Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 27 again, as the last discharge which crashed its demand across the space hissed down, the receptor, unheeding, continued its clattering jerks. "Will reward " it chattered on in its heedless fright. "Only, come !" Harling grabbed the bridge communicator. "Captain ? Harling !" he reported quickly. "I have picked up yacht Irvessa by wireless, sir ! She reports she is going to pieces on a reef — I didn't know — no, sir — no, I can't even get them to listen Yes, sir. Thank you !" Black sheets of rain flooded the glass ahead, and the chattering of the resonator had ceased as the captain slid back the door. The spark behind was already volleying rapidly again. "It's a bender of a night !" The captain nodded to the other as, shiny and dripping, he stood over the operator and glanced through the transcription of the messages. He nodded his understanding again as he put them down. "What are you sending now?" "He seemed to have run out ; so, on the chance he may be listening, I'm trying again to ask him where he thinks he is, sir. Ah ! Here it comes." "It says?" "I don't know. I don't know." Harling read it slowly. "We were bound for San Francisco" — the panicky chattering of the sounder was" running more rapidly now— "from Manila. Have been driven before this storm two days, till struck this reef. No land within thousand miles. Come to us ! We are breaking up ! We " The captain nodded his fuller comprehension as he turned from the operator, and Harling swore unrebuked. "The Schjetman Reef is the only charted reef within three hundred miles of our reckoning," the captain said, "and that is almost two hundred miles to westward. Could you send that far tonight?" he asked the operator. "I don't think we could," Harling said, "and a yacht " "What are you asking?" "For his radius of communication. Here it comes, sir! Seventy miles, he thinks." "A yacht, under these conditions?" asked the captain incredulously. "Even if it could make seventy, that precluded the Schjetman — if it's in the place the charts show it. What are you asking?" "His aerials — how long his wires are. Here it comes !" "Thirty feet, he says. Seventy miles ! The " Harling checked himself. "We must have been within forty miles, to get him at all to-night, sir," he said. "If we are going toward him, we might now be within thirty-five. But, of course, he may be anywhere within a circle of the forty miles. What, sir?" "Some unreported reef, then, I said," the captain muttered. "Where? You have said it yourself!" He jerked his head to the blackness without. "Anywhere within a reach of forty miles ahead or on either side. And this night we could scarcely see even a searchlight five miles ! Unless you can — what's that?" "Save us !" Harling read, in answer. "We're breaking up! We're breaking up ! Save us ! Sa " The chattering was checked in the midst of a letter. The older man watched, unmoved, as the younger sprang to the key. "Irvessa! lrvessa! Pinckney ! Irvessa!" The captain put his hand kindly on the young man's shoulder as the latter looked up. A moment before, in his intolerant, impatient impulse, Harling had been swearing at the man who had now ceased to call. But his eyes now filled with tears which he let his commander see, unashamed. Again he called, and again. No answer came. "You've done all you could, boy ; they're gone," the captain said, with what, to youth, seems the callous acceptance and easy resignation of the old. Yet he waited while the boy turned rebelliously again to his key. Again Harling signaled, and again ; but the taps which had brought him the chattering cries of one going to death sounded no more. The one who had called had been one who, through every rap and tremble of his messages, the boy had despised ; yet he had called to this boy for help, and now he was gone — unaided. "They're gone, sir." The captain gathered up the operator's transcription in silence. "I'll take these for the log," he said. "They are complete? The yacht Irvessa, and the man who was sending said he was E. H. Pinckney?" "Yes, sir ; the Irvessa." Harling checked it off from the tape of his automatic register. "The man who was sending said he was E. H. Pinckney, sir, for George Durant, owner. He said also that there were thirty on board. You have it all there, sir." "Very good. It was them, then." The captain nodded absently. "The Durants' Irvessa, with Pinckney on board, again." "Why, sir" — the boy started impulsively as he watched the older man — "do you know anything about them, sir?" "Don't you, boy?" the captain returned laconically, as he slid back the door. "Have you forgotten the yacht and the people who got in that fight off Bagol a few months back?" "No !" Harling shouted excitedly, as he sank back. "Then this man who was sending was the Pinckney with the Durants whom Sommers, of the San Juan, saved?" "Yes. I shall be on the bridge now. If any other ship signals, report to me at once." He ducked, dripping, into the storm. Harling settled the receivers over his ears excitedly. But now he picked up the tape, to read again the messages which had come in before the yacht was lost. He studied the repeated and unsteady marks of the sending of the man who had called to him from the breaking ship. "So you were Pinckney — the great Pinckney with the Durants !" he muttered to himself. "You were the fellow whom Sommers saved. But — the girl must have stuck by you, after all. For there you were with them again ! Sure; she must have stuck to you. But if she ever saw this !" He struck the record tape in disgust ; for it recalled vividly to him the frightened, shaking chattering of that man's messages. "I wonder ! Just suppose Sommers — the fellow that came to save you — had been there on the Irvessa with Frances Durant this time, instead of you. I wonder if he would have sent this, or if he " Harling caught himself up. Of course, in the absence of Sommers, he could imagine anything he chose. Yet His breath stopped suddenly short in his throat ; he sat forward, strained and white in his excitement. "Ta-ap, ta-ap ; ta-ap, ta-ap ; ta-ap ; *ta-ap; ta-ap; ta-ap!" The resonators were ringing steadily. The first start of hope which startled Harling forward dropped him back limply. "M-M-M-M," registered itself mechanically upon his mind. It must be some private call of some other ship ; for the sound and "feel" of the send