Rilla of the Lighthouse

by Grace May North

The old man looked out of the window at the gathering blackness. Then, loosening her arms, he leaped to his feet. “Rilly gal,” he cried, as she still clung, “let me go! The lamp’s not turnin’. Somethin’s happened to it.”

Away he hurried. The girl stood in the little kitchen where he had left her, with hands hard clasped. She heard his rapid steps ascending the spiral stairs. She waited, almost breathless, wondering why the circle of swinging light did not pass the window. There must have been a hitch in the machinery. That, however, was nothing to worry about. It had happened before.

Then came a vivid flash of fire that zigzagged across the sky. A torrent of rain swept over the island.

Flash followed flash with scarcely a second between, and crash on crash of deafening thunder. Then another sound was heard in the midst of the reverberating roar, a sound of splintering glass, of stone hurled upon stone.

Muriel’s prophecy had been fulfilled; the storm had wrecked the lamp that for so many years had defied it.

With a terrorized cry the girl leaped to the door of the tower, and, heedless of danger to herself, she climbed the spiral stairway, shouting wildly that her call might be heard above the fury of the storm: “Grand-dad, I’m comin’!” But the rain and wind beat her back; then the terrible reality surged over her. The lamp—the tower, both were gone! They had been hurled to the ground by the storm. Muriel knew no more, for she had swooned.

Hours later she was found by Doctor Lem and several longshoremen who had crossed the tossing waters of the bay to discover why the light was not throwing its warning beams out into the darkness.

Carefully, tenderly they lifted her. She had been bruised by rocks that had fallen while she lay there, though of this she had not been conscious. Doctor Lem and two of the men had taken her back to town and had waited until she had revived; then, leaving her in the care of the physician’s housekeeper, Brazilla Mullet, the men, in the cold, grey dawn, had returned to the island to find the keeper of the light, who had been faithful even unto death.

Muriel had been too dazed to really comprehend what had happened and Doctor Lem thought best to have the burial service at once and not wait until the grand-daughter could attend.

“Poor little gal,” Brazilla Mullet wiped her eyes on one corner of her apron, “she’s lost her best friend, I reckon, but she’s got a powerfully good one left in Doctor Lem, though she’s little carin’ jest now.”