Fifteen
minutes before the eclipse every night this weird dance
of leaps two hundred feet high, followed by hops of
twenty feet high, mingled always in the steady order I
have described, spelt out the ghastly message: "Show `I
understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
And every morning, as the eclipse ended, I saw the
column creep along to the horizon, and again, as the duty
of opening day, spell out the same:--
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
They had done this twice in every twenty-four hours
for nearly two years. For three nights steadily I read
these signals twice each night; only these, and nothing
more.
But Friday night all was changed. After "Attention,"
that dreadful "Show" did not come, but this cheerful
signal:--
"Hurrah. All well. Air, food, and friends! what
more can man require? Hurrah."
How like George! How like Ben Brannan! How like
George's wife! How like them all! And they were all
well! Yet poor _I_ could not answer. Nay, I could
only guess what Haliburton had done. But I have never,
I believe, been so grateful since I was born.
After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed
their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out:--
"Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be."
Of the meaning of this, lonely _I_ had, of course,
no idea.
"I have a power of seven hundred," continued George.
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