Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/80

48 alongside. To their surprise they found the passengers in high good humor, lining the decks and shouting the latest election returns, which were being announced meanwhile in the cabin exactly as on any newspaper bulletin board.

The ship keeps its wireless connection with land through the Sea Gate station for several hours, even after the point has been left far astern. If the vessel is bound down the coast, a formal report will be sent to the Ambrose light-ship, and later to the Scotland lightship. The transatlantic liner keeps her instrument carefully attuned to the tall masts at Sea Gate until she has left them about ninety miles behind. About this time she will add “Good-by” to one of her messages, and turn to the next wireless station on her course, at. Throughout the long run along the shore of North America, she will let go one wireless grasp only when another is within easy reach.

Out here on the Atlantic, far out of sight of land, the wireless station becomes much more interesting than it is on shore or alongside the dock. At sea, this invisible link with the land is always more or less in one’s mind. The door of the wireless booth seems to lead to a bridge which spans the ocean. The wireless room has all the fascination of a newspaper bulletin board, for all the news must reach one through this channel.

It is considered a great privilege to “listen in” during an Atlantic crossing. There are very few hours, indeed, when a visitor to the wireless house, or cabin, would not be seriously in the way. If a corner of the cabin be found for you, however, and the receiving apparatus clasped to your ears, you will be amazed to find how busy the apparatus is kept. The air above New York harbor is as crowded with wireless messages as are the waters with ships. You are, besides, in easy range of many commercial stations and hundreds of amateurs. Long after the shores have disappeared from view, the buzz of wireless talk continues. There are hundreds of amateur wireless stations along the Atlantic seaboard listening to ships’ messages. It is comforting to know that if, by an accident, the powerful shore stations should fail to catch our messages, an army of alert boys are on guard.

Some four hours after your ship has passed out of, or after a ninety-mile run, the operator bids the Sea Gate station good-by, and begins to feel ahead for the next station at Sagaponack, or even the one at , on Nantucket Island. If your ear is Sensitive enough, you have probably heard her call sometime before. For a few minutes all sending and receiving is stopped while the ship throws out her name, over and over again. Soon the wireless man catches the Nantucket’s reply, and explains that he could recognize the operator’s sending among a thousand.

Then he plunges into the work of sending and receiving messages. It was the Nantucket station, he will explain to you, that first picked up the call of the, and, by its promptness, gave the rescue steamers the news in time to save all