Admiral's Light

ANNA HILLIARD From a drawing by Martin Justice
ADMIRAL’S LIGHT
BY HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT Author of Beached Keels, The Siamese Cat, etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1907
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November 1907
To NATHANIEL ALLISON, M. D.
Note. The frontispiece is from a drawing by Martin Justice. The eleven half-titles are from drawings by Charles H. Woodbury.

ADMIRAL’S LIGHT
Thrusting his tousled head through the trap-door, Miles made his third and last inspection for the night. Fierce yellow light flooded the glass cage; against the panes, like restless, irritated snowflakes, a few belated moths fluttered in vain. The circular base of the lamp cast downward a shadow so black as almost to appear a solid supporting cone. At the edge of this Miles reared his shoulders higher. Under the blue flannel shirt their weary movement was that of a sleepy boy; but his thin, dark face shone grave as a man’s. He sniffed the familiar smell of oil and hot brass, and glanced perfunctorily; the lamp burned as bright as it had three hours ago, at midnight, or as it would burn three hours hence, at sunrise,—with the same provoking virtue that made his nocturnal rounds a waste of labor and sleep.
“Some one has to,” he said aloud. “Burn away, Beast!” With this customary good-night, he clattered downstairs, locked the lighthouse door, caught up his lantern, and went whistling along the narrow path by the river. From below, to the left, stole the salt coolness of seaweed bared at low tide,—a sharp aroma that set him wide awake. From above, over a black phantom hill, peered Orion’s red shoulder-star. Hurtling shadows of undergrowth before his lantern rose magnified, parted in rout, wheeled slowly, fell prostrate and infinitely prolonged. The grass fringe of his smooth-beaten trail gleamed with a pearly rime of autumnal dew. “Nearly frost to-night,” thought the boy.