Pat the Lighthouse Boy

by Evelyn Everett-Green

"A good thing we went ashore to-day, wife," Pat heard his father say. "For if I don't mistake me, we'll have a spell of rough weather on us soon. The glass is going down steady and fast. By to-morrow morning, I take it, it'll be blowing half a gale of wind."

Pat looked wonderingly at the glass, and could not see that it had moved from its niche. He never could understand why his father would say that it was higher some days than it was on others; but it was one of those things that he never asked about—one of those mysteries that he pondered over in secret with a sense of wonder and rather fascinating awe.

Next morning he was not awakened, as he had been of late, by a bar of sunshine slanting across his bed and touching his face. He awoke later than his wont to a sound of moaning and splashing which he had not heard before; and when he jumped up and ran to the window he saw that there were heavy banks of cloud scudding across the sky, whilst the sea had turned from blue to grey, and was dashing itself against the rocks with greater vehemence than he had ever seen before. There was a moaning sound all around the walls of his home, rising sometimes to a mournful shriek. The little boy was glad to get on his clothes, and find a glowing fire burning in the living room. There had come a chilliness into the air, and it seemed as if summer had suddenly taken flight. His mother looked up at him as he came, and greeted him with a smile.

"Well, Pat; so father is right after all, and here are the gales come upon us all sudden-like at the last. We shall have to make up our minds to a deal of moaning and tossing and tumbling if we are to live all the winter in a lighthouse! You'll be a brave boy, my little son, and not mind the wind and the rain and the dashing of the waves? It'll not frighten you to hear it day after day and week after week, will it, honey?"

"Frighten me?" asked Pat, almost indignantly. "Why, mother, no! I'm almost a man now, and men aren't frightened by noises. I shall help father and Jim to take care of the lighthouse, and I'll help you down here when I'm not too busy upstairs with her. Jim says there's a deal more to do in winter than in summer, and sometimes they'll be very glad of a third man to help. I shall be the third man here. I shall have lots to do and think about!" And Pat looked for all the world like an important little turkey-cock, and went running up the stairs to see what was going on there, whilst his mother looked after him with a smile, and breathed a thankful prayer to God for giving back her child such full measure of health and strength.

The next weeks were very interesting and exciting ones to Pat. The wind blew strongly and steadily, and the sea ran higher and higher. He used to go out daily into the balcony round the lamp-house, and stand "to le'ward," as Jim used to call it, whilst he watched the great crested waves come racing along, and breaking into sheets of spray at the foot of the reef—spray which sometimes rose almost as high as he was standing, and would often make the mackintosh coat in which he was always wrapped fairly run down with water.

Jim would stand beside him sometimes, and tell him how in winter storms the spray would dash not only as far as the gallery, but right over the top of the lighthouse. Pat found it hard to believe this at first, but as he came to learn more and more of the marvellous power of the sea, he disbelieved nothing; and used sometimes to say with awe to Jim, when he had finished one of his stories of shipwreck and peril—

"It do seem wonderful that the sea obeyed Jesus when He was here, and went down and got still just when He told it to. Mother says God holds the sea in the hollow of His hand. Jim, I think God's hand must be very wonderful; don't you?"

Perhaps nothing so helped those two to understand the mighty power of God as their lonely life in the lighthouse during those stormy autumn days. If any story in the Bible reading seemed too marvellous for belief, it only needed Pat to point over the sea with his little hand, and remark reflectively, "But you see, Jim, He made all that!" to convince them both that nothing was too hard for the Lord. The story of Peter's attempt to walk on the sea was one of their favourite readings, when once they had come across it. Jim was wonderfully taken by the tale, and would have the mark kept in the place for a long time.

"I read it every night up here alone," he said once to Pat, "and I can't help wondering if I could ever walk on the sea if I asked Him to help me."