Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/79

1912.] word), and visitors begin to look up the wireless station. It is usually a detached house on the uppermost or sun deck, just large enough for the mysterious-looking apparatus and a bunk or two. Before the voyage is over, most of the passengers will have become very familiar with the station, for it is, after all, about the most interesting place aboard. If no messages are filed for sending, the operator picks up the shore station and clicks off the name of his ship, as, for instance, “Atlantas. Nil here” (meaning “nothing here”).

Should the operator have any messages to file, he will add the number, for example: “Atlantas 3.”

The receiving station picks this up and replies quickly. If it has no messages to send, it will reply, “O K. Nil here.”

Should there be any messages to deliver, it will reply, “O K G.” (Go ahead.)

All the way down the harbor, the great ship is in constant communication, sending and receiving belated questions and answers. The passengers, who have been calling their farewells from the ship’s side as the waters widen, are merely continuing their conversations with the shores now rapidly slipping past. Your message, meanwhile, will be delivered almost anywhere in the United States within an hour, and in near-by cities in much less time.

The wireless service is the last detail needed to give one the impression that the steamer is a great floating hotel. A steward comes to your room to deliver an aërogram written ashore a few minutes before, as any messenger-boy would look you up at home. If you are walking on deck, or lounging in the social-room or library, you are “paged” exactly as in a hotel. Meanwhile a bulletin, posted at the head of the main companionway or in the smoking-rooms, announces the latest weather forecast, the land station, and the various ships then in wireless communication. A little later, the daily newspaper will be published. A novel diversion of a transatlantic crossing, nowadays, is a game of chess or checkers played between passengers on two steamers hundreds of miles apart. The squares of the boards are numbered and the moves announced by simply telegraphing these numbers, when each move is made.

One of a thousand advantages of having the wireless apparatus aboard is the control it gives the captain if his ship should chance to ground down the harbor. The ship’s owners know all about the trouble almost immediately, and assistance can be rushed from the nearest point within a few minutes. There is the case, for instance, of the great liner with a thousand passengers which sailed from New York one Election Day, and stuck her nose in the mud just inside Sandy Hook. Late at night, a tug filled with newspaper men ran down the bay and came