Harry said, “Well, if he doesn’t want to eat it, what’s the use of chewing it over? Let’s send it.”
I bet you think we’re all crazy, hey? I should worry.
So then we gathered a lot of twigs and started a fire about in the middle of that open space. While we were doing that, Charlie Seabury and Ralph Warner got some dead grass and brush and took it down to the brook and got it good and wet. Then they squeezed the water all out of it so it was kind of damp and muggy like. It has to be just like that if you want to send a smudge message. Maybe you don’t know exactly what a smudge signal is because maybe you think that a smudge is just a dirt streak on your face—I don’t mean on yours but on Pee-wee’s. That’s Pee-wee’s trade mark—a smudge on his face. Usually it’s the shape of a comet and it makes you think of a comet, because he’s got six freckles on his cheek that are like the big dipper. And his face is round like the moon, too, but, gee williger, I hate astronomy. But I’d like to go to Mars just the same.
Anyway this is the way you send a smudge signal. When you get the fire started good and strong you kind of shovel it into a tin can, but if you haven’t got any tin can, you don’t. Scouts are supposed to be able to do without things. We should worry about tin cans. Brent Gaylong has a tin can on wheels—that’s a Ford. My father says it’s better to own a Ford than a can’t afford. Anyway my sister says I ought to stick to my subject. Gee whiz, she must think I’m a piece of fly paper.
CHAPTER XV—THE MESSAGE
The reason that I ended that chapter was because I had to go to supper. So now I’ll tell you about the signal. If we had only had a tin can with some kind of a cover to lay over it, it would have been easy. But we hadn’t any so this is the way we did. After the fire was burning up we piled some of the damp grass and stuff on top of it and that made a smudge that went way up in the air. I guess any one could see that smudge maybe fifty miles, especially on account of it being up on the top of a mountain.
I said, “All we need now is a cloth or something to spread over it so we can divide the letters.” Because you know we use the Morse code.
So Brent said we could have his mackinaw jacket and he sent Pee-wee down to the brook to soak it in the water so that it wouldn’t catch fire. That was the beginning of Brent Gaylong’s bad luck. Crinkums, that fellow must have been born on a Friday—anyway, he was born on a Friday that day, I guess. But one good thing about Friday, it’s the day before Saturday. That’s why there are fifty-two Good Fridays.
So then we sent the message. The first word was Uncle, so to spell that we let the smudge rise for just a second, then laid Brent’s jacket over it for about three seconds, then let it rise for another second, then waited about three seconds more and then let it rise for, oh, I guess about ten seconds, maybe. That made two dots and a dash in the Morse code and it made the letter U good and big, cracky, bigger than you could make it on any blackboard, as big as the whole sky. Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything to you, but that’s because you’re not a scout. But anyway it meant U. I don’t mean it meant you, but I mean it meant U.
After that we made the other letters in the word Uncle—N-K-L-E—I don’t mean K, I mean C.