“They’re back,” he whispered.
“No, that’s another one. Listen! You can tell the difference.” She brought the first one back, then switched to the second.
“What do you know about that!” He was all ears.
“Perhaps the ‘put’ stands for dot, and ‘put-a-put’ for dash,” he suggested. “I’ll just try it that way.”
“Might be the opposite!”
“Sure, just anything.” He snapped on a small light and then began marking down dots and dashes as he listened. For a long time neither of them spoke.
“That might be it,” he breathed at last. “It’s hard to take down, but I’ve got dot, dot, dot, dash, dot. That’s three, dash, dash, dash for five and dash, dash, dot, dot, for seven. Then there are some numbers that seem like seventeen, twenty-three, and thirty-one. I can’t be sure—”
“Give me a pencil and paper,” she suggested. “Let me play the game.”
For a long time after that they listened and marked down dots and dashes. When one sender went off the air they switched to another. In time they came to believe that number one and number two were holding a conversation. Then number two went off the air, followed by number one.
A little search found a third. When number three went dead, number one was at it again. It became an interesting game of hide-and-go-seek, in the air.