Pat the Lighthouse Boy

by Evelyn Everett-Green

For Pat had been very ill. He had been a frail little fellow all his short life, and had never been able to run about and shout and play as the other children did who lived in his court. He had spent most of his time indoors with his mother, growing more and more wan and white with each succeeding summer as it came and went. Although the sea lay only a mile away from his home, he had scarcely ever walked as far as its margin, for there was nothing to attract him when he did so. It was not beautiful open sea such as what he was now looking upon, but a piece of ugly tidal water, with quays and wharfs lining the brink, and evil smells everywhere.

His father had a boat, and would have taken his boy out with him in it sometimes; but Pat was afraid of the rough looks of the other men, and his mother knew that the frail child would be weary to death long before he could be put ashore. So that Pat had grown up seeing little more than the sights of his own court, hearing little besides the shouts and cries and foul words so freely bandied about there. He had not been much better off in that respect than if he had come from a London slum, and this sudden awakening in the Lone Rock Lighthouse was like an awakening in a new world.

It was on Pat's account that his parents had come to this strange new home. When the hot May sunshine had come streaming into the alley in which the child had been reared, he had suddenly failed and fallen ill of a low fever, which had almost sapped his little life away; and so near had he come to the gates of death, that the doctor had shaken his head and said, "There is only one thing that can save him, and that is lots of fresh air and sunshine and pure salt breezes—not the breezes you get in here, reeking with all that is foul and impure. If you keep him here, he will die. The only chance for him is to take him right away; and I am afraid that, situated as you are, you will find it impossible to do so."

Perhaps it would have been impossible at another time; but just at this very juncture it chanced that Lone Rock Lighthouse was vacant, and indeed the post of caretaker had actually been offered to Nathaniel Carey, because he was known to be a steady respectable man, who could be relied upon to do his duty there. Lone Rock Lighthouse was always changing its keeper, for the life there was so solitary that men could not long stand the strain of it; and by the end of a year, or a couple of years, almost always resigned the post, in spite of the regular pay and comfortable home.

It was not a post that Nat would have cared to accept under ordinary circumstances, for he was a sociable man, and liked to have other men about him; but when the life of his only child was at stake, and his wife, with wan drawn face and piteous eyes, pointed to the little figure on the bed and told him what the doctor had said, the only thing to be done was to go and accept the post without any more hesitation; and the next business was to get the sick child removed there upon the first calm and suitable day.

For Lone Rock was not to be approached at all times and seasons, even in summer weather, and often was cut off from communication with the shore in winter for many weeks together. It was built upon a very dangerous sunken reef, round which the sea boiled and surged and raged from year's end to year's end. And herein lay the chief peril and the chief drawback of the keeper's life. If anything were to go wrong with him or with his home—if he were to be ill, or in want of some necessary of life, or if the structure of the lighthouse needed attention, it might be long weary days, or even weeks, before he could receive the help he had signalled for. It is true that every precaution was taken to ensure his safety. The structure was carefully examined by competent persons at short intervals. A large store of dried and salted provisions was always kept under the roof of the building, so that the keeper and his assistant might never be put to actual shifts for food, and stores of oil, for the great lamp, were likewise kept—stores which could scarcely run out, however long a spell of bad weather might last. Every care and precaution was taken; but for all that the life there was one of singular isolation, and men had been known to go mad during the long dreary winter months; and once a terrible crime had been committed there through this very cause—a crime of which men whispered still sometimes with 'bated breath, though Pat's mother always resolved that the child should never hear the gruesome tale.

Eileen Carey was the first woman who had had the courage to make a home upon the Lone Rock. Other keepers had either been unmarried men, or had left their wives behind for the time that they lived there. But Nat Carey came with his wife and his child; and those in authority were glad that it was so, for they argued that a man who had a real home about him would not suffer from the loneliness of the life as others had done; and they had done several things to brighten up the little home before the new-comers arrived there. Eileen's clever hands had done more so soon as they were fairly landed, for little Pat required very little nursing, as he lay day after day in a trance of weakness and exhaustion. But his mother was satisfied that each day he grew slightly stronger, and was quite content to wait until he should awaken to a knowledge of his new surroundings, which she meantime strove to make as bright and as homelike as possible; for she meant that her husband and her little boy should not lack any of the comforts which her hands could provide during their whole stay on the Lone Rock.

And now the mother was to have her reward. For several days Pat had begun to look about him, to follow her movements with his eyes, to answer when she spoke to him, and to smile when she looked his way. He was a long time in taking notice of anything except his mother and father. It seemed to them as though he had no eyes for any of the other strange things about him. He must have known that this new room, with its whitewashed walls, so spotless and clean, its queer shape, its fresh furniture and bright curtains to the sunny window, was not the room in which he had lived for all the previous years of his small life. Yet he did not take any open notice of these things for many days, and his mother would not let him be spoken to about them, for, as she truly said, if he hadn't strength to take them in with his eyes, he had far better be let alone till the strength began to come back to him of itself.

And now that time had come. Pat had for some days been noticing everything—noticing with an ever-increasing curiosity and pleasure. He had begun by asking what was "that funny noise that never stopped;" and when his mother had told him it was the sound of the waves, he had asked "how they got there, for they didn't use to be so near." And so little by little Eileen had told him all the tale—how father had been offered the care of Lone Rock Lighthouse, and how the doctor had said that little Pat might thrive and grow strong if he were to be taken right away from the court in which he had always lived. And Pat lay and smiled at the tale, and got his mother to tell it him again and again, and grew so fond of the song of the sea before ever he had been able to get up and look at it, that he often told her "it was making him well as fast as it could;" and she would smile with tears in her eyes and believe him.

Every day had seen some improvement in little Pat's condition; but it seemed long to the mother before he had expressed the wish to get up and look out at the window. She knew that would be the first thing he was likely to ask for, because he lay and watched the sunny square hour after hour, with a smile of contentment on his face. But it was only to-day that he had said he wanted to get up and look; and now she was sitting with him wrapped in a blanket, he standing with his little bare feet upon the window-seat, and gazing with wide-open wondering eyes over the vast expanse of sparkling water that was as little like "the sea," as he had been accustomed to think of it, as was the noise of the waves like the ceaseless bawling and brawling that his ears had grown used to in the court whence he had come.