By now more than one teletype was sounding. Whitey came in with the first batch of reports, settled into his seat, and with a fine-pointed fountain pen began entering the data. An arrow graphically indicated wind-direction, and the number of barbs the wind-force. The amount and design of the shading within the tiny circle showed cloud conditions. Figures and other symbols served to record pressure, temperature, humidity, and other conditions as needed. North Platte, Concordia, Omaha, Sioux City. The map no longer looked so empty in the region of the Missouri Valley. Knoxville, Charlotte, Atlanta, Charleston. Whitey was working with the speed and accuracy of a machine. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington.

Until the map was nearly finished, the Chief could not really begin his work. He walked into the teletype room. As he entered, its activity seemed to rise in crescendo. The machines clicked like maddened typists; their bells rang; conveyors from the vacuum tubes plunked into their baskets.

To an outsider, everything might have seemed insane confusion; to the Chief, it was the ordered rhythm of life. That machine which kept clicking out messages with scarcely a break—he knew that its impulses came from an office in Chicago which served as clearing-house for the weather reports of half the continent. Another machine clicked continuously and in addition, as if in mere exuberant good spirits, loudly rang a bell every few seconds. This was the Weather Bureau’s own wire linking together the stations along air-lines. The other four machines, serving local telegraph and radio stations, were sometimes silent, but by contrast their bursts of activity seemed even more feverish. To add to the confusion one of his own men was cutting a teletype ribbon, for at the proper moment San Francisco must become a sending station and report the local conditions to the rest of the world.

In spite of years of routine the Chief felt a deep smoldering excitement; the moment drew nearer. Will the good priest ever fail to stir as the ritual of the mass rises to the climax? Will the true actor, even after a thousand nights, take as a matter of course the cue which yields him the stage for his great scene? And for the Chief this was no mere ritual or drama, passing inevitably toward a fixed end. It was a contest, a battle, in which the mighty forces of the air were preparing against him unknown attacks and ambushes. He hurried back to see how the map was shaping up.