Finding the double necessity of killing the dreary and anxious hours, and perhaps of conciliating—if such were possible—these sullen and brutal spirits, I assisted them in trimming the huge lamps and reflectors, in cooking our repast of salt junk, and brewing a great can of egg-flip; but having been detected, in the evening, waving my handkerchief as a signal to a passing schooner, the master of which, on seeing it, actually altered his course and bore up for the lighthouse, I fell into a serious scrape.
Suddenly I was confronted by my two tyrants. Dick's eyes glared like those of a wild beast, as he gave me a violent blow on the ear with a heavy telescope, while the other, with gratuitous ferocity, struck me down by a stroke from a handspike, exclaiming,—
"Look out! or, split me, if I won't cut your rascally throat from clue to earing! Who the devil is going to keep a loblolly-boy like you in grub and grog for nothing?"
I fell senseless and bleeding on the upper deck, or roof of the lighthouse.
I must have lain long thus; for, on recovery, I found that darkness had set in, that the beacon was lighted, and its three lamps, from the cavity of their vast reflectors, were again shedding their radiated lustre far across the heaving waves of the darkened sea. There was no moon visible, but a few tremulous stars were shimmering through the gauze-like vapour that veiled the gloomy sky.
Stiff, sore, and chilled, with an aching head and eyes full of tears—my cheeks damp and my hair encrusted by the saline nature of the atmosphere—I staggered up and sat in the outer gallery for a time, gazing sadly, and full of bitter thoughts, upon the restless sea, which boiled and seethed some thirty feet below me.
CHAPTER XXI.
RETRIBUTION.
Smarting still with the blows those ruffians had given me, I thought of all the evil fortune had wrought me, and burned for vengeance; and terribly I had it, ere the morning sun rose from the sea.
The sound of a strange voice—a woman's voice, too!—was now heard. A woman in that sequestered lighthouse! From whence, and how had she come? I heard also the ribald fun and coarse laughter of the two beacon-keepers. Slipping off my shoes, I crept down the ladder, and peeping through the hatch in the ceiling of the lower apartment, saw the Messieurs Dick Knuckleduster and Broken-nosed Bill seated near a table, drinking and smoking with a woman of repulsive aspect, but with whom they seemed on somewhat intimate terms.