Before long there was a lull in the flood of messages, and when time came for dinner, he signaled the San Francisco office to hold up any further communications for an hour or so, threw off his receiver, and joined his friends at the table.
"Well, Bert, how does she go?" asked Dick, who sat at his right, while Tom and Ralph faced them across the table.
"Fine," answered Bert, enthusiastically. "It isn't work; it's pleasure. I'm so interested in it that I almost grudge the time it takes to eat, and that's something new for me."
"It must be getting serious, if it hits you as hard as that," said Tom, in mock concern. "I'll have to give the doctor a tip to keep his eye on you."
"Oh, Bert just says that, so that when he gets seasick, he'll have a good excuse for not coming to meals," chaffed Ralph.
"Well, watch me, fellows, if you think my appetite is off," retorted Bert, as he attacked his food with the avidity of a wolf.
"By the way," asked Dick, "what arrangements have you made for any message that may come, while you are toying with your dinner in this languid fashion?"
"I've told the San Francisco man to hold things up for a while," replied Bert. "That's the only station we're likely to hear from just now, and the worst of the rush is over. After we get out of range of the land stations, all that we'll get will be from passing ships, and that will only be once in a while."
"Of course," he went on, "theoretically, there ought to be someone there every minute of the twenty-four hours. You might be there twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes, and nothing happen. But, in the last minute of the twenty-fourth hour, there might be something of vital importance. You know when that awful wreck occurred last year, the operator was just about to take the receiver from his head, when he caught the call. One minute later, and he wouldn't have heard it and over eight hundred people would have been lost."
"I suppose," said Ralph, "that, as a matter of fact, there ought to be two or three shifts, so that someone could be on hand all the time. I know that the Company is considering something of the kind, but 'large bodies move slowly,' and they haven't got to it yet."
"For my part," chimed in Tom, "I should think that with all the brains that are working on the subject, there would have been some way devised to make a record of every call, and warn the operator at any minute of the day or night."