Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/214

 stairs of the tower, and find four soldiers in the upper room busily transmitting the messages that come in letters of light from Wargla, one hundred and fifty miles below. We see our message also flashed into outer darkness, letter by letter. The men in the next tower twenty-five miles away read the dots and dashes of light through a telescope, record them, and then repeat them for the sake of accuracy.

LES TELEGRAPHISTES

OPERATORS OF THE POSTE OPTIQUE

To the northward we can see faint rapid flashes like glowings of a tiny fire-fly; these re-spell our message almost without an error. Thus from tower to tower it swiftly flies until, reaching Biskra, the electric current begins its work.