“An’ you call this blazin’ climate o’ yours temperate,” exclaimed the shipwrecked mariner.
“Heat?” said the Pilot, making the painter of the boat fast to some rusty bits of iron that lay on the shore; “you call this heat, with the sea-breeze risin’, and the island cooling like a bottle of champagne in an ice-chest. It’s plain to see, Sartoris, you’re a packet-rat that never sailed nowhere except across the Western Ocean, in an’ out o’ Liverpool and New York.” They had approached the end of the island, and overlooked the harbour entrance. “Now, this is where I intend to place the beacon. What do you think of it?” Sartoris assumed the manner and expression of supreme interest, but said nothing. “Them two leading lights are all very well in their way, but this beacon, with the near one, will give a line that will take you outside o’ that sunken reef which stretches a’most into the fairway; and a vessel ’ll be able to come in, scientific and safe, just like a lady into a drawing-room.”
With a seaman’s eye Sartoris took in the situation at a glance. “Very pretty,” he said, “very neat. A lovely little toy port, such as you see at the theayter. It only wants the chorus o’ fisher girls warbling on that there beach road, and the pirate brig bringing-to just opposite, an’ the thing would be complete.”
“Eh! What?” ejaculated the Pilot. “What’s this play-goin’ gammon? You talk like a schoolboy that’s fed on jam tarts and novelettes, Sartoris. Let’s talk sense. Have you ever heard of an occulting light?”
“No, certainly not; not by that name, anyhow.”
“D’you know what an apparent light is?”
“No, but I know plenty of apparent fools.”
“An apparent light is a most ingenious contraption.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
“It’s a optical delusion, and makes two lights o’ one—one on shore, which is the real one, and one here, which is the deception.” But while the Pilot went on to talk of base plates, lewis bats, and all the paraphernalia of his craft, the skipper’s eye was fixed on a string of little islands which stood off the end of the western arm of the great bay outside.