The light-keeper then gave some details of our lighthouse service. His paper deeply interested his auditors.
Subsequently Annie Fletcher asked, "What is that ringing like the sound of a little church-bell?"
"Then your ears were quick enough to catch it?" replied the keeper. "The window, too, is up, and so you could hear it. That is a bell-buoy at a bad ledge off in the sea."
"A bell-buoy?" asked Annie.
"Yes. It is a frame from whose top is suspended a bell. The bell is fixed, while the tongue, of course, is movable. The buoy floats on the water--fastened, you know, to the rocks beneath; and as the waves move the buoy the bell moves with it, and rings also--like a cradle rocking!"
"The buoy is the cradle, and the bell is the baby in it," suggested Dave.
"And waves are the mother's hand rocking the cradle," added May Tolman.
"Mother's hand--that is, the ocean--is pretty rough out there sometimes," said the light-keeper. "In a storm, when the wind brings the sound this way, the baby cries pretty loud."
"It squalls," declared Dave.
"I'd like to see that bell-buoy," said Johnny Richards.