Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio

  CHAPTER VI

  AMAZING THINGS

  "Just wonder if'n I'll ever get it right! Wisht I'd paid more attenshunto teacher that year we had one!" Lem Hicks ran a tragic hand throughhis sandy hair till it stood out like a bottle brush.

  He sat at the table in Lee's workshop. Before him stood a homemadecontraption young Renaud fondly hoped bore enough resemblance to atelegraphic outfit to work. Spread open beside the instrument was thecode book, and spread open beside the code book was an old Blue-backedSpeller. Lem, with a finger poised above the telegraph key, franticallystudied first one book, then the other. It was no use! The excitement ofthe occasion had driven all the "book larnin'" out of Lem's head. Fordays he had been planning on this, the first telegraphic message to besent in King's Cove. But the final effort of "putting words intospelling" and then "putting spelling into code" was too much for him. Hejust had to tap something, though. Lee, waiting at a similar instrumentdown in the old storage house, which was the end of their telegraphline, was all set to see if the thing really worked. In desperation Lemclickety-clicked at the only piece of the code he could seem toremember--three quick taps, three long taps, then three quick tapsagain.

  And before he had hardly finished, there came a bang of doorsdownstairs, a gallop of feet on the stairs, and Lee Renaud shotbreathless into the room.

  "In trouble? What's the matter?" he yelled. "Short-long-short, threetimes each, that's S. O. S., the distress signal of the world. I thoughtthis thing must have blown up or busted or electrocuted somebody." Leedropped limply on a bench.

  "Naw," said Lem, flushing shamefacedly. "Every bit of the code 'ceptthat went clean out of my head. I wanted to get something to you--"

  "It got me, all right!" Lee burst out laughing. "But say, man, itworked! We've made us something here. That set of taps clicked throughto me as clean as anything. When we get some more code in our heads, wecan really talk to each other over the wire."

  Lee Renaud's experimenting with the telegraph set in motion a strangesurge for King's Cove, a surge of educational longings. For the firsttime in their drab lives, some young Coveites "wisht they had sat undera teacher more."

  In the past these tow-headed youngsters had looked upon the few monthsof schooling that occasionally came to them as something to be dodged asmanfully as possible. Now with the hunger upon them to enter the grandadventure of sending one's thoughts, clickety-click, far away across awire, the mistreated reading books and dog-eared spellers were dug outand actually studied. "Great snakes! A fellow railly had to know sump'nif he was goin' to put his thoughts into spellin', and then put spellin'into code," remarked one lank youth as he lolled in front of the villagestore, and Tony Zita mournfully allowed it was "more worser than tryin'to scramble eggs, then tryin' to unscramble them."

  Great-uncle Gem could hobble around now with his stick. He began takingas lively an interest as the youngsters in Lee's "tapping machine."Quite often he would come limping up to sit in the workshop, his blackeyes twinkling beneath bushy white brows at the electrical chatter goingon around him.

  "Just think," Lee was day-dreaming, "if I had wire enough, I could makemy battery send a telegraph signal all the way to Mr. Akerly in Tilton,on to Birmingham, maybe on to my home folks in Shelton--"

  "Wait there, wait there! Hold your horses, young man!" Uncle Geminterposed, not wanting this dreamer to dream too big a dream and thenhave it crash. "Maybe some day you'll progress enough to send farmessages by this wireless we read about, but as long as you're stilltalking about telegraph wires, just remember that it would cost some fewthousand dollars just to string wires from here to Tilton--"

  "A thousand dollars--um, and some more thousands! Gosh, I didn't knowwire cost like that!" Lee's face fell. "I'd been hoping, anyway, that wecould stretch a wire on to Jimmy Bobb's so he'd be sort of in touch withfolks. He's so--so--"

  "From here to the Bobb place is more than half a mile. Half a mile ofwire is a considerable bit. Here, give me a pencil; let me do somefiguring." Great-uncle Gem bent his head above a scrap of paper."There's the horse lot and the cow pasture--we don't have any cattle onthe place these days. All that was fenced once, four strands high. Youmight as well take what you can find of it and put it to some use."

  "Hurrah for the famous Renaud-Bobb Telegraph Company!" shouted Lee,leaping up and letting out a whoop like a wild Indian. "Uncle Gem can bepresident. Who wants to join this mighty organization?"

  It seemed that everybody did, or at least all the young crew in King'sCove. Taking stock in this booming concern consisted merely incontributing all the labor and man-power you had in you.

  Stringing up even a half mile of telegraph wire turned out to be a vasttask; especially since the wire had to be yanked down from old fences,and some of it was barbed, from which the barbs had to be untwisted. Butwhenever a Cove youth could be spared from hoeing 'taters and corn orpushing the plow, he rushed off to the Renaud place to work ten timesharder. Only this new labor was interesting work--work with a zest toit. One crew logged in the woods for tall, strong cedar poles that wereto carry the wires, another crew de-barbed old fencing, still anotherdug the line of post holes. A great search went on for old bottles to beused as glass insulators.

  Then the actual stringing up began to go forward.

  "Mind, you boys," warned Uncle Gem, "don't let anybody's clothesline getmixed up in this. We don't want to stir up any hard feeling round hereagainst our project."

  Which very likely was the reason why the stringing up halted for a timewhile more old fencing was de-barbed, and why, in the dark of a night,Nanny Borden's clothes wire miraculously reappeared on its posts.

  It was hard for untrained hands to set the posts firm and in a straightline, harder still to string the much-spliced wire taut.

  At last, though, the great day came when the Renaud-Bobb Telegraph Linereached from station to station.

  The lonely little Bobb cabin suddenly became a center of interest. Therewas always some youngster happening along who wanted to send a messageover the line. Jimmy Bobb's eager mind picked up the code quickly. Hislong fingers learned to click the key with real speed. The cripple beganto know happiness. For the first time in all his starved, meager years,he was getting in touch with life.

  Then one day while Lee Renaud was away from his workshop, a franticmessage came clicking over the crude wires.

  "That thing's banging like fury up there!" Uncle Gem waved his stickceilingwards as Lee dashed into the house.

  The boy hesitated a moment. He had come for a bag, and was going out tothe old junk heap in the gully. Right now something new was surging inhis brain and there might be some metal on that old carriage frame thatwould help him.

  The stuttering of the telegraph clicked on again.

  "Just some of the gang wanting to gab," Lee muttered, turning away.

  Then the insistent note of the click caught his ear.

  "That's--that's S.O.S.!"

  Up the stairs he leaped, taking two at a time.

  Sharp and loud came the tap-tap-tap, three short, three long, threeshort! S.O.S.! Save! Save! Save! Again three short, three long--a littlecrashing thump of the key--then blankness.

  "What is it? What is it?" pleaded Lee's clicking key.

  No answer.

  "Something's happened! Can't get any answer from Jimmy!" he shouted ashe left the house on the run. "Send Pomp for help to Ray's meadow--"

  Great-uncle Gem, for all his injured leg, must have put some speed intohis search for Pomp. For, as Lee sped down the woods path, he could hearthe old darky somewhere behind him hallooing, "Help! Help!" and clangingthe dinner bell as he headed across the village towards the open hayfields where everybody was cutting grass while the weather held.

  With that racket Pomp would stir up somebody, never a doubt! But Leewasn't wasting time waiting on reinforcements. With that last insistenttap-tap call of the telegraph still beating in his ears, he stretchedhis long legs d
own the path.

  Hurtling through bushes, dodging swishing limbs, he burst panting intothe clearing of the Bobb hilltop. Here no human sound greeted him.Instead, the awful crackle of flames filled the air. Whorls of smokecurled up from almost every part of the old shingle roof. As he looked,the smoke whorls began to burst into tongues of flame.

  Lee raced to the door and flung himself inside, shouting, "Jimmy, Jimmy,where are you?"

  There was no answer.

  The heat and smoke were nearly overpowering. Lee dropped to the floorand crawled across the room. Yes, here by the ticker was Jimmy's chair,and Jimmy in it, slumped in a huddle. Lifting the limp form to hisshoulder, Lee staggered back to the door and out into the fresh air.

  As he laid Jimmy down in the shelter of the trees on the side off thewind, shouts greeted him. The whole woods seemed alive with people. Pompand his dinner bell had done their work.

  While Lee revived Jimmy Bobb, an impromptu water-line formed. Likemagic, buckets and tubs and even gourds of water passed up from thespring under the hill to the flaming hell of the roof. Cove women, notbeing given to style, wore plenty of clothing. Here and there, a wideapron or a voluminous Balmoral was shed, wetted and wielded as a weaponto beat down the flames. Crews of howling small boys broke pine brushfor brooms and swept out any creeping line of flame that caught fromsparks and headed for the fence, the slab-sided chicken house, or thecow shed.

  Then it was over. The fire was out. Blackened rafters and a pall ofsmoke told what a fight it had been. The roof was gone, but the cabinwalls stood, and the meager homemade furniture was safe.

  Sarah Ann Bobb, stirred for once out of her habitual calm, stood nearJimmy, waving her hands and weeping.

  One of the Cove men detached himself from the smoke-stained group andwent up to her. "Don't take on so, Miz Bobb," he consoled awkwardly."Hit war that old no 'count chimney what must've done it. We aims tobuild you a new one, and set on another roof. Done plan to starttomorrow, the Lord sparing us!"

  "I ain't crying sorrowful." Sarah Ann's knees let her down on theground. "I'm so happy Jimmy ain't dead!"

  "I'm all right, maw," Jimmy assured her, "but I bet the telegraph's allbusted."

  "Yep, considerably busted, I suppose." Lee sounded inordinatelycheerful. "But all the real stuff we need is still here, and we'll bebuilding her over again, good as new, maybe better."

  "Oh," Jimmy Bobb settled back down, "I'm right thankful you saved hit.Hit sho saved me!"