"Several vessels in the harbour," said Dave.
"Yes: they have been coming down from Shipton this afternoon; but the wind has all died away, and they seem to have made up their mind to anchor there to-night. It is getting cool. Perhaps we had better go down," said the keeper, shrugging his shoulders. While within the lantern he glanced at the lamp, and then descended to the kitchen. Without the twilight deepened. Out of the gloom towered the lighthouse, bearing aloft its guiding, warning rays. The keeper was in the kitchen, trimming an old lantern which had done him much faithful service. That small visitor, Bart, had gone with Dave up into the lantern, anxious to see the working of the lamp.
The keeper lighted his lantern, and then started for the fog-signal tower. He was descending the stairs, when he heard a cry outside of the lighthouse.
"Somebody at the foot of the ladder, I guess, wants me," concluded the keeper, "and I will go to the door and see who it is."
He went to the door, lantern in hand, and looked down.
"Hollo, there!" sang out a man from the shadows below. "Shall I come up?"
"Ay, ay!" responded the keeper. "Low water down there, isn't it, so you can come up the ladder?"
"I guess so. I will make fast and try the ladder."
The keeper heard the steps of somebody on the ladder, and then a man's form wriggled up through the hole in the platform outside the door.
"I get up with less trouble to you than I did the last time I was here," said the man.