There was nothing exciting in this announcement for dad went off on business trips quite often, but when he said that he would take us with him and we’d go by steamer I immediately sat up and took notice, for I had wanted to make a sea voyage ever since I could remember. It may seem a little queer but although I lived almost within sight of the old Atlantic and picked up messages right along from coast liners, the only trip I had ever made was on a little steam launch that takes unwary pleasure victims from Asbury Park outbound toward Europe for about ten miles, or until every one’s gizzard is turned wrong-side-out (much to the delight of the fishes) and back again. I said _every one_ was sea-sick nigh unto death but as a matter of fact there were just three human beings aboard the _Snail_ that were able to step ashore like sober folks and walk a fairly straight line. I don’t want to do any bragging but these sole survivors of _mal-de-mer_ were the captain and the engineer, who made up the crew, and yours truly. To make a real ocean voyage on a sure enough steamer meant something more to me than just a sea-going trip, for a law had been passed some time before making it compulsory for all ocean passenger vessels to have a wireless outfit aboard and I was just _bugs_ to see a regular ship set in operation. For the next few days everything around home was a hurry-up place--like going away for the summer--and I was mighty glad when at last we took the Erie (not weary) railroad for Jersey City, where the _Pan-American Line_ had its docks. Once there, a couple of porters relieved us of our numerous pieces of hand baggage, and trailing along in the rear of dad and mom, I came aboard feeling like a duke. After we were shown our staterooms by the steward I made a bee-line for the wireless room, but found it locked, the operator not yet having put in an appearance. To kill time till he came I went up on the _hurricane deck_, that is the upper deck, to take a look at the aerial. It was formed of a couple of parallel wires about 200 feet long suspended between the masts and insulated from them by _strain insulators_ of the kind that was then known as the _Navy type_. I was standing close to one of the _funnels_ looking up at the aerial, which seemed to me to be a middling one--I had seen better and worse in Montclair--when all of a sudden there was a terrific noise set up and for a second I failed to cohere--that is I was nearly scared stiff. In an instant my _jigger_ was right again, for it was only the ship’s whistle blowing its deep throated blast to let those who had come aboard to say good-by to their friends who were sailing, know that it was time to go ashore, and to those ashore who wanted to take the boat know that they had better get a move on them if they expected to make it.