Oh, that wide, wild, beautiful sea! How Pat came to love it! It was at once a friend and playmate and a deep unspeakable mystery. He was never tired of watching its wild play over the rocks, or of sitting listening to its deep strange voice, as it laughed or shouted in its wild wonderful strength. He would sit with his face towards the west as the sun was going down, and watch whilst the great blazing ball dipped lower and lower, till it sank, sank, sank, right into the sea itself. And then as the sea opened its mouth and swallowed it up, it seemed all dyed crimson and gold, as though it had caught some of the colour from the prisoner it had taken.
The child would watch with awe this daily mystery, and when he found that every morning the sun came up again out of the sea, but in quite a different place, he was awed and perplexed past the power of speech. It never occurred to him to ask questions even of his mother about this daily wonder; but he watched it with unfailing interest, and seemed to drink in new thoughts every time it happened. He was more and more sure that his new home was very like heaven—not so beautiful as the real heaven, because Jesus would be there to make the light of it: but like it in some things—in its peace and beauty and wonderful calm. Pat had been so near to the gates of death that his mind naturally turned to thoughts like this. He was still not strong enough to play more than a few hours every day, and the rest of his time would be spent sitting on the rocks or at the window watching the sea, and thinking about it, until his face took a new expression, as though some of the sunshine and the clearness of the blue sea had got into them and had taken up an abode there.
Very often he would carry out his little Testament to his favourite nooks in the rocks, and find some of the places where he loved to read. He was particularly fond of the chapter about the "sea of glass mingled with fire," because he was so sure it must be just like his own sea at sunset time; and there were other places he was fond of too, because they always set him thinking and dreaming, and chimed in with all his new ideas. He did not talk much about his thoughts; when he went in to his mother he would chatter to her of his play and of the live things he had seen in the pools. To his father he would ask questions about the lamp, and how it kept awake all the night through—whether it never went to sleep by accident; for to him that lamp was like a living creature. He had only seen it once, because the climb up the spiral stairs turned him queer and giddy, and his parents had bidden him wait till he was stronger before he tried again. But that one visit had been enough to excite him strangely, and he always thought with awe of the great revolving light going round and round the whole night through. He was never tired of hearing about it and asking questions; but of his own strange thoughts, when he was all alone with the sea and the sunshine, he said nothing. That was his own secret—perhaps because he lacked words in which to express himself. And the new, strange, beautiful life began for little Pat upon the isolated reef which supported Lone Rock Lighthouse.
[CHAPTER II]
"SURLY JIM"
One night, contrary to his usual habit, Pat could not sleep. He had been to sleep for some hours during the early part of the night, but now he was wide awake, and he did not feel like going to sleep any more. He sat up in bed, and looked round him in the moonlight. There were his father and mother, both sleeping calmly and quietly. If father was in bed, Jim must be up in the lighthouse, watching to see the big lamp did not "go to sleep by accident," as the child phrased it in his own mind. He was suddenly taken with a vivid curiosity to go to that lighted chamber himself. He had only been there by day as yet. He wondered what it would look like at night; and almost before he knew what he was doing, he had slipped out of bed, and was putting on his clothes. He did not want to disturb his father, who would by-and-by have to get up and take his own watch in the tower, as the child called it in his thoughts, so he moved softly about, and presently found himself creeping up the dim staircase that was lighted at intervals by small lamps placed in niches in the wall.