Posted by Peter H on September 28, 2007 at 14:24:45 from 86.130.134.92 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: How to signal in MORSE code posted by Laurence Monkhouse on September 28, 2007 at 08:02:05:
Nancy and Peggy don't seem to have any friends until the Swallows arrive
Well we don't really know this. AR doesn't mention this, because it's irelevant for his purposes. I feel that they must have had some acquaintances in the area. The way in which N and P handle their first encounter with the Swallows seems to me to indicate that they had done that sort of thing before.
What need had they for signalling before that?
To signal to each other! One can imagine a situation where Nancy is on the lake in Amazon and Mrs B asks Peggy, who is helping her clean up after the plumbers, to remind N that she is due at the dentists in an hour's time or whatever. I can recall as a child yearning for two-way radio so that we could co-ordinate games and 'adventures'. I suppose that we didn't learn semaphore because the terrain where I grew up was flat and wooded with hedges everywhere, and visual signals would have been useless.