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Updated: May 20, 2025
The outlook for baggage at Waterloo; the feeing of the obsequious porter expectant of a douceur; the mistake I made in getting my ticket which had to be rectified at the last moment; the confused ringing of bells and clattering of trucks up and down the platform; the slamming of doors and hurrying of feet to and fro: then, the sudden pause in all these sounds; the shrill whistle, betokening all was ready; the converting of all the employes into animated sign-posts, that waved their arms wildly; the grunt and wheeze from the engine, as if from a giant in pain; the sharp jerk, and then the steady pull at the carriage in which I was sitting; the "pant, pant! puff, puff!" of the iron horse, as he buckled to his work with a will; and then, finally, the preliminary oscillation of the ponderous train, the trembling and rumbling of creaking wheels along the rails as we glided and bumped, slowly but steadily, out of the terminus the distance signal showing "all clear" to us, and blocking the up line with the red semaphore of "danger."
Or he devoted his leisure to the invention of signal codes, semaphore systems, embryo torpedoes, gun carriages, and what is more to our point methods ostensibly calculated to man the fleet in the easiest, least oppressive and most expeditious manner possible for a free people.
Now that he was beginning to comprehend their use, he was deeply interested in the bright red, green, and white lights of the semaphore signals that guarded every switch and siding. He knew that at night a white light displayed from the top of a post, or swung across the track in the form of a lantern, meant safety, a red light meant danger, and a green light meant caution.
They did not, however, for the gunboat's semaphore remained dumb. But the two visitors from the cruiser presently re-appeared, tumbled down over the side into their boat, and were rapidly rowed back to their own ship. Ten minutes later a stream of smoke began to issue first from one and then from the other funnel of the cruiser.
The station itself, a rudely built cabin, with two windows, one furnished with a telescope, looked like a heap of driftwood, or a stranded wreck left by the retiring sea; the semaphore the only object for leagues lifted above the undulating dunes, took upon itself various shapes, more or less gloomy, according to the hour or weather, a blasted tree, the masts and clinging spars of a beached ship, a dismantled gallows; or, with the background of a golden sunset across the Gate, and its arms extended at right angles, to a more hopeful fancy it might have seemed the missionary Cross, which the enthusiast Portala lifted on that heathen shore a hundred years before.
He examined everything that was to be examined, instruments, code books and distant ships, and altogether thoroughly approved of being a signaller. Often there was work to be done, in daylight by semaphore arms, or international flag code; and at night by morse lamps, carefully shaded.
We dug trenches one day and filled them up the next. We made bombs and learned to throw them. We mastered every kind of signaling from semaphore to wireless, and we nearly wore out the old Roman stone roads hiking all the way from Hythe to Canterbury. We carried those old Colt guns and heavy tripods far enough to have taken us to Bagdad and back.
The semaphore's arm was dropped over the track, setting the danger signal that showed the switch was open. In an instant, Dyke saw the trick. They had meant to smash him here; had been clever enough, quick-witted enough to open the switch, but had forgotten the automatic semaphore that worked simultaneously with the movement of the rails. To go forward was certain destruction. Dyke reversed.
The last answering pendant from the Fleet shot up above the bridge rails, and the impatient semaphore on the Flagship's bridge commenced waving its arms. The Yeoman of the Watch in the second ship of the line steadied his glass against an angle of the chart house. "'Ere y'are! Write down, one 'and." A Signal-boy stepped to his elbow with a pad and pencil in readiness.
Devoid of attractions or of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head that of a woman near on sixty with a cap of a particular and unvarying shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the neighborhood she was known as the "portress nun." Her speech was curt, and her movements had the stiff precision of a semaphore.
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