Dave grinned and winked, and turned front once more.
"Think nothing of it, my little pal," he said. "Even the best of us make mistakes now and...."
Dave clamped his lips shut on the last, sat up straight in the seat and stared hard down at the water to his right and some four or five miles away. Perhaps it actually was a sunbeam dancing back up at him, but for a brief instant he was certain he had seen four or five rapid flashes of light down on the surface of the water. Another moment and he was positive beyond all shadow of a doubt. There was a light flashing down there on the water. Rather it was the reflection of the sun's rays on a heliograph mirror. However, the flashes were both long and short, and Dave didn't have to look twice to realize perfectly well that some kind of a message was being flashed from down there on the water.
"But how, and who's doing it?" Dave gulped out the question aloud. "Unless I'm completely nuts, or stone blind, there's nothing but water down there. Hey, Freddy!"
"Yes, I see it, too," the English youth spoke up. "Thought I'd let you see it for yourself this time. What do you make of it, Dave? A bit weird, isn't it?"
"And a lot more than that!" Dave grunted and was uncomfortably conscious of an eerie tingling at the back of his neck. "I don't see a darn thing else but water and that flashing light. Hey! Do you suppose it could be a sheet of metal, or something, that's being caught by the sun as it rides those swells?"
"It could be, but I'm sure it isn't!" Freddy Farmer replied in a tight voice. "Dave, those are real dot and dash signals. Three dots—two dashes, then one dot and four dashes. Neither of those are Morse Code letters. Or International Morse, either. But, I'll eat my parachute pack if those aren't some kind of signals."
"Check and double check!" Dave grunted and scowled.
On impulse he took his eyes off the strange flashing signals far below and ahead, and twisting all the way around in the seat he took a good look at the surrounding heavens. Finally, he lowered his eyes to meet Freddy Farmer's puzzled gaze.
"Notice something else, Freddy, that seems to be a little out of whack?" he asked.