No Peak Too Lofty for a Weather Station.
No Peak Too Lofty for a Weather Station.
Taking recording instruments up a mountainside where there has never been a trail.
Copyright by J. Cecil Alter, U. S. Weather Bureau, Cheyenne, Wyo.
"What can a chap do?" asked Ross, aflame with eagerness.
The Forecaster looked at him thoughtfully, but before he answered, Anton piped in, with a plaintive note in his voice:
"Is there anything that I could do?"
In spite of himself, the Forecaster's glance fell on the crutch. Anton's intent gaze followed the look and he flushed. A sudden silence fell, the silence of an abiding tragedy from which all eyes are always turned, the tragedy of the disabled.
"Yes," he said with grave quietness, "there's a great deal that you can do."
The crippled lad regarded him steadily.
The steady rushing of the Mississippi in flood could be heard near by with its thousand miles of menace.
"We need work," the weather expert said, at last, "work with the heart behind it. Even now, the United States Weather Bureau has over four thousand co-operative observers, who work without pay, who work with their hearts behind their duties. Still, this is all too few."
Anton's gaze never wavered, but a question crept into his eyes.
"Yes," answered the Forecaster, "you can be one. I know your father well, and I'm sure that he will be guaranty for the instruments. The work of making and recording observations will be yours. Never late, never forgetting, never swerving from your duty, your post at the rain-gauge and the barometer will be as honorable and responsible a post as the soldier's at sentry-post or behind the gun."
The lad's eyes glowed more deeply.
"Storms, frosts, and droughts will be your enemies," the Forecaster continued, "and they never sleep and never give quarter. The lighthouse-keeper who lets his light go out and permits a ship to go unwarned to wreck upon the rocks is not more guilty than the Weather Observer who allows disaster to sweep, unwarned, upon his district. It is a trust, Anton. Can you and will you take it?"
The sun broke through the clouds, lighting up the yellow wood of the crutch and turning it into gold. It caught the boy's eye, but with a new significance. No longer would it stand between him and his future. There was something hecould do for his country, as well as though he were the strongest and best-built lad in all the neighborhood. Life, with its promises of work, opened before him.
"I'll take the trust," he answered simply.
"Fo' the land's sake, Mistah Anton, what fo' yo' puttin' up that pole on the grass?"
"So that I can find the sun, Dan'l," the crippled lad answered cheerily, as he held upright the pole, while Ross began to fill in the deep hole that the two boys had spent the morning in making.
"Yo' don't need no pole to find the sun," the old darky answered; "why, yonder's the sun, right up over yo' head."
"Is it right over my head, Dan'l?" the boy asked.
The negro, an old family servant, put his hand above his eyes and squinted at the sky.
"Not right over," he corrected himself, "but mighty near it."
"How near?"
Dan'l looked at the boy with a puzzled air.
"Ah don't jest know how near," he answered.
"That's the idea, exactly," Anton rejoined, "I want to know how near."
"Is this hyar another of your contraptions to tell what the weather's goin' to be like the year after next?" the plantation hand queried, taking advantage of his position as an old family appanage. The instruments had been a point of discussion all summer, for Dan'l prided himself on being a weather prophet, though he based most of his predictions on the behavior of the animals and birds around the farm.
"This is to tell time, not weather, Dan'l," Anton answered, "but we'll use it for weather, too."
The darky shook his head.
"Ah don't hold with none o' them glass things with silver runnin' up an' down in their insides, what you calls 'fermometers," he declared, "they're not nateral. Ah believe in signs. When, in the evenin', a rooster crows like he's done goin' to bust, ah knows sho' it's goin' to rain befo' mornin'."
He ambled up to Ross, who was busily shovelling in the earth.
"Hyar, Mist' Ross," he said, "let me do that for yo'. Yo' ought to ask old Dan'l when yo' got a job like that."
"That's all right," the older boy answered, readily yielding up the spade, however, and wiping the perspiration from his brow, "it is pretty hot, though."
"Yo' got no call to be workin' right near noon," the negro protested, "that's not fo' white folks. Fust thing yo' know, yo'll be havin' a sunstroke."
He shoveled vigorously as he talked, tamping the earth down hard.
"It's sho' goin' to be a hot summer," he said, "yo' only find the field-mouse nests where the shadder's thickest. Thar," he continued, patting down the earth level with his spade, "that's done now. Yas, suh, it's hot."
He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.
"You bet the sun's hot," the boy agreed, "but Mr. Levin told me the other day that we only get a two-billionth part of the heat put out by the sun. Did you know that, Ross? The sun has heat enough to warm two billion Earths as big as this one. Even at that, Dan'l, the amount of heat we get from the sun would make thirty-seven billion tons of freezing water boil in one minute."
The negro's jaw dropped.
"Yo' not fooling?" he said.
"Not a bit."
"Ah's hot," he said. "Ah's goin' to boil, soon."
"Cheer up, Dan'l. You'll cool off tonight," suggested the older lad. "Nearly everything that takes in heat has to give it out again. The earth, the sea and the dust in the air, all gradually let out some of the heat during the night. If it wasn't for that, everything would stay at the same temperature all night long. That's why it's always colder an hour before dawn than an hour after sunset.
"See, Dan'l, the earth and the air which take in heat easily and give off heat easily, by the end of the night, have got rid of a lot of their heat. At sea, though, where the water lets go its heat less easily, it is never as cold as on land. The thermometer shows when it's hot and when it's cold."
"Ah don't hold with none o' them fermometers," the old darky repeated.
"That's because you don't understand them," the crippled lad replied. "It's dead easy, though. You see, Dan'l, when a thing is hot it gets bigger and when it's cold it gets smaller, that is, most things do."
"Ah don't see that, nohow," the negro answered. "A red hot stove is just 'zackly the same size as when the fire's out."
"No, it isn't, as a matter of fact," the lad replied, "but you can't always see the difference. Iron does get bigger as it gets hot. You've seen the steel rails on railroad tracks, haven't you, Dan'l."
"Sho'."
"Did you ever notice that there's a little crack between each rail? In winter, the crack is quite wide."
The negro thought for a moment.
"Is that the crack that makes a train bump?"
"Yes, that's it. Now, Dan'l, on a hot day in summer, you can't see any crack there at all, the rail has expanded or got bigger, and filled it up. On a frosty day in winter, there's a big crack, so big that you could drop a lead pencil between the ends of the rails. That's the difference of expansion on a steel rail between winter and summer."
"That's powehful little!"
"It's quite a good deal. I'll show you. Suppose, Dan'l, you had a small rubber ball filled with ink and there was a pipe out of the ball sticking straight up in the air, and suppose you put thatlittle rubber ball in the crack between the rails."
"Yes?"
"Then, on a cold day, the rubber ball would have room enough. It wouldn't be squeezed and all the ink would stay in it. On a hot day, as the end of rails came together, they would squeeze the ball and the ink would squirt up. As there wouldn't be anywhere for it to go except through the tube, it would shoot up the tube, wouldn't it?"
"Sho'."
"So that you could tell, by the height of the ink in the tube, how much the rails had come closer together, or expanded. As the only thing that would make them expand would be the heat, you could measure the heat that way, couldn't you?"
"Ah reckon yo' could."
"That's what a thermometer does, Dan'l. The little bulb at the bottom contains something that's easily swelled by the heat. In a hot climate, quicksilver is used, because it doesn't boil except at a heat much greater than the air ever gets, though it freezes easily; in a cold climate, they use alcohol because it doesn't freeze except at a degree of cold much colder than the atmosphere ever gets, though it boils easily."
"Yo' fermometer's got blood in it!"
"No, the alcohol is colored, so that you can see it easily, Dan'l, that's all. The quicksilver, or the alcohol, is put into a little bulb and up from this bulb there runs a tube. That tube is awfully thin, sometimes a hundred times thinner than a hair. When a tube is as thin as that, even a tiny amount of expansion or contraction will make the quicksilver run up the tube or down. If you watch that thermometer I've got in that white shelter over there, Dan'l, you can easily tell when it's hotter and colder. It's nearly always hotter around noon."
"It's sho' mighty near noon now," Dan'l declared.
"How do you know?"
"Ah can tell that fo' sho', yas, suh!"
"How, Dan'l?"
"By mah own fermometer, Mist' Ross, an' that's mah inside. Right about five minutes befo' noon, thar's a little knock that says 'Tap, tap,' Dan'l, yo're hungry.' An' that knockin's always right, Mistah Ross. Ah sho' is hungry right at that hyar time."
"It hasn't knocked yet, Dan'l, has it?"
The darky looked thoughtful.
"Ah hasn't felt it," he answered, "but Ah's got a feelin' that Ah can expect it now 'most any minute."
"Well," the younger lad answered, watching the black shadow of the pole as it stretched along the ground almost to his feet, "we'll find out how near right your inside is."
He took a piece of steel tape from his pocket and handed it to his chum.
"How long is it, Ross?" he asked. He bent down eagerly and watched the measuring of the shadow.
"Four feet, six inches," the older lad announced.
The negro looked at the shadow a moment and then burst into a hearty laugh.
"What is it, Dan'l?"
"Why, Mistah Ross, it ain't no use for yo' to measure that! Yo' done forgot that a shadder don't stay still."
"Why not?"
"A shadder keeps movin' round. Yo' ought to have thought o' that," he added seriously.
"We thought of it, all right, Dan'l," Anton answered. "See, the line of the shadow's already on one side of the tape. Try it again, Ross!"
"Four feet, five inches and three quarters," came the reply.
"What fo' makes that shorter?" queried the negro.
"Dan'l," said the younger boy, reprovingly, "why don't you use that thick head of yours a little? When you get up in the morning, isn't your shadow longer than it is in the middle of the day?"
"Sho', it stretches away off yonder!"
"And in the evening?"
"Jest as far."
"And around noon-time?"
"It's right short."
"Then," said the crippled lad, "don't you see that if we measure where the morning shadow stops growing shorter and the afternoon shadow begins growing longer, that'll be the middle of the day?"
The darky slapped the side of his leg with a resounding smack.
"Who'd have thought o' that, now?" he said. "It sho' does look like you was right."
Ross bent down and measured the shadow.
"I think we'd better put in a peg to mark it," he said, looking up; "it doesn't seem to be changing so much. I can only make it five and five-eighths, now."
Anton stuck a sharpened peg in the ground and took out the little silver watch that had been given him on his birthday.
"It's not nearly twelve o'clock by my watch yet," he said.
"That's standard time," Ross reminded him; "don't forget that we're not right on the line of standard time here, Anton. That's New Orleans time you've got, not sun time."
"Is thar more'n one kind of time?" the darky asked. "Ain't time, jest time, all over?"
"I should say not!" declared both boys at once, "it's never the same true time at any two places in the world."
"That is," corrected Ross, "unless they happen to be due north and south."
"Yo' makin' a joke of me, Mistah Anton," declared Dan'l.
"Not a bit of it," replied Anton. "I'll show you just why. The sun rises in the east, doesn't it?"
"Sho'."
"So, if you walked a long way east, you'd see the sun quicker, wouldn't you?"
"Ah s'pose Ah would," the darky responded hesitatingly.
"And your watch would show that the sun rose earlier."
"Sho'!"
"So noon would come sooner, too. And if you walked west, it would be longer before the sun rose and noon would be later, that is, figured by your watch."
"Ah declah Ah never thought o' that!"
"So, you see, every place has a different time."
"But," the darky protested, "it's the same time when Ah goes to Vicksburg."
"Certainly," the lad answered, "and if you went away to Texas it would seem the same, but it really wouldn't be. The clocks change four times in the United States, don't they, Ross?"
"Yes, four times," the older lad agreed. "East of a line running through Buffalo, Wheeling, Asheville and Atlanta, time is called 'Eastern Time.' Everything west of that line is really an hour later, so the clock has to be put back an hour. If a train comes from the east into the station at Wheeling, at ten o'clock in the morning, and only stays in the depot five minutes, the timetable shows that it left at five minutes past nine."
"What-all happens to that yar hour?" asked Dan'l.
"It's just lost," Ross declared. "That standard of time, which is called 'Central Time,' reaches clear across to the middle of the Dakotas, and the eastern boundaries of Colorado, and New Mexico. There you lose another hour, 'Mountain Time' extending as far as the ridge of the Rockies. From there to the Pacific coast, it's called 'Pacific Time' and is another hour later.
"You see, Dan'l," he continued, "when it's noon in Washington and New York, it's eleven o'clock in Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans; ten o'clock in Butte, Cheyenne and Denver; and nine o'clock in Spokane, San Francisco and Los Angeles."
"Who-all fixed it up that way?"
"The railways," Ross answered, "but the various states have O.K.ed it. You've got to arrange the setting of time in some definite way for the handling of railroads and telegraphs and things of that sort. It seems funny, Dan'l, but if you send a telegram here to a friend in San Francisco, he'll get it, according to his watch, nearly two hours before you sent it."
Ross stooped down as he spoke, and again measured the shadow of the pole, as it lay stretched out like a black line across the grass.
"It's just the same!" he cried. "It's noon now!"
Anton promptly set his watch right by the sun.
"There's Mr. Levin coming," he announced, "let's show him that his watch is wrong. He's always so exact."
The boys came up to him, but before they could put their question, the Weather Man spoke.
"Well, boys," he said, "what are you after? Putting up a flag-pole? It's a little short, isn't it?"
"No, Mr. Levin," Anton answered, "that isn't a flag-pole, it's a new clock, and one that's always right!"
"How have you been making it?" the Forecaster asked, immediately interested.
Anton described the principles that the boys had used and especially the means adopted to ensure that the pole should be upright.
"Why don't you fix it so that you won't have to measure the length of the shadow every day?" queried the Forecaster. "It's quite easy when you know how."
"Won't you show us?" responded Anton.
"Certainly," the old Weather Man answered, getting out of his buggy. "I see," he continued, "you've got hold of the idea that when the sun casts the shortest shadow it must be true noon, because the sun is half-way between the longest shadow and the shortest. That means, of course, that the sun is at the meridian."
"Yes, sir."
"It would be much the same thing, wouldn't it, if you measured half the distance between the points on the horizon where the sun rose and the sun set?"
Ross thought for a moment.
"Yes," he said, "I suppose it would. But is that always the same?"
"How can it be anything else?" the Forecaster asked. "In winter the day is short and in summer it is long, but the meridian plane is always the same—that is, excepting for certain very small astronomical variations which would make no difference to you in the matter of measuring time. Let's get the meridian plane, first. Dan'l, do you suppose there's a pail of whitewash in the barn?"
Wall Sun-dial at Santa Barbara, Cal., on old Spanish mission.
Wall Sun-dial at Santa Barbara, Cal., on old Spanish mission.
Sun-dial at Hillside, N.Y., duplicate of that of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.
Sun-dial at Hillside, N.Y., duplicate of that of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.
"Yas, suh," the darky replied, "Ah knows there is."
"Go ahead and get it then," the observer asked, "and let me have a piece of string."
He fastened the string to the bottom of the pole and awaited the return of Dan'l with the whitewash. In a moment the old negro came back with the pail.
"Now," said the Forecaster, "I'm going to hold this string right at the end, and, holding it tightly, walk around the pole. What kind of a figure will that make?"
"A circle," answered the two boys.
"Right. Dan'l, you take the brush and whitewash a narrow line right behind my hand as I move the string round."
Dan'l stooped down and rapidly painted in the circle, as the Forecaster moved the string.
"Next," said the Weather Man, "we'll make another circle, a little closer in."
"At any special distance, sir?" asked Anton.
"No," was the reply. "It doesn't matter. Any distance at all will do."
A second, and again a third circle was thus made.
"Tie a piece of rope around the pole," was the next direction, "as high as you can reach."
This only took a minute.
"Now, boys," the Forecaster said, "all that you have to do is to watch when the shadow of the rope crosses those three circles. Put in a peg this evening when it crosses the inside one, then the middle and then the outside. To-morrow morning, mark with pegs the place where the shadow crosses the same circles on the other side, only, of course, it will cross the outer one first."
"Then what shall we do, sir?" asked Anton.
"Have you a long straight board?" he asked in reply.
"Plenty of them," the younger lad answered.
"Good. Well then, to-morrow morning lay that board so that its edge touches the two points where the shadow of the rope on the pole crossed the outer circle and let Dan'l whitewash a straight line joining the two points. Do the same with the second and with the inside circles."
"Yes?" queried the lad eagerly, "and then?"
"You'll have three parallel lines," the Forecaster said, "the outer one longer and the next two shorter. Bisect those lines. Do you know how to do that?"
The younger lad shook his head.
"Only by measuring with a bit of string and doubling the string," he said.
The Forecaster took a pencil and an envelope out of his pocket.
"It's quite simple," he explained. "Fasten a string to the peg at one end of the line you want to divide in half. Stretch the string along the line till you come to the end of this line. Then make a circle. Do the same thing from the other end of the line. That will give you two circles crossing one another. With the board, draw a straight line joining the points where the circles cross.
"To be exact, bisect the line on the middle and on the inner circles in the same way. You'll find they all come out the same. The bisecting line, reaching from the pole, and crossing the bisected lines is called the plane of the meridian. If I were you, I'd make that line a permanent mark by pressing into the ground a row of stones, or those white clay marbles. Then the rain can destroy the other whitewash lines, without doing any harm, because you've got what you were after."
"But how is that going to show the time?" queried Ross.
"Because," said the Forecaster with a smile, "whenever the shadow of the pole lies along theline of white marbles, which marks the meridian plane, it is exactly twelve o'clock by sun time."
"Without any measuring as to length?"
"Without any measuring at all."
"That ain't no clock, Mistah Levin," the darky announced in a superior way. "Ah don't hold with no clock like that."
"Why not, Dan'l?"
"Ah gets hungry other times besides noon," he said. "Ah'd only eat once a day by that clock. No, suh, Ah wants a clock that tells every hour o' the day, not jest noon-time.
"Ah got another clock that don't never need no mending, not in summer-time," continued Dan'l. "My marigolds open at seven sharp every mornin' an' wink their eyes at me an' say 'Dan'l, yo're hungry,' and Ah sho' is. An' jest before six o'clock in the evenin', the white moon-flowers say, 'Dan'l, time fo' supper and yo' little white bed.' An' dey's right, too. Don't need no sun-clocks."
"I'm like Dan'l," put in Anton, "I'd like to be able to tell every hour, not just twelve o'clock only!"
"Well," the Forecaster answered cheerfully,"you can make your sun-clock that way if you like."
"Can we, sir?" asked Anton. "How?"
"By using your pole as the style or upright of a sun-dial. Before clocks were invented, people told the time by sun-dials, and there was a whole science of sun-dials, called gnomonics. It was quite a difficult mathematical science. Even after clocks and watches came into use, sun-dials continued to be used as time-pieces, because watches and clocks were expensive and there were few mechanics who could mend them."
"I've been wondering—" began Anton.
"Let's make a sun-dial here, Mr. Levin?" asked Ross, finishing Anton's sentence. "We can, can't we?"
"Certainly. You can make a sun-dial anywhere. If you had to do it without a watch, you might find it a little difficult, of course, but it can be done. For example, I can tell you off-hand that for this latitude here, the angle between noon and eleven o'clock, is a little over nine degrees, while it is nearly ten degrees at New York.
"Since you've got a watch, however, it's quite easy. Your meridian line marks twelve o'clock, and a line drawn at right angles to it, from thebase of the pole, inclined to an angle corresponding to the latitude, will mark six o'clock, morning and evening. If you'll put in a peg on the circle that Dan'l whitewashed, exactly at the place where the shadow touches when it is one o'clock, two o'clock and so forth on your watch, the watch having been made to agree with the shadow at noon, your sun-dial will be right all the year, round. You don't need to mark anything earlier than four in the morning or later than eight in the evening, as even on the longest day, here, the sun does not rise before that time nor set after it. You don't have to get up before six o'clock to mark the hours, as the lines are the extension of the four and five lines of the afternoon."
"Let's do it!" cried Anton. "We'll make a clock with white stones, just that way! Couldn't I divide it up into five minute distances, like a regular clock, Mr. Levin?"
"Yes," the Forecaster answered, "if your circle is big enough. And if you wanted to do the thing in the way that it used to be done, you could have a little motto running all around the circle, just picked out in white stones."
"What kind of a motto, sir?"
"All kinds were used," the other answered, "I remember one that read 'Pass On'; another 'Do not linger'; but the one I like best is the old Latin one which ran 'I count only the bright hours.' I suppose you've heard the story of the American sun-dial motto?"
"No, sir," said both boys together.
"You knew that the sun-dial is one of the official emblems of the United States?"
"I never heard of it," Ross exclaimed.
"It is. It was used on some of the earliest American coins. Last century, in London, one of the courts of justice, known as the Inner Temple, gave an order to a sun-dial maker to put up a dial. He asked for a motto, and was told to come the next day for it. Next day it was not ready, nor the day after. Still the dial-maker persisted. At last, one day, in making his request, he interrupted an important meeting, and the chairman turned to him quite impatiently and said:
"'Sirrah! Begone about your business!'
"'A very good motto,' said the dial-maker, not realizing that the command was meant personally for him, and he engraved the words on the dial. When the lawyers of the Inner Temple saw themotto, they agreed that nothing could be better, though it had never been intended.
"When our first coinage was discussed, Benjamin Franklin was on the committee and he suggested that a sun-dial should be used. As, however, the coinage would go to the people instead of the people going to the sun-dial, he suggested the old motto with a change. This motto read:
"'Mind Your Business!'"
"That's good, too," exclaimed Anton.
"Very good. So that phrase was engraved on the American coinage, and on some money that was issued by the State of New York, over a century ago. You could use whichever motto you liked best."
"I'll use the American one!" declared Anton enthusiastically. "I've a lot of those marbles. I'm going right off now to see if I haven't enough."
He shifted his crutch to a more comfortable position under his arms and pegged across the yard to the house as hard as he could go.
"I've noticed," said the Forecaster, as he looked after the limping boy, "that Anton seems a lot happier since the flood. He used to be such a mournful little fellow."
"It's this weather work you started him on," the boy answered. "It means a lot to him."
"Ross," said the Weather expert, "I've been thinking a good deal about Anton and about all the rest of you boys in this neighborhood. Issaquena county is over ninety per cent colored and there aren't very many of you white boys, but the dozen or so that are here seem to me to be mighty good American stuff."
"They're a dandy lot," Ross agreed.
"Have any of you boys thought at all about what's going to happen to Anton, when he grows up? His father hasn't money enough to send him to college, or anything like that, especially since he lost so much by the flood, and, being a cripple, Anton's not going to have much of a chance on the plantation."
"I hadn't thought of it," Ross answered, "but it does seem as if he were up against it, doesn't it?"
"Why don't you boys make it easy for him?"
"How, Mr. Levin? We would in a minute, any of us. Everybody likes Anton."
"Look here," said the Weather Man, putting his hand on Ross's shoulder, "I know from experience that when you suggest something worthdoing to a bunch of American boys, they're mighty apt to go ahead with it. Now, as you said yourself, Anton seems to have a real interest in these weather observations. His father tells me he's never two minutes late in taking them. Making this sun-dial is another example of the same thing. What I'm thinking is this—why couldn't Anton be taken in hand and taught to fit himself for the Weather Bureau? I'll teach him mathematics as my share, but you boys will have to do your bit."
"What could we do?"
"Suppose—of course, without letting Anton know why you're doing it—suppose you boys got together and took up this weather plan as a sort of outdoor club. You could meet here at Anton's place. If all his chums were interested and having a natural earnestness, I'm sure he'd work like fury at it. It would give him a real chance, and, what's more, I believe you chaps would like doing it."
"Make a Weather Bureau of our own, Mr. Levin? I think it would be great!"
"I think myself that you'd get a lot of fun out of it," said the Forecaster, "but the real idea is that you'd be helping Anton, yes, helping himmore even than when you rescued him from the drifting house during the flood, because you'd be giving him a start in life. It's a piece of work that's worth the doing, Ross."
"It's a bully scheme, sir," agreed the boy, waving his hand to another lad who was coming up the road. "I'm game to do all I can."
"You'll have a good deal to do," the Weather Man warned him. "I know you're practically the leader of the neighborhood and the boys follow you. I've spoken to a few of the fellows and asked them to meet me here this afternoon, but I wanted to see you first. I've just come from your house and they said you were over here. It's got to be a boys' deal, through and through."
Ross thought for a moment.
"You said, sir, we oughtn't to let Anton know. I think, perhaps, we ought to keep it dark. But I'd like to talk to Bob Portlett about it, if you don't mind. He doesn't talk much, but the chaps put a lot of stock in what he says. Bob and I are pretty thick, you know."
"Of course, talk things over with him. I spoke to him about it yesterday. You two go into executive session, while I go up to the house a minute."
He nodded to Bob and strode off across the yard.
"Levin been talking to you about Anton, Bob?" Ross asked, as soon as the Forecaster was out of hearing.
"Yes," answered Bob, in his abrupt way. "He said you knew all about it."
"He only sprung it on me just a few minutes ago," Ross rejoined, "but I think it's a dandy idea," and he proceeded to relate to his friend the outline of the plan. When he had finished, Bob nodded his head.
"Count me in," he said, "I'll do anything for Anton."
"What'll you do?"
"Wireless," was the brief reply.
"What's that got to do with weather?"
"A lot. I got my new big sending apparatus yesterday and I've got a transmitting license."
"Have you?" said Ross in surprise. "I thought they were so awfully hard to get. Don't you have to pass an examination, or something?"
"Yes. I passed it. I've still got the small apparatus I used to have, the one you know. I'll give that to Anton, teach him to work it. He can send me his observations and I'll transmit. I'vea lot of amateur stations on my string. How's that?"
"Fine!" declared Ross enthusiastically, "it would keep the observations up to scratch if the chaps knew they were going to be used. Who else do you think would join in?"
One by one the two lads discussed the other boys in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, many of them had arrived and were clustering around Mr. Levin and Anton, asking innumerable questions about the new sun-dial. Dan'l was giving out information freely, and one of the puppies had taken exception to the whitewash line and was barking at it with high puppy-toned barks. Presently Ross caught the Forecaster's eye, and came over and joined the group.
"I've just been telling the fellows, Ross," said the Weather Man, speaking as though the lad knew nothing about it, "that we've a good chance in this county to give a hand to the Weather Bureau. I'm out of the work, now, of course, but my heart's in it yet, and I'd like to see Issaquena County put on the map. We haven't got an observer's station in the entire county. Weather's the most important thing in the world and we've only just begun to learn how wonderful it is.
The First Line of Defence Against the Tempest.
The First Line of Defence Against the Tempest.
Headquarters of the U. S. Weather Bureau, at Washington, D. C., where every wind and cloud that passes over the United States is chronicled and watched; the greatest forecast office in the world.
Courtesy of U. S. Weather Bureau.
"Every one of you boys has seen what it means when the Mississippi gets in flood, and most of you could guess what would have happened last spring if the Weather Bureau hadn't given any warnings. As it was, nobody was drowned, all the way down the river. In the Johnstown Flood, just because it was a case in which no warning could be given, over two thousand people were killed.
"Think of it, boys, if we could get together and map out the weather in every square mile of this county, we could make this district the best kept and most famous meteorological centre in the world!
"I know, sometimes, it seems as if we were a good deal out of things, here. There's not a town of any size in the county, one day's a good deal like another, and we're apt to think of places like New York, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco as being the fighting centres of the nation's life.
"Yet, right here, right over our heads, the never-ending battle of the weather goes on, with its brigades of warring clouds, its wind-cavalry and its artillery of storm. The sky holds more secrets than the city does and there's a lot ofadventurous work to be done. Which of you is game to do it? Who'll volunteer?"
An excited babble of answers greeted him.
"I will, Mr. Levin!" cried one.
"Sure!" said another.
"Put me down for it," proclaimed a third, voicing the general sentiment.
Ross brought the matter to a point.
"The way I feel about it," he said, "I reckon we'd all like to tackle something like that. And, I tell you, chaps, it would be bully for us to have a club-house of our own."
"A club-house!" cried one.
"Yes," said Ross, "Anton's father is ready to give us the old barn. He says we can fix it up any way we like."
"All for our own?"
"Yes, to do anything we like with. Mr. Levin has given me some bully ideas about things we can do, and Bob's thought up a scheme that's just great!" and he proceeded to explain the lad's offer of wireless.
The enthusiasm of the boys was rapidly growing. With the Forecaster behind him, with Anton's rain-gauge, with the new sun-dial staring them in the face, with Bob's plan for the wirelessplant, with a club-house of their own and the admitted leadership of Ross, the whole group was swinging into line.
"Tell you what I'll do for my share, fellows," said another of the boys. "You know that printing-press of mine?"
"You mean the one you printed the pirate flags on, Fred?" queried Ross, referring to the Treasure Island period when the boat was made.
"Yes. Ever since Dad found that he had to use the shed I used to keep the press in, I haven't had much chance to get at it. I'll ship the press over here, if there'd be room for it in our club-house," the words were said with great pride. "We could print a little weekly paper. I wanted to do that last year, but Dad said that he didn't want me to print nothing but gossip, and there didn't seem anything else to write. If we really had some stuff worth reading, like weather news, I'm sure I could make it go. Enough, anyhow, to pay for paper and mailing."
"You think we ought to issue a regular weather bulletin," said Ross. "That's a good notion, Fred."
"I'll let you have some of my stories," said one.
"Or Fatty's jokes," suggested another, dodging a nudge of the elbow from his neighbor.
"A weather bulletin would be a good thing," the Forecaster said, approvingly.
"What could the rest of us do?" asked an alert youngster. "I haven't a printing-press, or a wireless apparatus or anything else."
"Nor have I," said two or three voices.
The Forecaster looked quickly at Ross. This was a crucial point. It was Anton who answered.
"You've got plenty of wind at your place, Lee, haven't you?" he asked.
The lad laughed.
"Pop says it's the windiest place in the county," he answered, "poked right up there on the top of that knoll."
"You ought to be the official wind-measurer," the crippled lad declared. "There is a way to measure wind, isn't there, Mr. Levin?"
"Certainly," the Forecaster answered, "it's a very necessary thing to do, too."
"Pete's camera!" interjected the laconic Bob.
"What's the good of that?" broke in its owner. "You can't snap-shot the wind, at least not that I've ever seen."
"Clouds!" said Bob.
"That's right," agreed Anton, "you could photograph the clouds, Pete. Suppose you took a snap-shot of the sky every day, at the same time, for a year, it would make a peach of a series."
"The Bureau at Washington would be glad of a series like that," put in the Forecaster. "So far as that's concerned, Pete, I'd buy a daily print for my own use. I couldn't pay much, of course, but enough to meet the cost of materials."
Pete brightened up.
"I'll do that, quicker'n a wink," he said. "I've snapshotted about everything else around here, but I never thought of the sky."
"You could tackle eclipses and halos and rainbows and lightning—all sorts of things," suggested Anton.
"Right-o!" answered Pete, "you can put me down as official photographer."
"I don't see," said one of the smaller lads, "where that rain-gauge is so hard to make. I'll make one and put it up at my place."
"Dad's got an old barometer," suggested another, "that he used to have when he was a steamboat skipper. I'm sure he'd let me have it. It's in the attic now, where nobody looks at it."
"Some of us might measure the amount of sunshine," said Ross. "Isn't there some way of doing that, Mr. Levin?"
"Indeed there is," the Forecaster replied. "Why, in some places, they run machinery by sunshine. There is a big solar engine at Pasadena, in California, where they pump water and irrigate an orchard just by an arrangement of mirrors. Even a small one would run quite a good-sized engine."
"Gimme that! Oh, gimme that!" burst in another of the boys, who had been passive theretofore but who was absorbed in mechanics. "I'll be tickled to have an engine run by sunshine."
The Weather Forecaster looked around with a smile at the enthusiastic group.
"It seems to me," he said, "that with an official photographer, an official wind-measurer, an official sunshine recorder, an official wireless station, a club-house and an editor with an official publication, 'The Mississippi League of the Weather' is mighty well launched on its way.
"Now, I'm going to have the fun of making the first motion. I move you, Mr. Chairman, that the League come into the house and hold its first official feast!"
"Where's the boss?" queried a strange voice, one afternoon.
The entire mechanical staff of theIssaquena County Weather Herald, consisting of Fred Lang, publisher and editor-in-chief, aged fifteen, and a general assistant with the blackest face and the whitest teeth in the county, aged seventy, named Dan'l, turned at the question.
"Why?" asked Fred.
The stranger stepped into the office of theHerald.
"I'd be wishful to see the foreman," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "that's if he's not too busy."
Fred grinned in response.
"I guess I'm the foreman," he said.
"I'm lookin' for a job," the new-comer explained.
"What kind of a job?"
"Any kind of a job in a printin' shop," theIrishman replied. "I'm an old-timer. There's nothin' about printin' I don't know."
"Have you seen a copy of our paper?" asked Fred.
"I have so," was the reply, "I've got it with me, right here." He pulled from his pocket the latest number of the little four-page sheet. "'Tis an illigant publication," he went on, "but I'm thinkin' that you're in sore need of a printer."
"Does it look so bad?" queried the "foreman." "The worst of it is, I don't know how to make it any better."
"I'm not saying that it's bad, but there's a deal to be learnt about printin'," the journeyman declared. "I'm thinkin' your compositor hasn't had overmuch experience."
"He hasn't," the boy admitted. "I'm him. Dan'l helps me all he can, but since he can't read, it makes it bad."
"Give me the job," said the Irishman, "an' I'll make the paper look right."
"I can't," Fred replied. "The subscriptions hardly pay for the paper and the ink. I give Dan'l thirty cents a week for wages to run the press and it's hard to scrape up that much, because Mr. Levin says I mustn't pay out a centthat theHeraldhasn't actually earned. What wages do you want?"
"Three dollars a day when I'm workin'," the journeyman printer replied, "an' the good green grass to sleep on and a hunk of corn-bread to eat when I'm not."
The young editor looked at the journeyman printer with a sudden eagerness.
"I've got four dollars and a half saved up," he said, "that's a day and a half's wages. Will you teach me all about printing in a day and a half? That isn't office money, that's my own, but, you see, it's for me."
"I'll teach ye for nothin'," said the Irishman, pleased at the boy's pluck, "if ye'll give me a bite to eat an' a place to sleep."
Fred shook his head.
"No," he said, "Mr. Levin won't let any of us boys take something for nothing. I'd sooner pay. It would be great if you could get out this week's number for us, and let me see how you do it. I'd learn a heap that way, and it would be just the stuff I want to know. Then the number you got out we could use for something to go by. But you'll have to do it in a day and a half, because that's all the money I've got. Can you?"
"I can that," the printer answered, "an' I'll pay for my board out of it, so that you won't be spending all your money."
"Can't do that either," said the boy, "because that would make it Anton's Dad's money, not mine. If you want to pay him, all right."
The Irishman stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
"I'll be lookin' to see what fonts o' type ye have in the shop," he declared, and examined the forms which were lying on the rough table.
"Did anny one ever show you annything about printin'?" he asked presently.
"No," said the boy, "I got this printing-press from a chap whose brother used to run it. The fellow who owned it was going to show me how it worked, but he went away and hasn't come back."
"Watch me a while," the journeyman responded and began to unlock the forms that had stood since the issue of the week before. It was a revelation to the boy to see how the trained fingers of the printer sorted, classified, and arranged the type. Talking steadily, in his Irish fashion, the journeyman explained how the type should be set up, showed that they had beenusing twice as much ink as necessary, warned them against pinching the type too closely, explaining that this "put the letters off their feet," and, by altering the arrangement of the sheet, improved its appearance a thousandfold. These routine matters were quickly adjusted, and then the printer asked for the copy which was to fill the first page.
"It's just got here," the young editor answered. "I haven't looked over it yet, but I guess it's all right. I had a wireless yesterday that one of our chaps was sending in a corking description of a sunset, or rather a sort of description of all the sunsets in the last month. Here it is."
He handed the pages of boyish handwriting to the journeyman, who looked over them hastily.
"'Tis fine stuff, entirely," he said in surprise. "I'd be wishful to take some copies of the paper for myself. Listen to this now!" And, turning the sheets, the enthusiastic Irishman read aloud:
"'Sunsets all look different, but when you write down what you see, one right after the other, they seem to be quite alike, that is, when the sky is clear. When the sun begins to set, and there are not many clouds, the lowest part of the sky is more different from the rest of it than in daytime. In the west—at the side of the setting sun—the sky looks white, changing to yellow. In the north and south, it is a dull yellow, which gets yellower. In the east, it is a dirty yellow, which changes slowly into a dull purple. All these yellows are duller at the horizon than a little way above. The purple in the east looks gray at the sky-line but shades into blue, higher up.'
"'Tis an illigant style the boy has," declared the journeyman, and continued:
"'Just as soon as the sun begins to drop below the horizon, an ash-colored plate (the shadow of the earth) begins to creep up the eastern sky, covering part of the purple bit and making it look like a purple rainbow. Soon the shadow covers all the purple light in the east.