The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht

Jessie called Amy, and they went up into the little wireless room behind the wheelhouse where everything about the plant but the batteries were in place. This was a very different outfit from that in the great station at the old lighthouse on Station Island, which they had visited several days before.

“If we only knew as much as that operator does about wireless,” sighed Jessie to her chum, “there might be some hope of our untangling all this and finding out the trouble.”

“He said he had been five years at it and didn’t know so very much,” Amy reminded her dryly.

“Oh, there will always be something new to learn about radio, of course,” her chum agreed. “But if we had his training in the fundamentals of radio, we would be equipped to handle such a mess as this. To tell you the truth, Amy, I think these two boys have made a cat’s cradle of this thing.”

“And Darry spent more than a year aboard a destroyer and was trained to ‘listen in’ for submarines and all that!”

“An entirely different thing from knowing how to rig wireless,” commented Jessie, getting down on her knees to look under the shelf to which the posts were screwed. “Oh, dear!” she added, as she bumped her head. “I wish this boat wouldn’t pitch so.”

“So say we all of us. What can I do, Jess?”

“Not a thing – for a moment. Let me see: The general rules of radio are easily remembered. The incoming oscillations that have been intercepted by the antenna above the roof of the house are applied across the grid and filament of the detector tube – ”

“That’s this jigger here,” put in Amy, as Jessie struggled up again.

“Yes. That is the tube. Through the relay action of the tube, an amplified current flows through the plate circuit —here. Now,” added Jessie thoughtfully, “if we couple this plate circuit back – No! This is a simple circuit. It is like our old one, Amy. We can’t get much action out of this set. It is not like the new one we are putting in the bungalow.“

“Well, the thing is, can we use it?” Amy demanded. “Can you link the power, or whatever you call it, up with the sending paraphernalia and get an S O S over the water?”

“Goodness, Amy! Don’t talk as though you thought we were really in danger.”

“Humph! I see the Reverend, as Nell calls him, out there with his coat off, in his shirt-sleeves, taking a turn with Burd at the pumps. They have rigged it for man power and are saving steam for the engines.”

“Let me see!” cried Jessie, peering out of the clouded window too. “You’d never think he was a minister. Isn’t he nice?”

Amy began to laugh. “Are all ministers supposed to be such terrible people?”

“No-o,” admitted Jessie, going back to the radio set. “But good as they usually are, we have the very best minister at the Roselawn Church, of any.”

“Yep. So we must plan to save him if anything happens,” giggled Amy.

“Let’s open the switch and see if we can get anything,” her chum said reflectively, picking up the head harness.

“You mean hear if we can get anything,” corrected Amy.

“Never mind splitting hairs, my dear. Is that the switch? Yes. Now!”

She put on the rigging, but all she got out of the air, as she sadly confessed, were sounds like an angry cat spitting at a puppydog.

“It isn’t just static,” she told Amy. “You try it. There is something absolutely wrong with this thing. See! We don’t get a spark.”

“If we did we couldn’t read the letters.”

“I believe I could read some Morse if it came slowly enough,” said Jessie, nodding. “But it is sending, not receiving, I am thinking of, Amy Drew.”

Amy began to look more serious. Jessie was harping on a possibility she did not wish to admit was probable. She went out and, hunting up Darry, demanded to know just how bad he thought they were off, anyway.

“Well, Sis, there is no use making a wry face about it,” the collegian said. “But you see how hard the Reverend and Burd are working, and they can’t keep ahead of the water. The poor old Marigold really is leaking.”

“Is she going to sink? Can’t we get to land – somewhere? Can’t we go back to the island?”

“Shucks, Sis! You know we are miles from Station Island. We are off Montauk – or we were this morning. But we are heading out to sea now – sou’-sou’east. Can’t head into this gale. She pitches too much.”

“And – and isn’t there any help for us, Darry Drew?”

“We don’t need any help yet, do we?” he demanded pluckily. “She is making good weather of it – ”

Just then the yacht rolled so that he had to grab the rail with one hand and Amy with the other, and both of them were well shaken up.

“Woof!” gasped Darry, as they came out of the smother of spray.

“Oh!” exploded Amy. “I swallowed a pail of water that time. Ugh! How bitter the sea is. Now, Darry, I guess we’ll have to send out signals, sha’n’t we?”

“How can we? I’ve tried the old radio already. She is as dumb as the proverbial oyster with the lockjaw.”

“Jessie is going to fix it,” said Amy, with some confidence.

“Yes she is! She’s some smart girl, I admit,” her brother observed. “But I guess that is a job that will take an expert.”

“You just see!” cried Amy. “You think she can’t do anything because she’s a girl.”

“Bless you! Girls equal the men nowadays. I hold Jessie as little less than a wonder. But if a thing can’t be done – ”

“That is what you think because you tried it and failed.”

“Huh!”

“We radio girls will show you!” declared Amy, her head up and preparing to march back to her chum the next time the deck became steady.

But when she started so proudly the yacht rolled unexpectedly and Amy, screaming for help, went sliding along the deck to where Dr. Stanley and Burd were pumping away to clear the bilge. She was saturated – and much meeker in deportment – when Burd fished her out of the scuppers.

CHAPTER XXIII – ONLY HOPE

The condition of the Marigold was actually much more serious than the Roselawn girls at first supposed. Jessie and Amy were so busy in the radio house for a couple of hours and were so interested in what they were doing that they failed to observe that the hull of the yacht was slowly sinking.

Fortunately the wind decreased after a while; but by that time it was scarcely safe to head the yacht into the wind’s eye, as the skipper called it. She wallowed in the big seas in a most unpleasant way and it was fortunate indeed that all the passengers were good sailors.

Nell came and looked into the radio room once or twice; then she felt so bad that she went below to lie down. The doctor worked as hard as any man aboard. And his cheerfulness was always infectious.

The minister knew that they were in peril. He would have been glad to see a rescuing vessel heave into sight. But he gave no sign that he considered the situation at all uncertain or perilous in the least.

The afternoon was passing. Another night on the open sea without knowing if the yacht would weather the conditions, was a matter for grave consideration. The doctor and Darry conferred with Skipper Pandrick.

“’Tis hard to say,” the sailing master observed. “There is no knowing what may happen. If the yacht was not so water-logged we might get in under our own steam – ”

“But we can’t make steam enough!” cried Darry.