S.O.S.

Otago Witness, Issue 3961, 11 February 1930, Page 77

S.O.S.

By

Carlson E. Holmes.

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.) “ . . . and so. Jack, I’m writing to tell you that this is the end. Our engagement has always been a farce, and you must have known that I would never have married you. I know you'll think I’m terribly cruel, but I feel that I would not be fair to myself in marrying a poor man. You have only the pay of a wireless operator; and I’m afraid that 1 wouldn’t be much of a success on that. lam returning your ring. I’m sorry.” —lrene.’”

Jack Hudson had read and re-read that letter a hundred times during the past three days. How like Irene to take the coward’s way and write to save herself the embarrassment of delivering the blow in person when he returned home! He slumped drowsily in his chair in the wireless cabin of the Atua. His messages for the night were cleared up, and he found himself thinking . . . thinking in just the same way he had been thinking during the time that had passed since he had received her letter. Irene

. . . the girl he had worked and saved for. He had always been aware of a little selfish streak in her nature —but he had hoped that, one day, she would lose that. Yet, one more skilled in reading character would have told him that those tight little lips and the eyes that had always mystified him held in themselves sufficient indication that there was in the world at least one little lady whose life was ruled by her head and not by her heart.

The Atua rose and fell in a dark sea that grew heavier and heavier as the leaden minutes dragged by. Hudson rose for a moment, took a tiny box from his pocket and threw it through the halfopen porthole. He listened for a moment to the increasing whine of the wind, then resumed his seat. \\ hy not call up his pal Tom Nicolls, on the Lavuka; Ton) s ship could only be 100 miles ahead and. if the present weather was any standard of comparison, the old Lavuka would be standing on* her head by now. He threw a switch . . . but what was the use. Listlessly he turned off the power and, settling his headphones more comfortably. he leant forward on his desk, his head in his hands. Irene .. . Irene .. - How long he sat thus, he did not know. Of a sudden, over the howl of the wind:

S.O.S. S.O.S. .. . the dread call of the sea. Instantly he was galvanised into ac tion. He thumbed a dial to strenghten the message of disaster: “ S.O.S. Lavuka calling. Position Holed by derelict S.O.S. S.O.S. Hudson pressed a telephone switch communicating with the bridge. In crisp, concise words, he gave his message to the mate and received the reply. Then, slamming on the power, his keen fingers speeded out the message of hope: Lavuka Lavuka. Atua calling. We are heading for you. Arrive your position 8 a.m. Dawn came. Against a green-grey fury of water, the Atua threshed her course. Away down in her vasty depths, sweatstreaked firemen, stripped to the waist, forgot all talk of unions, overtime, and capitalists—for they were men. With exquisite precision, they swung their shovels of fuel into the great maws of the fire that meant speed to the ship. Anxious engineers kept watch over the gauge needles that flickered to within a hair's-breadth of the ominous danger line.

Away up in the wireless cabin. Jack Hudson, red-eyed, but no longer listless, tapped away at the key that kept up hope on the doomed ship. His junior -—a youngster experiencing the thrill ot his first share in a rescue—went about his duties with well-suppressed excitement as becomes a man privileged to wear one microscopic bar of wavy gold on his cuffs. He longed to have a chance to “talk” to the stricken ship; but it seemed as if his senior didn’t ever want to eat or rest again. And still the messages chattered on. Only 20 more miles to go; hut on the stricken vessel, Tom Nicolls had dropped the formalities of the air. His messages —so the papers said later—were pathetic human documents. ” We are almost done, Jack, old man. Yet I can almost manage a grin when I think of you pounding that old brass key. “ That was Nicolls’s way of bidding farewell to the only friend that mattered. Ten miles . . . five miles' . . . “ Hang on, Tim, we’re coming fast,” chattered the Atua transmitter. “Good for you, Jack. Everyone here game. Your last message cheered all. We might just ”

A blank, an unearthly blank that tells so much to the rescue ship. It meant that the Lavuka. had sunk or that the water had got at the power supply of

the radio and rendered it useless. Jack Hudson wearily reached for the ’phone to the bridge, when, faint but clear: Atua Atua can you hear me? working on small portable plant. Can see you now hurry. Jack smiled. It would take a lot to stop r ”om Nicolls from getting his messages out. ¥ ¥• * That rescue is history now. The world’s papers—and all the people that read them—found no little romance in the way Hudson and Nicolls —friends through thick and thin- —had kept an allnight vigil with impending doom. Their pictures looked out at people from page and screen and, by one of those miracles that sometimes happen, they were asked to accept two executive posit ions in a huge shore station. Letters showered in upon them, letters of admiration from mere stay-at-homes like you and me, letters from young ladies who saw in them the heroes of their hearts, letters from dear old ladies whose sons had gone to sea and who would never come back, and a letter from Irene.

She had. she said, been hasty and seen her mistake. If Jack thought they could start all over again, it was possible that she, too, might be of the same frame of mind.

But, hers was the only letter that wasn't answered. As Jack confided to Nicolls:

“ When I threw the poor old ring—it meant two months’ pay—over the side of the ship into the sea, 1 sort of felt that all the feeling I had for Irene went with it.”