Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/82

 moment a creepy feeling again stole over Henry. Suppose something should happen to the ship. Suppose she should sink. What chance would her crew, mere pigmies, have with these giant combers? But when Henry thought of the wireless, a feeling of courage surged through his heart again, and he was thankful to the men who had labored to make the wireless possible, and thankful that he was a wireless man himself. What a wonderful thing it was, he thought, to be able to call help or to catch the cry of those who needed help. Assuredly, the wireless man carried the safety of untold lives in his hands, just as truly as the captain of the ship did. How proud an operator ought to be, and how faithful he ought to be to his trust. And again Henry frowned as he thought of the lad he had last seen on watch in the wireless shack.

Long before the Iroquois reached the spot where the derelict had been seen, the captain had ordered a watch in the crow’s-nests; and for two hours at a time a man stood in each of these elevated lookouts, searching the seas for some trace of the lost vessel. But the spot where she had been seen was reached without the discovery of a single trace of her.

The captain was not in the least disturbed. He had had no expectation of finding her so soon. Wind and wave would have carried the