My father sank down upon a rock, and, as he wiped the perspiration from his smutty face, he said:
“There, boys, your signalling has saved the prettiest timber lot in the town of Hardwick! I shall not forget it!”
Were we not justly proud?
Two days after I found upon my plate at breakfast a small package, which contained two pretty little spy-glasses.
“Perhaps they will enable you to enlarge your ‘signal code,’” was all my father said when I thanked him.
We soon found that with the aid of the glasses we could distinguish any color. So we made a set of blue flags, which gave us thirty more communications by using them in place of the white ones. And, by mixing the blue flags with the white combinations and the white with the blue combinations, over two hundred communications could be signalled. Thus we could converse with each other by the hour.
The way we wrote down the mixed combinations was, by using a heavy figure to represent a blue flag; as 1245, which meant that positions 1 and 4 were occupied by white flags, 2 and 5 by blue ones.
Blue flags can be inserted in the original thirty combinations in the following manner: 12, 123, 123, 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234, 235, 235, 2345, 2345, 2345, 2345, 2345, 2345, 2345, and so on.
Among the many recollections that throng my memory in connection with this subject, is that of an incident which has caused me many a hearty laugh since its occurrence, although at the time I did not feel particularly amused. Harry had gone away visiting, giving me no definite idea of when he would return. So, one drizzling, uncomfortable day, as I was sitting rather disconsolate at my barn window, I was delighted to see several flags appear on his barn.
Eagerly I read: