“I don’t need to grope around for matches. Olive keeps her flash-light by the head of her bed--since she and I haven’t been sleeping in a tent any longer.... What’s this? Oh! her secret that shines in the dark--the powder for radio-paint in that tiny bottle. Perhaps if I wetted a little of it--smeared some more on the dory’s bow--and rowed out a little way, to signal, I’d attract attention better; ’twould act as a foot-light--if they saw it through the glasses--between flashes! Well--here goes!”
Yet as she fluttered forth again through the wind-gap of that window, the Flame turned briefly and waved her hand to those World Heroes upon the wall. Not much tribute to them! At the moment one and all were summed up in the highly colored mental print of her brother Iver, fighting over there.
“He taught me to signal with Morse and Semaphore--to read Wigwag, too! He was wounded in both legs, the very first time he went over the top--crawled on, leading his men--that was at Château-Thierry. He’d want me to use the knowledge I got from him.... I’d do it even if that spy were to see me, turn back and kill me, maybe, before the Coast Guards get here.... Priceless stuff, Olive says, this radio-powder. Bah! who cares, if it helps? Now--now, she’s a regular lightning-bug, my camouflaged dory!”
Lost to all sense of economic values, she was wetting a full big pinch of the costly powder on her burning palm, with a drop or two of sea-water, smearing it over the dory’s camouflaged bow--then shoving her off, forgetful even of Betty, a trembling Holly--though of loyalty still evergreen--cowering upon the beach-edge.
“Now! what’s the attention-signal--Morse? Let’s see!” The girl’s left hand pushed her hair back from her brow, she crouching in the lightning-bug dory, a few yards from shore. “Yes! ‘A,’ sent over and over; ‘dit-dar-dit-dar-dit-dar--dit,’ if signaled with a buzzer; short, long, short, long, so on, with the light!”
She was standing now--as the spy had done in the motor-boat, the launch which had melted off into far shadows of the bay--holding her signaling flash-light aloft, pressing her thumb lightly, with rhythmic unevenness, upon a little lever at the side.
And, lo! the shore which she was facing--the wild island-shore merging into the long sand-bar--awoke, opened its eyes, answered with bright blinker flashes of understanding from lonely watch-tower and patrolling surf-man on his tiresome beat.
“Short, short, long! That would be dit-dit-dar--meaning U. N.--they got me! Now--now what message shall I send?... Oh, I wonder if he’ll get me, the spy, turn back an’ get me, before they come? Never mind; Iver----”
One sidelong glance out into the curtaining shadows of the bay! Then, “Catch spy in launch. Out--bay!” slowly spelled out the winking flash-light, pressed by a girl’s unfaltering little thumb.
And fast as the shore had blinked, it responded! There was something unusual about the direct, correct message; about a strange, faint unearthly shimmer, seen through binoculars, bathing the spot--the boat--whence it came, when the flash-light wasn’t speaking.