"Doesn't it get tiresome?"
"Well, that's how you take it. I was told of a lighthouse where the signal was going twenty-one days."
"Day after day! Just think of it!"
"Well, there is this side of it: off on the water there is somebody bewildered by the mist, perplexed day after day, it may be, and they catch the sound of the signal. Oh, ain't that good news? That's what makes me contented at it. I have sometimes wished I was a musician, and could please others by my playing; but I tell you I have stood by this old engine dark, rainy, foggy nights, and oh, I have been so happy starting up and sending out this old whistle. There it is!"
"Toot--buzz--boom--whiz--bim-m-m-m!"
"Somebody heard that, you may believe, and somebody, too, more pleased than if I had been a whole band of music, and had sent out just the sweetest tune."
The light-keeper stood by the tugging engine and wiped the perspiration from his brow, and his big, rosy face was as happy as that of a school-boy going off on a long vacation.
"Hark! what is that? Sounds like a bell," said Dave.
"It is the bell-buoy at Sunk Rock. We only hear that when the wind is blowing off the sea."
"Didn't hear it before."