the old Ardois, Steve?" Elspeth asked. "Why, even I could sometimes read those nice red-and-white lights that stayed long enough to be seen."
"Oh, I don't know," Steve replied; "the Blinkies are all right when you're used to 'em. Sometimes, when the fellow that's sending gets careless and doesn't space his letters well, it's pretty messy. But it's a lot quicker than Ardois."
"Have you been watching the Billington, Steve?" Jim asked.
"No," said the ensign. "What's she up to? What the mischief is he saying?"
The men set themselves to untangle the meaning of the flickering signals, and they repeated the messages aloud. For the most part these were ridiculous personalities, the idle small-talk of sailors practising the code. Joan, leaning back, gazed with half-closed eyes. Soft darkness, the ships invisible save for scattered clusters of lights, and above, the signals winking trivialities through the night. She realized that beneath each group of lamps a world lay, an existence complete unto itself. To-morrow night the ships might lie in a different port, they might be on the high seas; but the life
