“Sounds that way,” admitted Bob. “How far can they transmit messages, do you suppose?”
“About as far as they’ll ever want to, I guess. They have sent them thousands of miles already, even under unfavorable static conditions.”
“They must have a big antenna, then,” said Joe, somewhat skeptically. “They probably use a pretty long wave length.”
“The main antenna is suspended between the topmasts, and is over six hundred feet long. It’s about two hundred feet above the water, so you can see that they ought to get good results. The aerial is connected to a super-power vacuum-tube set of the latest design, and the transmitter can be operated on wave lengths of from one thousand eight hundred to two thousand eight hundred meters. Oh, I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind being in charge of that equipment.”
“Well, you’ll likely enough work up to it,” remarked Bob. “Somebody’s going to have the job, and why not you? You’re getting lots of experience on the _Meteor_, that’s certain.”
“Yes, there’s plenty to do. It develops your speed, if nothing else. And you have to be on the job every minute, too. We often get calls for help, and that possibility keeps us up on our toes.”
“While you have to work hard, you get fine chow, just the same,” put in Jimmy. “That dinner we had yesterday was a poem.”
“Trust Doughnuts to notice that,” laughed Herb. “I’ll bet you are bosom friends with the chief cook already, aren’t you, Jimmy?”
“Well, I’ve had one or two little talks with him,” admitted the fat boy. “He seemed to realize right away that I had sense enough to appreciate his good work, and we got quite chummy. He’s even promised to make me some doughnuts as soon as he gets a chance.”
“You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy,” said Joe, solemnly shaking his head. “There isn’t a place on earth that you could put Jimmy where he wouldn’t have obtained a plentiful supply of doughnuts within a day or two after his arrival. Put him on a cannibal island, and he’d have the king cooking doughnuts for him. Put him up at the North Pole, and he’d hunt up the champion Eskimo doughnut baker and have him on the job in no time. Wonderful, seems to me.”
“Oh, there’s nothing so wonderful about it,” said Bob. “It just goes to show what can be done when you put your heart into a thing. Probably if we hankered after dollars as much as Jimmy hankers after doughnuts, we’d all be millionaires by now.”