Tom Mickey, chief lineman of the Ohio division of the P. & O., was, like most other human beings, subject to fluctuations of temper; only, with Tom, the extremes were much farther apart than usual. This was due, perhaps, to his mixed ancestry, for his father, a volatile Irishman, had married a phlegmatic German woman, proprietress of a railroad boarding-house, where Mickey found a safe and comfortable haven, with no more arduous work to do than to throw out occasionally some objectionable customer—and Mickey never considered that as work, but as recreation pure and simple. It was into this haven that Tom was born; there he grew up, alternating between the chronic high spirits of his father and the chronic low ones of his mother, and being, on the whole, healthy and well-fed and contented.
He had entered the service of the road while yet a mere boy, preferring to go to work rather than to school, which was the only alternative offered him; and he soon became an expert lineman, running ? 34 ? up and down the poles as agile as a monkey and dancing out along the wires in a way that earned him more than one thrashing from his boss. Advancing years had tempered this foolhardiness, but had only served to accentuate the eccentric side of his character. He would be, one day, buoyant as a lark and obliging to an almost preposterous degree, and the next day, ready to snap off the head of anybody who addressed him, and barely civil to his superior officers.
These vagaries got him into hot water sometimes; and more than once he was “on the carpet” before the superintendent; but the greatest punishment ever meted out to him was a short vacation without pay. The road really could not afford to do without him, for Tom Mickey was the best lineman in the middle west. The tangle of wires which were an integral part of the system was to him an open book, to be read at a glance. Was any wire in trouble, he would mount his tricycle, a sort of miniature hand-car, spin out along the track, and in a surprisingly short time the trouble was remedied and the wire in working order. Tom was a jewel—in the rough, it is true, and not without a flaw—but a jewel just the same.
Luckily he was in one of his buoyant moods when Jim Anderson approached him on the morning following his conversation with Allan. Perhaps it is only right to say that this was not wholly luck, for Jim had reconnoitred thoroughly beforehand, ? 35 ? and had not ventured to approach the lineman until assured by one of his helpers that he was in a genial humour.
Mickey was just loading up his tricycle with wire and insulators, preparatory to a trip out along the line, when Jim accosted him.
“Mr. Mickey,” he began, “another fellow named Allan West and myself want to rig up a little telegraph line from my house, out near the two bridges, to his, just back of the yards here, and we were wondering if you would let us string our wire on the company’s poles. There seem to be some vacant places, and of course we’d be mighty careful not to interfere with the other wires.”
He stopped, eying Mickey anxiously, but that worthy went on with his work as though he had not heard. He was puffing vigorously at a short clay pipe, and with a certain viciousness that made Jim wonder if he had approached him at the wrong moment, after all.
“What ’d ye say th’ other kid’s name is?” Mickey asked, after what seemed an age to the waiting boy.
“Allan West.”
“Is that th’ kid that Jack Welsh took t’ raise?”
“Yes; he lives with the Welshes. He worked in Welsh’s section-gang last year—took Dan Nolan’s place, you know.”
“Yes—I moind,” said Mickey, and went on smoking.
? 36 ?
“How does it happen,” he demanded at last, “that he wants t’ learn t’ be a operator?”
“He’s got a job in th’ trainmaster’s office,” Jim explained. “He wants to learn the business.”
Mickey nodded, and knocking out his pipe against his boot-heel, deliberately filled it again, lighted it, and turned back to his work. Finally the tricycle was loaded and he pushed it out on the main line, ready for his trip. Jim followed him anxiously. He watched Mickey take his seat on the queer-looking machine, spit on his hands and grasp the lever; then he turned away disappointed. That line was not going to be possible, after all.
“Wait a minute,” called Mickey. “What th’ blazes are ye in such a hurry about? Do ye see that wire up there—th’ outside wire on th’ lowest cross-arm?”
“Yes,” nodded Jim, following the direction of the pointed finger.
“Well, that’s a dead one. We don’t use it no more, an’ I’m a-goin’ t’ take it down afore long. Ye kin use it, if ye want to, till then—mebbe it’ll be a month ’r two afore I git around to it.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Mickey,” cried Jim, his face beaming. “That will be fine. We’re a thousand times obliged—”
But the lineman cut him short with a curt nod, bent to the lever, and rattled away over the switches, out of the yards.
Jim hurried on to his place in the long-shop, getting ? 37 ? there just as the whistle blew, and went about his accustomed work, but he kept an eye out for Allan, who, he knew, would be coming through before long in search of the master-mechanic. Allan, you may be sure, did not neglect the chance to say good-morning to his new friend, and listened with sparkling eyes while Jim poured out the story of his success with Mickey.
“And now,” he concluded, “all we’ll have to do is to run a wire into our house from the pole just in front of it, and then run another across the yards here to your house. We can do it in a couple of evenings.”
“And we’ll have it for a month, anyway,” added Allan.
“A month! We’ll have it as long as we want it. That was just Mickey’s way. He didn’t want to seem to be too tender-hearted. He’ll never touch the wire as long as we’re using it. I’ll get some old wire to make the connections with, and fix up the batteries.”
“All right,” agreed Allan, and went on his way.
The work of stringing the wires was begun that very evening; the batteries were overhauled and filled with dilute sulphuric acid, and the keys and sounders were tested and found to be in good shape. Three evenings later, one of the instruments was clicking on the table in Allan’s room, and Jim was bending over the other one in his room a mile away. ? 38 ? Only, alas, the clicks were wild and irregular and without meaning.
But that did not last long. The book on telegraphy helped them; Allan himself, in the dispatchers’ office, had ample opportunity to observe how the system worked, and each of the boys copied out the Morse alphabet and set himself to learn it, practising on his key at every spare moment.
They found that telegraphic messages are transmitted by the use of three independent characters: short signals, or dots; long signals, or dashes; and dividing intervals or spaces between adjacent signals. Thus, a dot followed by a dash represents the letter a; a dash followed by three dots represents the letter b, while two dots, space, dot, represents the letter c, and so through the alphabet, which, according to the Morse code, is written like this: a, .-; b, -...; c, .. .; d, -..; e, .; and so on. Longer spaces or pauses divide the words, and longer dashes are also used in representing some of the letters.
The dots and dashes are made by means of a key which opens and closes the electric circuit, and causes the sounders of all the other instruments connected with the wire to vibrate responsively. When an operator desires to send the letter a, he depresses his key for a short interval, then releases it, and, after an interval equally brief, depresses it again, holding it down three times as long before releasing it. All the other sounders repeat this dot ? 39 ? and dash, and the listening operators recognize the letter a. Every word must be spelled out in this manner, letter by letter.
As may well be believed, the boys found the sending and receiving of even the shortest words difficult and painful enough at first, but in a surprisingly short time certain combinations of sounds began to stand out, as it were, among their surroundings. The two combinations which first became familiar were - .... . and .- -. -.., representing respectively “the” and “and.” Following this, came the curious combination of sounds, ..—.., which represents the period, one of the most difficult the learner has to master. Other combinations followed, until most of the shorter words began to assume the same individuality when heard over the wire that they have when seen by the eye. It was no longer necessary to listen to them letter by letter; the ear grasped them as a whole, just as the eye grasps the written word without separating it into the letters which compose it.
But even then, Allan still found the clicking of the instruments in the office an unsolvable riddle. This was due largely to the system of abbreviation which railroad operators use, a sort of telegraphic shorthand incomprehensible to the ordinary operator; but the sending was in most cases so rapid that even if the words had been spelled out in full the boy would have had great difficulty in following them. Train-dispatchers, it may be said in passing, ? 40 ? have no time to waste; their messages are terse and to the point, and are sent like a flash. And woe to the operator who has to break in with the . .. . .. which means “repeat!” The dispatchers themselves, of course, are capable of taking the hottest ball or the wildest that ever came over the wires. Indeed, most of them can and do work the key with one hand while they eat their lunch with the other; and the call or signal for his office will instantly awaken him from a sleep which a cannon-shot would not disturb. Telegraphy, in a word, develops a sort of sixth sense, and the experienced operator receives or sends a message as readily as he talks or reads or writes. It is second nature.
It was about this time that one of the old dispatchers resigned to seek his fortune in the West, and a new one made his début in a manner that Allan did not soon forget. He was a slender young fellow, with curly blond hair, and he came on duty at three o’clock in the afternoon, just when the rush of business is heaviest. The induction of a new dispatcher is something of a ceremony, for the welfare of the road rests in his hands for eight hours of every day, and everybody about the offices is always anxious to see just what stuff the newcomer is made of. So on this occasion, most of the division officials managed to have some business in the dispatchers’ office at the moment the new man came on.
He glanced over the train-sheet, while the man ? 41 ? he was relieving explained to him briefly the position of trains and what orders were outstanding. His sounder began to click an instant later, and he leaned over, opened his key, and gave the signal, .. .., which showed that he was ready to receive the message. Then, as the message started in a sputter which evidenced the excited haste of the man who was sending it, he turned away, took off his coat, and hung it up, deliberately removed his cuffs, and lighted a cigar. Then he sat down at his desk, and picked up a pen. Something very like a sigh of relief ran around the office. But the pen did not suit him. He tried it, made a wry face, and looked inquiringly at the other dispatcher.
“The pens are over yonder in that drawer,” said that worthy, with assumed indifference, and went on sending a message he had just started.
The newcomer arose, went to the drawer, opened it, and selected a pen with leisurely care. Allan watched him, his heart in his mouth. He could see that the chief-dispatcher was frowning and that the trainmaster looked very stern. He knew that neither of these officials would tolerate any “fooling,” when the welfare of the road was in question. But at last the newcomer was in his seat again. He reached forward and opened his key, and every one waited for the . .. . .., which would ask that the message, a long and involved one, be repeated. But instead, a curt “Cut it short,” flew over the line, followed by an order so terse, so admirable, so ? 42 ? clean-cut, that the trainmaster turned away with a sudden relaxation of countenance.
“He’ll do,” he murmured, as he got out a match and lighted his forgotten cigar. “He’ll do.”
And, indeed, at a later day, Allan saw the same dispatcher receive and answer two messages simultaneously. But these were merely the trimmings of the profession. They savoured of sleight of hand, and had little to do with the real business of train-dispatching.
So Allan did not despair. Every evening, he and Jim laboured at their keys. First, Allan would send an item, perhaps, from the evening paper, and Jim would receive it. Then he would send it back, and Allan would write it out, as his sounder clicked along, and compare his copy with the original, to detect any errors. At first, errors were the rule; but as time went on, they became more and more infrequent; and at the end of two months, both the boys had acquired a very fair facility in sending and receiving. Indeed, one evening, after an unusually satisfactory bout, Jim was moved to a little self-approval.
“I think we’re both pretty good,” he clicked out. “Let’s apply for a job as operator.”
“Not yet,” Allan answered. “This line hasn’t done all it can for us yet.”
Nor for the road, he might have added, could he have foreseen the events of the next twenty-four hours.