“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” the girl declared when they had worked for an hour and had not discovered the great lamp which for so many years had swung its circling light over the darkened sea.
“Seems powerful quare to me whar that big lantern can be,” the old man said at last, as he leaned on the handle of his shovel to rest. “’Pears like it ought’ve fallen on top o’ the heap, bein’ as it was the highest up; but ’tisn’t here, sure sartin.”
Muriel, standing on the uncovered rocks, looked down at him. “Uncle Barney,” she said, “do you suppose that someone has carried the lamp away to sell for old iron?”
The captain shook his head. “No, Rilly gal, I reckon not. It’s government property and no one’d be likely to cart it away.”
At noon they went down to the little beach shed. The Irishman made a fire in the rusty old stove and they sat near, appreciating its warmth while they ate the good lunch that Molly had prepared.
“Oh, Uncle Barney,” the girl exclaimed half an hour later, “it’s me as is goin’ to take the crumbs and left-over bits to the top of the cliff and see if I can coax the seagulls from the caves; that is, if they are there.”
It was well that Brazilla Mullet had insisted that the girl wear her thick woolen leggins, for she had to wade through deep, unbroken drifts of snow to reach the spot where so often she had stood to feed her bird friends; but though she called and called, the gulls that in former winters had appeared from the warm caves in the rocks did not respond; not even the lone pelican which she had hoped would come.
Almost sadly the girl was turning away when she chanced to look over the steep cliff and there, half way down, firmly wedged between an outjutting ledge and a small twisted pine, she saw something that sent her leaping back toward the fallen tower.
“Uncle Barney,” she called excitedly. “Come quick! I’ve found it! I’ve found the lamp!”
The old Irishman was soon at her side. Rilla looked up with tears in her eyes as she said: “Poor thing, how forlorn it looks with the glass broken and the sides crushed in.” The old man held fast to the girl, for she was perilously near the snow-hidden edge of the cliff.