"I think I could see it with father's spy-glass; it is real powerful. Say, will you try it to-morrow night? You hang it out, and I will take father's spy-glass and see if I can make out anything. Then I will send you word by the mail. You don't think it is too far from our house to the light?"
"Too far to see? oh no. Now, I said a man might want a doctor here. I have often thought if one of us was sick--and you know the keeper is getting old--and if the other couldn't get off to bring a doctor, it might be a very serious thing for the sick man."
"Well, if you are in trouble and will hang out a light, and I see it, I will tell the people, and they will get to you."
Dave thought no more of this, but silently said, "I wonder if I haven't something else interesting to show the boy! Yes, I have got it."
He went down from the lantern to the kitchen, and took from its shelf the strange box of sandal-wood, whose story Dave already knew.
The light-keeper now repeated to Bart the tale of the drifting relic. He held it to his ear. Did the boy think it was a shell--that it would murmur a song of wave and cloud and the broad sunshine sweeping down on lonely surf-washed ledges?
"It won't talk," said the light-keeper, beaming on him.
Bart shook his head.
"I wish it would talk," thought the keeper. "It might tell about that man whom we picked up and brought into the light, and who seemed to know something about it. I wonder if he will ever call for it!"
He spoke of it to Dave afterward. The two were up on the lantern-deck at sunset looking off upon the sea. The water was still and glassy. It was heaving gently, as if with the dying day it too was dying, but feebly pulsating with life. One vast surface of shining gray, it gradually darkened till it was a mass of shadows across which were drawn the lines of white surf cresting the ledges.