“How do you mean ‘communicate’?” asked George carelessly and all ears.
“Woy, wiv a flag, that’s ow,” said the boy.
Demaine had often been told of the long and complicated messages which little pieces of bunting could convey, and he had himself presented to a country school a whole series of flags which, in a certain order, signified that England expected every man to do his duty. But he could not conceive how so complete a message as the presence and desired arrest of an unfortunate stowaway could be conveyed to the authorities ashore by any such simple means, unless indeed the presence of stowaways was so common an occurrence that a code signal was used for the purpose of disembarking that cargo.
The boy illumined him.
“They got th’ flag up,” he said, “syin’ ‘Send a baht,’ and when they sees it they’ll run up one theirselves—then’s yer toime.”
But the boy’s information, as is common with the official statements of inferiors, was grossly erroneous.
A voice came bawling down from above, ordering him to tumble up with the prisoner.
Tumble up George did; that is, he crawled up the steep and noisome ladder, and as he put his head out into the glorious air, thought that never was such contrast between heaven and hell. He drank the air and put his shoulders back to it, to the risk of the green-black coat.
George Mulross was one of those few men who have never written verse, but he was capable that moment if not of the execution at least of the sentiment which the more classical of my readers are weary of in Prom. Vinc. Chor. A. 1-19, Oh the god-like air! The depth and the expanse of sky!
The fatherly sky was all light, the sun was climbing, and a vivid belt of England lay, still asleep, green and in repose under that beneficence; and in the midst of it, set all round with fields, lay a lovely little town. It was Parham.