At first when he lighted the lamp he turned the wick up far too high, and there was so much smoke and so big a flame that he could not possibly put the chimney in place. He turned it out slowly and was more successful in his second attempt, although even then he did not find the glass chimney at all easy to adjust. Proudly the “Light of Home” sailed round the inverted soap-dish and the smoking lamp. Still Daddy caught ’eaps an’ ’eaps of fish. But, alas! a storm arose, and the poor “Light of Home” listed in a truly terrifying manner.
The storm gave rise to a new idea. Daddy was no longer aboard the lugger. It was Granfäather Tregennis instead. Daddy was just a little new boy lying in a big fourposter bed. But there must be a light in Granny’s window to help Granfäather to sail safely home.
Tommy was in luck. As a rule there was no candle in Mammy’s bedroom, only the paraffin lamp. To-day there stood on the chest of drawers the ladies’ china candlestick, fitted with a quite new candle. Tommy pulled up a chair to the foot of the bed, lighted the candle and put the candlestick on the chair. Then he tilted it a little so that the light might shine through the rails at the foot of the bed, for the foot of the bed was the window of Granny’s room.
While these preparations were afoot the “Light of Home” had been lying neglected in the trough of a wave. Now she again began to sail over the furrowed bed clothes. But the storm was telling on her. Slowly but surely her outer coat was melting away, leaving sticky brown streaks on Tommy’s fingers and on the snowy whiteness of the clean bed-quilt.
“You hobjeck you! you article you! I’ll tell your fäather the minute he comes in.”
The “Light of Home” slipped through Tommy’s fingers. The Eddystone lurched over, fell from its soap-dish rock and was engulfed in the quilty billows below. Mrs. Tregennis rushed from the position she had taken up in the doorway, seized the lamp and extinguished the flame.
Tommy’s eyes dilated with fear. “Now I shall get it somethin’ awful!” he thought, and shrank against the erstwhile raging sea.
For once words failed Mrs. Tregennis. She looked at the big bed, whose counterpane was brown with chocolate streaks and black with paraffin smuts. She looked at her son, sticky, smutty and subdued. On the new white collar of the sailor blouse were the chocolate imprints of his restless fingers. Down the right leg of the new long trousers were splashes of grease. The room was thick with the smoke from the lamp and the smell was vile.
It was not often that Tommy was really whipped, and when Mammy opened the top long drawer of the chest of drawers with a sharp little jerk the tears welled up slowly in his big blue eyes. When she took from the drawer the supple cane that was so seldom used, and advanced towards him with grim determination, he broke into piteous sobs.
A quarter of an hour later a tearful Tommy sat limply on a chair in the kitchen; he wore his old blue trousers and his old red jersey top. Sunday though it was Mammy stood at the table and with brown paper and a hot iron removed the splashes of grease from the right leg of the new sailor suit. The dandy-go-risset suit of the early morning!