There was the light in that upper window once more, one spark on the top of another, far away below them. It went out. They watched the patch of darkness where it had been above that other light that went on steadily burning. And as they watched, the upper light shone out again.
“If it goes this time . . . ” said Dick, hardly able to speak. “It’s gone. Dot! They’ve answered . . . ”
“What are you going to do?” asked Dorothea.
“Give them our signal again. That’ll settle it.”
Quickly the lantern was shown in the middle of the window, hidden, shown, hidden, shown, and then put finally away in the corner. This would settle it. The two watched, hardly daring to believe.
There it was, that answering light, flashing out in the farm far away below them in the valley. It was gone. There it was again. One, two, three flashes, and then darkness.
“We’ve done it! We’ve done it!”
“Don’t go and tumble out. What are they thinking? Do they know it’s us?”
“Where’s your torch? Try them with another signal. Set it going and swing it in big circles like a wheel.”
Dorothea stood in the opening, a few feet back from the edge, lit her pocket torch, and whirled it round and round.
“Fine.”
“Shall I stop now?”
“Yes.” Dick was already watching through the telescope, finding the place to look at by the light in the lower window. “Of course, they may not guess . . . ”
“They’ve done it, anyway,” cried Dorothea.
Away down there, unmistakably, a small and feeble spark was spinning in a circle.
“Their battery is worn out,” said Dick. “They ought to get a new one.”
The Martians perhaps felt that the battery of their torch was not to be trusted. Almost at once the spark stopped spinning and, instead, there were a series of quick, short flashes at the window, and then a number of flashes, some long, some short, with intervals of darkness.
“They’re trying to say something,” said Dorothea.
“It’s Morse code they’re using, and we don’t know it,” said Dick with deep melancholy. But he cheered up. “Of course, it’s all right,” he said. “Morse. Morsian. Marsian. Naturally we don’t know their language.”
He interrupted the dot and dash flashing from Mars by a repetition of the first signal.
The Martians did the same.
“We can’t do any more to-night,” said Dick. “But we’ve got in touch with Mars.”
“They’ll come to see what it was in the morning,” said Dorothea. “I know they will. We’ve simply got to be up here early. Come on.”
They went down the stone steps with most uncertain feet. While Dorothea trod out the embers of their fire in the lower barn, Dick hid the lantern in the barn and kept an eye on Mars.
For some time nothing happened. Then, just as Dorothea came round from behind the steps, there were two long, separate flashes.
“Saying good night,” said Dorothea.
Dick made two long flashes with the lantern by carrying it into the open and then hiding it again. That was the end.
A minute later they had made sure that nothing had been left behind. Dick had the book and the telescope, Dorothea the torch and lantern. They left the observatory behind them, and, picking their way along the cart track as fast as they could by lantern light, hurried home to supper.
“We won’t tell her about the signalling until we know for certain it was them,” said Dorothea.
“It’s no good talking to her about astronomy,” said Dick, who remembered how she had laughed at his need for wide horizons.
Mrs Dixon met them at the kitchen door as they came in.
“You must be fair perished with cold,” she said. “And what stars did you see?”
“Oh, Taurus and the Pleiades,” said Dick.
Nobody said anything about Mars.
CHAPTER III
STRANGERS NO MORE
DOROTHEA AND DICK had rushed through breakfast and had climbed up the hill to the old barn as fast as they could, half afraid lest the Martians should be there before them. But everything was as they had left it. Dorothea dumped a bundle of newspapers she had brought with her for firelighting on the pile of sticks left over from last night. They went up the stone steps into the loft to get a better view. There was no sign of life in Mars. The white farm-house down there between the lake and the main road might have been uninhabited. No one could have believed that dwellers in so desolate a planet had caught and answered signals from the Earth.
And then Dick, who had been looking through the telescope, caught sight of a boat pulling into the little bay from which, yesterday afternoon, they had seen the red-caps row out. The boat was almost instantly hidden by the pinewoods on the nearer side of the bay.
Some minutes later they caught a glimpse of moving figures just below the house. Perhaps the others had gone down to meet the red-caps and they were all coming up from the lake together.
Suddenly that upper window from which the answering flashes had come in the darkness seemed to be crowded with heads.
“There’s a red-cap,” cried Dick. “Both of them. And somebody pointing.”
“But where are they now?” said Dorothea, for the window was empty.
“There they are,” cried Dick. “They’re coming. All six of them.”
“Where?” cried Dorothea.
“Up the field above the house . . . Over the wall . . . I wonder why they didn’t go through the gate . . . They’ve crossed the road . . . Over the other wall . . . coming up the next field . . . They’re still coming . . . They’ll be over that wall in a minute . . . ”
“Dick, Dick!” said Dorothea, forgetting how long they had been waiting. “They’re coming straight here. Isn’t it a good thing we got here in time.”
“Gone,” said Dick.
“The hill’s in the way,” said Dorothea.
Minute after minute passed. Almost the watchers began to fear that the Martians had turned aside up into the woods. And then first one and then another showed again coming over the ridge on the farther side of the little tarn and trampling through the bracken down to the edge of the ice. Dick trained his telescope on them. “The one in front isn’t looking where he’s going. He’s looking at something in his hand. Probably a compass. I say, they can’t be going to come straight across the ice. It won’t bear. At least it wouldn’t yesterday.”
The next moment Dorothea and Dick exclaimed together:
“She’s in! They’re both in!”
The bigger of the two red-capped girls had waved towards the barn and, leaping through the dead bracken, had charged down past the boy who had been leading the way. The other red-cap was close behind her. Almost at the same moment they were on the ice. There was a tinkling crash, a splash of water, and the two of them were floundering ankle-deep back out of the shallows.
“Oh! Oh!” said Dorothea. “And now they’ve got wet feet and they’ll have to turn back and go home.”
But they showed no signs of turning back. They took off their shoes and emptied the water out and put them on again.