“You’re safe, whatever happens,” grinned Joe.
“I’m not so sure of that,” was the unexpected answer. “Radio itself may throw me out of a radio job.”
“Sounds to me something like a riddle,” said Jimmy, rubbing his forehead in perplexity.
“Fact, just the same,” Johnson reiterated. “Radio itself will drive radio without the aid of an operator. They proved that that was possible in New York only a few weeks ago. By an arrangement of the controlling circuit of the longest commercial radio service in the world, from New York to Warsaw, Poland, they were able to make automatic signaling a substitute for operators. Radio was made to control radio, and thus over an eight thousand five hundred mile circuit continuous signaling was produced without human assistance.”
“Sounds to me as though I were listening to you read me something out of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” said Herb.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,” quoted the operator. “And among these, radio takes the first place.
“But there,” he continued, rising from his seat, “I’ve talked you fellows nearly to death, and, anyhow, the aurora is on its last legs and I’ve got to get back to my work.”
The boys could have listened to him all night, and told him so.
“Come down to my room tomorrow, and I’ll give you some idea of the multitude of things that radio does in the matter of the iceberg patrol,” he invited. “I suppose you boys think that about all we have to do is to report on the position of icebergs when we spot them. Isn’t that so?”
“I thought it was mainly that,” Bob answered for them.
“Well, come in and see how greatly you’re mistaken,” said Johnson, with a grin, as he left them.
The next morning after breakfast, Bob was the first one to reach the deck, while Jimmy brought up the rear, with Hector at his heels.
But a shout of surprise and excitement from Bob caused even Jimmy’s laggard feet to hasten.
“Hurry, fellows!” Bob fairly shouted. “Here’s a whole fleet of icebergs! You’re missing the sight of your lives!”
His chums’ excitement was quite as great as Bob’s as they ranged themselves by his side at the rail and saw the magnificent spectacle that had provoked his outburst.
Moving along majestically and slowly were scores of icebergs, their icy pinnacles catching the rays of the sun and throwing them back in a thousand prismatic lights. They were of all sizes and areas and shapes. Some of them were solid, irregularly formed masses of ice; others had great passageways in them like Gothic arches; still others towered aloft like mighty cathedrals, with spires and towers shooting toward the skies.