“Oh! I say, boy, I wonder if you would be so kind and condescending as to take this message to the Captain? Some other messages are likely to come in and I don’t want to leave my post.” Would I carry a message to the Captain? Why I’d carry one to the King of Abyssinia for a pleasant word from any professional operator. I felt that there was my chance to get a stand-in with his royal highness, the wireless man. After delivering the message to the Captain I returned with alacrity to the window of the wireless room. The operator loosened up but I didn’t tell him I was one of those fellows too. I had learned at first hand that professional operators hadn’t any use for wireless kids and that the only way to be friends with one was to be as dumb as a clam as far as wireless was concerned. This scheme worked out fine for after some talk he asked me of his own accord if I’d like to take a look at the apparatus. He opened the door and told me to “come right in” although on a card tacked on the wall in plain sight was printed this legend: Service Regulations for Operators. (1) The instrument room is strictly private. No strangers are allowed on the premises without a signed permit from the Managing Director. And this was followed by a dozen or more other rules and regulations. When I got inside the room the operator, whose name was Bathwick, began pointing out which part of the apparatus was the sender and which made up the receiver; this was the key; that the sending tuning coil, over here the condenser; under the table the transformer; on the wall the spark-gap; and altogether these make up the transmitter. This the crystal detector, the potentiometer, the tuning coil, the variable condenser and the head-phones make up the receiver and, finally the aerial switch, or _throwover switch_ as it is called, the purpose of which is to enable the operator to connect the aerial with the transmitter or the receiver, depending on whether he wants to send or to receive. I acted as if I had never seen a wireless set before; all went well until he had finished and then I let the cat out of the bag. He had a peculiar kind of a loose-coupled tuning coil that I had never seen before and I asked him how it was _wound_. He grinned at me with his big mouth and blue eyes and put out his open hand, palm side up. “Put it there, pal,” he said. “I was a wireless kid myself once.” We shook hands and it put me next to the fact that all professional operators are not alike and at the same time it gave me a pass to the wireless room whenever I wanted it. I almost lived there the rest of the voyage. Harry--I mean Bathwick--and I got so thick we began calling each other by our first names. He let me listen-in whenever I wanted to, and then after telling me all about the service regulations that had to do with the order in which the messages were sent, he let me try my hand at sending.