CHAPTER V
MAN OVERBOARD!
Several other reporters gathered about Larry, who stood blushing at the attention he was attracting. He hardly knew whether to accept the money or not. One of his fellow newspaper workers saw his confusion.
“Take it,” he whispered. “It's all in the game, and you won it fairly. I'll keep it for you until you get dressed.”
Larry accepted the offer, and gave the money to his friend, who put it in his pocket until the lad had his clothes on once more.
There were a number of other games and sports after this, and then the members of the club, thoroughly tired out with the day's fun, went aboard the boat for the trip home. There was not much excitement on the way back, and Larry was beginning to fear he might have missed the story.
He thought perhaps there had been politics talked which he had not overheard, and he was worried lest Mr. Emberg would think he had not properly covered the assignment.
Larry ventured to hint at this to some of the other reporters, but they all told him that, contrary to all expectations, there had been no politics worth mentioning discussed on the outing.
“Just make a general story of it,” advised the reporter who had held the money for Larry. “None of us are looking for a beat.”
So Larry made his mind easier. A little later the boat made a stop at a dock to let off several members who had decided to go the rest of the way home by train. The newspaper men, with the exception of Larry, decided, also, to go home on the railroad.
“Better come along,” they said to Larry. “You'll get no more story.”
“Probably not,” rejoined Larry, “but I'll stay just the same. The boss told me to keep on the job until it was over, and it isn't over until the boat ties up at the last dock.”
“You'll soon get over that nonsense,” said the reporter, with a laugh, as he left the craft. The boat resumed her way up the river, and Larry, who was quite tired out, was beginning to think he was to have his trouble for his pains in explicitly following instructions. There seemed no more chance for news, since most of the men were resting comfortably in chairs, or lounging half-asleep in the cabins. Even the band was too tired to play.
It was getting dusk, and Larry was wondering what time he would get home. He walked about the upper deck, and gazed off across the water.
Suddenly there sounded a commotion on the deck below him. Then came a splash in the water.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!” sung out several deckhands. “Lower a boat!”
At once the steamer was the scene of confusion. Men were running to and fro, a hurried jangle of bells came from the engine room, and the craft slackened speed.
“Turn on the searchlight!” cried someone, and soon the beams from the big glaring beacon were gleaming on the dark waters aft the boat.
“There he is, I see his head!” cried someone at the stern, casting a life buoy toward the figure of the man who had toppled over the rail.
“Who is it?”
“Who threw him in?”
“How did it happen?”
“Is he dead?”
These were a few of the confused cries that came from all parts of the steamer. But while most of the excursionists were greatly excited, the members of the crew of the craft remained calm. They quickly lowered a boat, and, by the aid of the glare from the searchlight, were able to pick out the swimming figure of the man. They headed the boat toward him, and in a little while hauled him into the small skiff. Then they rowed back to the steamer, the rail of which was crowded with anxious friends of the unlucky one.
“Did you save him?” they cried, for they could not see whether their friend was in the boat or not.
“Sure!” cried several of the crew, and one added: “He's all the better for a little salt water!”
“This will make a good part of the story,” thought Larry, as he watched the craft drawing nearer. “I guess the other fellows will wish they had stayed aboard.”
When the skiff reached the steamer, and the crew, and rescued one, had been taken aboard, there were scores of demands to know how it all happened.
“I'll tell you,” said the victim of the accident. “I was sleeping on two camp-stools close to the rail. I got to dreaming I was making a political speech, and I was walking up and down the platform telling the audience what a fine party the Democratic one is.
“I must have walked a little too far, for, the first thing I knew, I had stepped over the edge of the platform, and the next thing I knew I was falling. I woke up in the river, and struck out. That's about all.”
“Lucky for you the searchlight was working,” remarked one of the man's friends, “or you might have been on the bottom of the river by now.”
“Well, you see,” said the man, with a smile, as he wiped the water from his eyes. “I ate so many clams, lobsters, and crabs to-day that when I got down there the river thought I was a sort of a fish, and so it didn't drown me.”
Larry made inquiry, and found out the man's name. He made notes of the occurrence, and, the next morning, on reaching the office, wrote up a lively story of the happening.
He said nothing to Mr. Emberg about being the only reporter on the boat when the thing happened. But that afternoon, when all the other papers came out, and, like the morning issues, had no account of the rescue of the man, who was a prominent politician, the city editor said:
“I hope you weren't 'faking' that story, Larry?” and Mr. Emberg looked serious, for he did not want any of the reporters to “fake,” or write untrue accounts of matters.
“No, sir, it actually happened,” said Larry, and he related how he came to be the only newspaper reporter at the scene. A little later Mr. Newton came in.
“Say,” he asked, “did we have a story of a man falling overboard on that Democratic outing? I just heard of it on the street as I was coming in.”
He had not been in that morning, being out of town on a story.
“Oh, Larry was on hand as usual,” replied the city editor, for by this time he was convinced that Larry's account was true. “He has given us another beat.”
And so it proved, for the Leader was the only paper in New York that had an account of the incident, and nearly all of the later editions of the afternoon sheets had to use the story, copying it from the Leader.
“It was a good beat, and a good story of the outing besides,” said Mr. Emberg, shortly after the last edition had gone to press, for he liked the half-humorous manner in which Larry had written about the sack race and the other sports in which the members of the club had indulged. “You are doing fine work,” he added, at which praise Larry felt much gratified.
Things were slacking up a bit in the office, now that the paper had gone to press for the day, when one of the reporters who was looking over the front page suddenly cried out:
“Here's a bad mistake in that account of the meeting of the County Republican Committee last night. It says Jones voted for Smith for chairman, and that's wrong. I was there. The compositor must have made a mistake. It ought to be corrected, or it will make trouble.”
“I'm afraid it's too late,” remarked Mr. Emberg, as he grabbed a paper to see the error. “The presses are running, and part of the last edition is off. The only way we can do is to have them smash Jones's name, and blur it so no one can tell what it is. That's what I'll do.”
He tore part of the page off, marked out the name to be smashed, and called to Larry, there being no copy boys in the room then:
“Here, Larry, go down in the pressroom, and tell Dunn, the foreman, to smash that name.”
Though Larry had been on the paper some time he had never been in the pressroom. Nor did he know what the operation of smashing a name might mean, but he decided the best thing to do would be to carry the message.
He hurried down to the basement. As soon as he opened the door leading to it, down a steep flight of steps, Larry thought he had gotten into a boiler factory by mistake. The noise was deafening, and the presses were thundering away like some giant machine grinding tons of rocks to atoms.
Half-naked men were running about here and there. In one corner was a furnace full of melted lead for making the stereotype plates. Larry made his way through the maze of wheels, machinery, and presses.
He was met by a youth whose face was covered with ink.
“Where's Mr. Dunn?” asked Larry, shouting at the top of his voice.
The youth did not bother to answer in words. He had been in the pressroom long enough to know the uselessness of trying to make himself heard above the din. He had understood Larry's question from watching his lips, and pointed over in one corner.
There Larry found a quiet man marking something in a book.
“Mr. Emberg says to smash that name!” yelled the boy, handing over the paper. He was afraid he had not made himself heard, but Mr. Dunn seemed to comprehend, for he nodded several times, though he did not seem pleased. He hated to stop the presses, once they were running, until all the edition was off.
However, it had to be done. He left his corner, and went around the rear of the ponderous machine, where the paper, in a large roll, was fed in at one end, to emerge, folded and printed sheets, at the other. Mr. Dunn seized a rope, and yanked it. A bell rang, and the press began to slacken up.
The type from which the paper was printed was cast in one solid sheet, there being several of the sheets, just the size of a page. Each one was half-circular, and fitted around a cylinder on the press. This cylinder whirled around, and the paper, passing under it in a continuous roll, received the impressions.
Once the press was stopped Mr. Dunn crawled up into a sort of hole in front of the cylinder, Then he had the press worked slowly, until the particular page he had to reach came into view.
Next, with a hammer and chisel he smashed the name of Jones so that it was a meaningless blur. After that the press started its thundering again. The remainder of the papers would not contain the name of Jones, and so there would be no danger of that gentleman coming in and demanding an apology for a misstatement made about him. Often papers have to resort to this emergency when it is too late to correct directly in type an error that has been made.