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Updated: May 20, 2025
Later on I found out for myself that, in this particular hotel, when you ring for the waiter or the maid the bell sounds in the service room, where those functionaries are supposed to be stationed; but when you ring for the manservant a small arm-shaped device like a semaphore drops down over your outer door. But what has the manservant done that he should be thus discriminated against?
But the most curious instance is that of the telegraph-plant, or Desmodium gyrans, each complete leaf of which consists of a large terminal leaflet and two little lateral ones. These latter keep up, night and day, an irregular jerking movement, which has been compared to the movements of a semaphore.
We were still lying broadside-on to the Gadfly, and I had not the least doubt that on board her a constant watch was being kept upon the barque; glancing round hurriedly, therefore, and observing that all hands on the forecastle were busy with their breakfast, I slipped over the side into the mizzen chains, where I could stand without being seen from inboard, and, removing my jacket, so that my white shirt-sleeves might show up clearly against the barque's black side, I forthwith began to semaphore with my arms, waving them up and down for about a minute to attract attention.
"I guess so," was the lack-luster response. "Only I don't know where to go, or what to do when I get there." They were crossing the open square in front of the wide-eaved passenger station. A thunderous tremolo, dominating the distant band music, thrilled on the still air, and the extended arm of the station semaphore with its two dangling lanterns wagged twice.
"Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second lad. The second boy said it was a "green wood." This annoyed the Professor still more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right arm waving up and down like a distracted semaphore signal.
The edifice is surmounted by a spherical cupola that serves as a base to a semaphore provided with masts and rigging. On each side of the sphere there are two pendent beacons.
But at twelve o'clock MacWilliams lowered the glass quickly, with a little gasp of excitement, rubbed its moist lens on the inside of his coat and turned it again toward a limp strip of bunting that was crawling slowly up the halyards of the semaphore. A second dripping rag answered it from the semaphore in front of the Custom-House, and MacWilliams laughed nervously and shut the glass.
"Just as we left it," said Alex to himself, and was about to put it aside, when he paused with a start, studied it sharply a moment, then uttered a cry, shook it to see that it still contained oil, and scrambled hurriedly forth, taking it with him. A moment he paused to listen, then set off on the run for the old yard semaphore, dimly discernible a hundred yards distant.
There was no breeze stirring, and yet the long fronds of a large fan palm, that stood near the breach in the wall, began to move gently from right to left, like the arms of some graceful semaphore, and then as suddenly stopped. Almost at the same moment a white curtain, listlessly hanging from a canopied balcony of the Alcalde's house, began to exhibit a like rhythmical and regular agitation.
The Semaphore established from Kedgeree to Calcutta, is of very great advantage to the shipping interest of the place. Any vessel getting on shore, or coming from sea in distress, can send intelligence of her situation to town in fifteen minutes, and have a steamer down to aid her in twelve hours. It would hardly be fair to leave Calcutta without saying a word in praise of the pilot service.
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