is it to Battle Harl)or from here?”

".About five miles,” ventured Captain 1 fickson.

".And it lies right over there, don’t it?” Tomlinson swept his arm up to where the pale fires of the northern lights glimmered over the saw teeth to starboard. The captain allowed that it did lie over in that general direction.

Well, Captain, will you lower a boat and put me ashore; I’m going to go over to Battle Harbor tonight, get a little interview with Peary and put it on the wireless.”

“So you’re thinking of going over the cliffs to the other side?” Captain Dick¬ son’s florid face turned a shade deeper and there was a queer clicking sound down under the collar of his sou’wester. “You know. Battle’s on an island about a mile from any shore.”

“Oh, yes, but I can get a fellow to row me over in a boat and then-”

“Young fellow,” Captain Dickson’s words were slow and burred with more of that strange clicking under his collar. “A'oung fellow, if you want to commit suicide wait until you get back to Massachusetts. It won’t cost your paper so much to recover your body—if it should want to. Go get a little drink of that Scotch back in the saloon. You’re feverish.”

So Tomlinson did not take the mid¬ night hike across the Labrador. When the sun came next morning the corres¬ pondents compared measurements of those cliffs there between the Tyrian and Battle Harbor. The New Yorkers said that they were not quite so high as the Singer building, but just as steep; the Bostonians said that there were no buildings in their town, except possibly Bunker Hill Monument, that looked like those cliffs. And the spray that flew out of those lateral fissures when the waves pounded in!

1 hut morning as the Tyrain poked her nose around the corner of Cari¬ bou, the correspondents gathered in the saloon and performed a grave ceremony. Numbered slips were dropped into a hat and one by one each drew his number. 1 hat settled the order of precedence that was to be followed in tiling news on the single invisible thread of the wireless there. It was a gentle¬ men's agreement that each should tile no more than a stated number of words and that number was necessarily limited.

There followed the tremendously busy day of interviewing and of hearing strange tales from the pole. Before live o'clock every one had tiled his stipuated number of words with the patient wire¬ less operator. Captain Dickson said that it was time to go back to the ship. He wouldn’t pull out before morning, but the wind was rising and the jolly boats could not make the mile pull out to the Tyrian if it blew much harder. So everybody, including Tomlinson, went out through the spray to the ship.

At nine o'clock that night a weather worn old man rowed out from the har¬ bor with a box full of tokens from Com¬ mander Peary for distribution among the correspondents and ofticers of the ship. The tisherman was not long aboard, but while he was on deck Tom¬ linson was observed to draw him into the shadow of the stack and slip an en- veloiH! into his hand. Then Tomlinson came into the lighted saloon, his face hland as a child's.

1 he correspondent who that very day had stoutly declared that he could w’eigh any old island in the North Atlantic just by triangulation and the “nth power of Scotch and soda” happened to have been more alert than his best friends would have suspected. He saw that envelope pass from Tomlinson to the withered fisherman. Just before the fisherman was going over the side the mathema¬ tician held him up.

“Let’s see that envelope,” he said. The fisherman meekly handed it over. The weigher of islands tore it open and read “Hanover Blade, Hanover, Mass. Just got exclusive information, etc.”

“Oh this is a mistake; this is not to go to the wireless,” said the careful cor¬ respondent and he tore the message up. The fisherman went over the side and back to Battle Harbor. The Tyrian sailed at break of day. Tomlinson did not know for ten days more or less why it was that his paper did not congratu¬ late him upon the exclusive despatch from Battle Harbor. The funny thing about it was that what Tomlinson wanted to send back through the night by the withered fisherman was really “exclusive information.” The trouble was that he had been a party to that gentleman's agreement in the morning.

Just once more did the indomitable soul of Tomlinson forge to the front and center. It was on the day before the Tyrian reached Sydney. The in¬ terest of all foi; the common good had induced a discussion of the telegraph facilities at the Nova Scotian port and the possibility of congestion when each of the eighteen, bursting as he was with voluminous “copy” should rush to the operators. That day was Saturday. Captain Dickson had said that the Tyrian ought to dock about a half hour before midnight that night. There were seven wires out of Sydney, most of which would be crowded with cable news late Saturday night.

Sunday was the ideal day to file, for on Sunday there was little business on the wires and they could begin working at an early hour. Anyway, Monday’s paper would be clear for the 12,000 to '8,000 words that each wished to send

in. It Would be futile to try to send so much a half hour before midnight for Sunday morning's paper, everybody agreed—that is, everybody but Tomlin¬ son.

He said that he was going to tile what he had the minute he arrived in Sydney; his paper did not go to press until four o'clock in the morning and he could get something into his office before that time anyway. They argued with Tomlinson, those other seventeen. They argued long and persuasively. If he filed they must all file. There would be a mad scramble for the wires, everybody would get hot under the collar and what, oh what, would happen to those 12,000 or 18,000 words of glowing literature? Tomlinson was adamant.

It was eight bells of the evening watch and the Tyrian was off St. Paul’s, forty miles from port when a deputa¬ tion from the seventeen went to the captain and laid the matter before him.

"Now you know we wouldn’t want to have to lock him in his stateroom,” they were saying when the jovial skipper interrupted.

"1 can’t slow down liecause I have to account for every ton of coal and every mile of steaming time,” he said, “but in the face of such an e.xasperating situation I might get the least bit off my course—these currents about St. Paul’s are that tricky, anyway—and if we didn’t get into Sydney until 3.30 now-”

Tomlinson stood at the bow cursing those tricky currents off St. Paul’s which were holding the Tyrian back and blocking the enterprise of the Blade’s staff correspondent. He stood there in the cold winds that blow through the gateway of the St. Law¬ rence until all hope of that Sunday morning paper went glimmering away with the fading aurora. Then—and then—Tomlinson was asleep when the Tyrian snuggled against her berth at Sydney at 3:30 o'clock Sunday morning.

Oldest Belgian Newspaper.

In answer to an inquiry from a Western university. Consul General Ethelbert Watts of Brussels reports that the oldest newspaper in Belgium is the Gazette van Gent, which re¬ ceived the privilege of printing the “Gendtsche Post-Tydinghen” on No¬ vember 17, 1666, and which has ex¬ isted almost continuously since the first number was printed on January I, 1667. The oldest copy preserved is No. 69, of September 8, 1667. The next oldest newspaper in Belgium is the L’Independance Beige, in its 8oth year.