My First Job
23
S G, which I afterwards looked up, was, I found, a station at Sea Gate which was on the coast. Vinalos was the name of our ship. Fine meant the state of the weather. Fifteen indicated the number of words the message contained.
I laughed at the man who forgot, but nobody else laughed because there was probably not one among them who knew the difference between a binding post and an electric wave.
All of that afternoon I read the outgoing messages, but I felt I was losing something by not getting what was coming in. Then a bril-