Pat the Lighthouse Boy

by Evelyn Everett-Green

"And you were the little boy that was taken out of the water, and poor Jim was the brave man who swam into the great big waves to save you!"

Pat was the speaker, and the beautiful little boy the listener. They were sitting together in the hot sunshine, just beneath the south wall of the lighthouse, well sheltered from the wind; and the sun was shining with all the brilliance that it sometimes can in early February on the south coast, though the sea tumbled and foamed beneath the strong gale which still blew steadily day by day, and cut off Lone Rock from the mainland. But the weather began to show signs of modifying. The careful keeper of the lighthouse had that day told his wife that he believed a few more days would see the end of this bout of rough weather. The glass was beginning to rise after its long period of depression, and this was the third day on which the sun had shone out brightly and bravely, tempting the two children out upon the rocks for several hours, in the brightest part of the day. By this time the two boys were the best of friends. They were not happy for a moment if separated. Pat took the lead in devising amusement for his small guest, and was in one sense of the word the leading spirit, yet it was the little prince who really ruled the pair, for his word was law to his comrade, who could have sat and looked at him, or listened to his merry prattle for hours. The little gentleman had a way with him which had captivated every heart within the lighthouse. Nat and Eileen were almost as much his slaves as Pat. He could twist any one of the three round his chubby little fingers, and this was plainly no new art to him. Those merry ways of his, half-coaxing, half-commanding, had plainly been practised before. He was no novice in the art of getting what he wanted, this beautiful little prince (as Pat firmly and fully believed him to be); and it seemed to Eileen a pathetic thing that the little fellow should thus be cast among strangers, and those of a rank in life so much humbler than his own, without being able to explain to them who he was, nor whence he had come, although in other ways he could prattle away fast enough, and tell little stories, too, in his own peculiar fashion.

Eileen had listened in vain for any illusions to his parents in his talk; but the name of father or mother was never on his lips. Once, when she asked him where mother was, he pointed vaguely out over the sea; but she could not make out whether he meant anything by the gesture; and the only relative he ever spoke of was "Auntie;" whilst he did not appear to be pining after anybody, but was as merry as a lark from morning to night; very different from what Pat would have been, even as a little child, if suddenly robbed of all those whom he had learned to love.

"I sometimes think the water has washed the memory of what went before clean out of his head," Eileen had said to her husband, in some disappointment at her failure to learn anything of the boy's history from him. "It seems strange he should have forgotten everything, such a quick, noticing little fellow as he is. He talks a little about a ship to Pat; but never seems to remember the people who were with him. I can't make it out. At his age, Pat would have been able to tell anybody where he lived, and what his name was, and who his father and mother were. It puzzles me altogether, that it does. And we want to send a message ashore when the relief boat comes. I'd have liked to be able to say who the boy was."

"Well, we'll say enough for his relations to know him by, if he's got any living claim to him, poor little chap. I suppose the children of the gentry, who always have a nurse beside them, don't learn to be as knowing and independent as our little ones, who have to fend for themselves so much sooner. Pat may be will find out something more sooner or later. He chatters away to him like a young magpie. The child looks a deal better since his little prince came. It's good for boys to be together. I'll not grumble if his folks don't come for him in a hurry. Look at them now; why, they are as happy as kings together—and a deal happier than many kings, I take it, if all we hear of the ways of the world is true."

The two boys were sitting in the hot sunshine in the lee of the lighthouse, and the tame sea-gull was hopping about near to them, sometimes diving into a pool after a dainty morsel that caught his eye, sometimes flapping his wings, and uttering his harsh cries, which seemed those of joy at seeing the sunshine again. Pat was evidently telling a tale to the little one of more than usual interest. The little prince's eyes were fixed upon his face with a look of wrapped absorption, his rosy lips were parted, and his whole expression was one of deep and undivided attention. He was in reality hearing the story of the little boy who had been seen a few nights ago, just as it was growing to be dawn, floating on the water on a broken spar; and of the brave man in the lighthouse, who had swum out amongst the great waves to bring him in safe to shore; and Prince Rupert had been more fascinated by this tale—told with all the graphic power of which the youthful eye-witness was capable—than by any other from Pat's store; and when at the close he was told that he himself had been the little boy, and that it was Jim who had gone into the boiling sea to fetch him out, he looked fairly bewildered at the idea, and turning his dark eyes towards the lighthouse behind, he looked up and down, and then asked—

"And where is poor Jim?—does he live here, too?"

"Yes, he lives here," answered Pat. "But he got hurt that night. He has to lie in bed. I go to see him every day. Poor Jim looks very sad and poorly. Father says he won't be better till we can get a doctor to him."

Little Rupert's eyes were wide with sympathy and interest. He was quite a kind-hearted little fellow, though he had been taught to think first of himself and his own wishes, as too many little children are, whether those about them know it or not.

"Did he get hurted coming into the water after me?" he asked, in a voice that was quite soft and subdued with surprise and thought.