Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/80

 south of the bleak, frozen regions to be in their element.

And say, the ship! She was a beaut of the old wooden kind, not a whole lot to look at, but built to stand the strains of furious gales as well as the tremendous pressures of the ice packs. Indeed, she had been one of ships which had been farthest north when that explorer sought to find the North Pole some years before.

The wireless apparatus and I were the only objects on the ship that seemed not to belong to her, but when we reached the sealing grounds we found ourselves and helped in the catch, thereby making friends with the Captain and his crew.

The transmitter was formed of a single ten inch induction coil which was energized by a current of the ship’s dynamo. The receiver was of the regular Marconi type with a magnetic detector. The masts of the Polar Bear were only fifty feet apart and an aerial made up of half-a-dozen wires swung between them.

Whoever installed the equipment stopped at the aerial for there was no ground. It was no small job to get a decent ground for the ship,