In the afternoon, they'd put up some marine signal flags. Wow, I'd seen plenty of marine signal flags from puzzle-based treasure-hunt games, many of which used codes. But here was a chance to use the flags for real. I'd brought a code "cheat sheet" with me on this trip, but it just had Morse, Braille codes, no marine signal flags. Thus, I was reduced to looking up the code on my mobile phone's browser.
?? ?? H O G ?? H S (subst 1)
Apparently, real marine signal flags make less sense than our puzzle hunt codes.