“Anything coming yet?” he asked more than once as Jack sat alert, waiting for the first word from the doctor who was to treat a surgical case across three hundred miles of ocean.
The silence was tense and taut, and broken only by the heavy breathing of the injured engineer.
“What is the man doing?” said the captain impatiently at length.
“It takes even shore doctors time to give a correct diagnosis in some cases, sir,” ventured Jack gravely. “I suppose he is considering the conditions.”
“Absent treatment at three hundred miles,” muttered the captain. “Ready, I begin to believe that this is a crack-brained bit of business, after all.”
“Wait a minute,” warned Jack, holding up his hand to command attention, “here is something coming now!”
His pencil flew over the pad and then stopped while he flashed back:
“Thanks, that’s all for now. I’ll cut in again when we are ready for the next step.”
He turned to the captain and read slowly from his pad the doctor’s directions for treating the injury.
“He says that, from your description, there are no bones broken. The arm is merely crushed,” said the boy; and then, bit by bit, he read off the far-distant surgeon’s directions for treating the injured member. As he read, the captain and his assistant amateur surgeons plied dressings and antiseptics with diligent care.
At last the doctor of the _Parisian_ said that he had no more advice to give that night, but flashed a prescription for a soothing draught to be compounded from the ship’s medicine chest.
By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully without any symptoms of fever, and Jack cut off communication with the distant liner after promising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured arm in a sling, sat on the edge of Jack’s bunk. They had passed out of range of the _Parisian_, but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the crushed arm was getting along well, and the “wireless doctor” had left instructions for the treatment of the case as it progressed.
“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for me, all right, with those Hertzian waves of yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I feel about it. But how in the world did you ever come to think of such a stunt?”