He loved the work, could have kept at it hours longer, but dusk was coming on, the other planes were already dropping down.
Old Fuz was still up. Hal suddenly remembered the ridiculous whispered promise he had made to Fuz. He began to circle the other plane, sending his own engine into a sharp staccato sputtering: “T-t-t-tat t-tat tat!”
Hal swept closer. “T-tat t-tat!” roared his engine.
Fuz must be working his brain overtime on wavy line maps, must be asleep at the stick or something. It was exasperating. And he had told Fuz to be on the lookout.
Hal zoomed high, then circled low again, sending his engine into such a sputter that it began to miss and he had to shoot the juice to it and fly straight for a stretch.
Fuz was a dumb-head, he was a—
Of a sudden Hal broke out into a laugh and whirled his plane back into his circling above the landing field.
A staccato t-t-t-tat from the other plane had answered him. Good old Fuz, he hadn’t forgotten after all!
For half an hour longer the two boys circled high and low in the air, making their engines “talk” in a sputter of aerial telegraphy based on the old dot-and-dash code they had worked out long ago in their tappings on land things, on stones, on water pipe.
With practice, they found they could speed and cut the engine to series of staccato barks that simulated fair enough the tap of a telegraph instrument. They felt foolishly exuberant and tapped each other all kinds of messages.