After a while he continued, “I want some one to help me with the work on the island. We must be up all the nights now. By day we must get some sleep. I want another man or a strong boy. Is there any who will come? The Government will pay. Or if not, I will pay, moi-meme.”
There was no response. All the men hung back. The lighthouse was still unpopular, or at least it was on trial. Fortin’s pluck and resolution had undoubtedly impressed them a little. But they still hesitated to commit themselves to his side.
“B’en,” he said, “there is no one. Then we shall manage the affair en famille. Bon soir, messieurs!”
He walked down to the beach with his head in the air, without looking back. But before he had his canoe in the water he heard some one running down behind him. It was Thibault’s youngest son, Marcel, a well-grown boy of sixteen, very much out of breath with running and shyness.
“Monsieur Fortin,” he stammered, “will you—do you think—am I big enough?”
Baptiste looked him in the face for a moment. Then his eyes twinkled.
“Certain,” he answered, “you are bigger than your father. But what will he say to this?”
“He says,” blurted out Marcel—“well, he says that he will say nothing if I do not ask him.”
So the little Marcel was enlisted in the crew on the island. For thirty nights those six people—a man, and a boy, and four women (Nataline was not going to submit to any distinctions on the score of age, you may be sure)—for a full month they turned their flashing lantern by hand from dusk to day-break.
The fog, the frost, the hail, the snow beleaguered their tower. Hunger and cold, sleeplessness and weariness, pain and discouragement, held rendezvous in that dismal, cramped little room. Many a night Nataline’s fife of fun played a feeble, wheezy note. But it played. And the crank went round. And every bit of glass in the lantern was as clear as polished crystal. And the big lamp was full of oil. And the great eye of the friendly giant winked without ceasing, through fierce storm and placid moonlight.