Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/82

50 picks up the last land station. Once more a batch of messages is received and despatched. Cape Race is not a post to be coveted. It is one of the most isolated in the world, and throughout the greater part of the year perhaps the coldest. Operators stationed here have gone blind from the glare of the sun upon unbroken icefields. In leisure hours they have some compensation in hunting wild northern game. “Yet, through the long winters, they have snatches of the news only a few minutes later than the newspaper offices in London or New York. An operator stationed here once broke the monotony of his life by chatting, with the wireless men on the ships, about the base-ball games, which were reported to him inning by inning.

Ever since the steamer left New York, the editors of her daily newspaper have been receiving the latest news and publishing it in their daily editions, exactly as in any well-equipped newspaper ashore. This news is sent out regularly from a station at. The news of the world, including the latest stock-exchange quotations, is boiled down to 500 words, and is sent broadcast out across the Atlantic at exactly ten o'clock every night. It is thrown out for about 1800 miles in all directions, so that any vessel between America and the middle of the ocean may catch it. When the despatch is completed, there is a pause of fifteen minutes, when it is repeated over the same enormous area, and the repetitions continue steadily until 12:30. The ships suit their own convenience, picking up the news, at any time between these hours, when they are not engaged with other messages.

When the calls from the Cape Race station grow faint and are finally cut off, our steamer ends its direct service to shore. We are now more than one third of the way across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the ship is very rarely completely out of touch with the shore throughout the crossing. The ocean lanes are so peopled with great ships that a message can be relayed from ship to ship to the land station in an incredibly short time.

And for some hundreds of miles farther, as we go across the Atlantic—to the very middle of the ocean—the news service still follows our ship. Regularly every night at 10:30, the operator tunes his instrument to the Cape Cod station and writes down the latest news at the dictation of the operator, now more than a thousand miles away.

Half-way across the Atlantic, before the Cape Cod messages have died away, our operator catches his first wireless from Europe, flung out to welcome him from the powerful station at, on the Cornwall coast. There is scarcely a moment on the broad Atlantic when we cannot listen to one or the other of these stations. Poldhu sends out news and the stock reports, just 500 words of it, exactly as does Cape Cod, beginning every morning at two, and repeating the messages at regular intervals until three. And so the wireless newspaper you pick up at your breakfast in any region of the Atlantic, is quite as up-to-date as the one you read at home.

Even in the middle of the ocean, there is very little rest for the wireless operators. There is scarcely an hour when our ship is not in communication with one or more vessels. On a single crossing, aboard one of the great liners, there are usually from 500 to 600 wireless messages transmitted and received. When a ship is. picked up, a notice is posted in the companionway, smoking-room, and elsewhere, announcing that messages may be sent to such a vessel up to an hour, easily calculated, when she will be out of range.

The first direct landward messages are sent to the station at, on the Irish coast. Land will not be sighted for many hours, but the passengers are at once busied with preparations for going ashore. There are scores of messages filed for both sides of the Atlantic, announcing a safe arrival—for under the protecting arms of the wireless one feels himself almost ashore greetings are exchanged, invitations extended, and the details of land journeys arranged.

When Crookhaven is dropped, the Liverpool steamer next. picks up the wireless station of, and. For the other steamers there are the, , , and , passing in rapid succession. But the thrill of the ancient sea-cry of “Land ho!” has been anticipated a thousand miles offshore.