Meantime Roy stood in the captain’s cabin, disheartened and disconsolate. No wonder he felt downhearted. The man he must please had taken a dislike to him at the very outset. He did not know what to do, so he did nothing. With a heart like lead he waited for the return of Captain Lansford. Presently that irate individual came storming back.
“Get up to the wireless house,” he said roughly. “I’ve got to keep you for three months until a new class is ready. But I don’t need any wireless to run _my_ ship by, so don’t you come bothering me. Good-day, sir.”
“Good-day, sir,” echoed Roy, but the echo was very faint indeed. Disconsolately he stepped from the captain’s cabin, found his way to the wireless house, and shut the door tight behind him. For the moment his courage was almost gone. Sick at heart, he sat down to think over the situation.
“It’s the same old story,” muttered Roy to himself, after a time. “I wonder if they will ever stop saying ‘You’re only a boy.’ That’s what they said at Camp Brady. Yet the wireless patrol ran down the dynamiters when the state police couldn’t find them. That’s what they said here in New York when we were searching for the secret wireless. Yet we found it, even if we were boys. That’s what Captain Lansford says now. Shall I ever be old enough to escape it?”
Yet it was fortunate for Roy that he _was_ but nineteen. At nineteen one possesses the resiliency of youth. One rebounds like a rubber ball. It was so with Roy. A while longer he sat, his head buried in his hands, his heart full of woe. Hardly could he keep the tears back. Then the buoyancy of youth asserted itself.
“Only a boy,” he said presently, straightening up. “Isn’t there anybody in the world who knows that sometimes boys have brains and courage and common sense? What was David but a boy when he fought Goliath? What was General Grant but a boy when he loaded the logs alone? Who fought the Civil War but boys? I don’t care if I am a boy. I can read and send wireless messages with the best of them, and there’s nothing conceited in my saying so, for it’s a fact. Only a boy, eh? All right, I’ll show them what a boy can do. Maybe that captain can run his ship without the help of wireless, but I’ll bet that after he’s had the wireless service for----”