midnight
Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines . Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch , and Cogs bent over it to read , his spirit-lamp blew up , -- as the dear things will . They were beside themselves in the lonely , dark office ; but , while the men were fumbling for matches , which would not go , Cogs 's sister , Nydia , a sweet blind girl , who had learned Bain 's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston , bent over the chemical paper , and _ smelt _ out the prussiate of potash , as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story . Almost anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse messages with the finger , -- and so this message was read at all the midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected , and where the companies do not supply fluid or oil . Within my narrow circle of acquaintance , therefore , there were these simultaneous instances , where the same message was seen , heard , smelled , tasted , and felt . So universal is the dot-and-line alphabet , -- for Bain 's is on the same principle as Morse 's . The reader sees , therefore , first , that the dot-and-line alphabet can be employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols , -- be they long and short notches , such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts with , or long and short waves of electricity , such as these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland bay , so prophetically and appropriately named `` The Bay of Bulls . ''