Great Lakes (North America) -- Fiction; Radio operators -- Fiction; Ship captains -- Fiction; Ships -- Fiction; Short stories
We were going ahead again, and I could feel that our nose was turned so
that we would land farther out along the point. Suddenly the
engine-room bell clanged again. Again I saw the breakwater approach us
and recede, this time coming much closer than before, too close for the
comfort of some of the passengers near me. They were asking me about
the advisability of protesting to the skipper when he looked aft and
caught sight of me.
“Go below,” he roared at me, “and get that message. She’s calling.”
I knew there was no one calling, but there was nothing to do but go
down again. And then the unexpected happened. There was some one
calling!
“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it said over and over again in dots and dashes. It was
a strange signal, and the tone was unlike any I had ever heard on the
Lakes. Perhaps in my amazement the unfamiliarity of it was exaggerated,
but it was a queer signal.
“SSE, SSE, SSE,” it went on, and finally, after a whining crescendo, it
said, “SSE, Anna.” And that was all.
I wrote it out on a piece of paper and took it up on the bridge. The
captain looked at it, and a strange light came into his eyes. He dashed
into the wheelhouse, and pushing aside the quartermaster, slowly swung
the ship until her nose pointed south southeast. Then he rang for more
speed ahead. Once again the shore line came into view. We could see
both sides of the breakwater this time. We were aimed directly at the
center of the opening.
As we passed the crib at the end of the north breakwater I noticed a
small craft tied to it. Dimly I could see that on the stern was painted
the one word “Anna.”
This explained the strange signals and the bearing we had secured. I
suppose that from her position near the breakwater the Anna could see
our masts sticking up in the air. This explanation was not so
satisfactory later on when I called the _Anna_ again but got no word
from her.
Within five minutes we were steaming toward Houghton, where we arrived
not over half an hour late and with plenty of time for the passengers
to buy copper doodads and for me to learn through one of the men at the
railroad station that the _Anna_ was a Swedish boat that some foolhardy
youth from Stockholm had crossed the Atlantic in. He had relatives in
Minnesota. There was nothing strange about this--Swedish youths are
always doing foolish things--except the fact that Swedish vessels have
radio call letters beginning with S, so that the call “SSE” which I
heard was probably the call signal of the craft. It was apparently just
coincidence that the letters I had picked up gave us the bearing we
needed.
At six that night I went on watch, and later the skipper came in.
“Well, young man, I must thank you for getting that message this
morning. I always thought that if I ever got into trouble with fog I
would get a message from Anna.”
“Anna?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said simply. “My wife sent the message. Her name was Anna.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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