"We'll give them a fight," said Don.
Tim said nothing. But the fire to be something more than the Wolf patrol failure began to burn again. When the last message had flashed back and forth, he handed Don his flag.
"We'll get down to real work after this," said the patrol leader.
Ah! So here was the trick. Tim waited.
"Sending messages back and forth," Don went on, "is all right while we're brushing up the code. We know the code now. It's time to begin to specialize for the contest. One of us will have to do nothing but send, and the other nothing but receive."
Still Tim waited.
"Which do you want to do, send or receive?"
"I—I'll send," said Tim. He felt like a boy who had squeezed his fingers in his ears and had waited for a gun to go off, and had then found that the gun was not loaded. He was bewildered, lost, confused.
Wednesday he came again. And still there was no bossing, no giving orders, no high hand of authority. Perhaps there was no trick.
"Ah!" Tim told himself, "there must be. Why did he shift me here? Why didn't he let me stay with Alex? There's a reason, all right."