“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.

“Could it be one of our convoys?” Sally asked.

“Hardly that. They maintain radio silence, I’m told. But with such a radio, who knows? But if they are subs, a whole wolf-pack of them!” he exclaimed a moment later.

“And if we could spot them!”

“While we were on a ship, an aircraft carrier! Spot them some distance away and go after them with a dozen planes loaded with depth-bombs. I’ll tell you what!” he exclaimed, becoming greatly excited. “I’ll be ready to sail in a month or two, on an aircraft carrier. You get a radio job on my ship. Then we’ll really try this radio out.”

“They’re not sending WAVES on ships yet,” she reminded.

“Oh! We’ll manage it,” he insisted, “We’ll just have to.”

“We may discover that we’re mostly just duplicating one of Uncle Sam’s secrets.” Sally was cautious by nature. “These code signals may come from American ships or airplanes.”

“Tell you what!” he exclaimed. “We’ve just got to de-code their messages so we can tell what they say. Then we’ll know. But that,” he sighed heavily, “looks like a long, long job.”

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