As night began to fall the Master ascended alone to the observatory. He at once lighted the furnace, and heightened its brilliancy by means of lime and oxygen. He then removed the wainscot from the three walls opposite the large windows facing the sea. Behind the wainscot were immense concave mirrors of burnished steel. These now reflected back the dazzling light from the furnace in three directions away to the distant horizon.
Before the exercises of the night it was customary to ring the "chapel" bell. This was an enormous bell, which had once been taken as booty. It was suspended in a secret chamber beneath the observatory, and on being rung, its rumbling notes sounded through a semicircular window of the tower far out into the night. The tower had no opening on the land side, and the inhabitants of the island could neither see the light of the furnace nor hear the tolling of the bell. Every ship which appeared on the horizon in a stormy night must inevitably fall a prey to this diabolical stratagem.
In the channel connecting the Baltic with the Gulf of Finland there were two lighthouses—one on the Swedish coast at Gustavsvarn, and another on the Finnish coast near Revel. Even on a stormy night seamen might easily have steered their course by these two lights. But the Devil's apostle in the Tower of Dago confused them with his light and the sound of his bell. The mariners imagined that one of the two lighthouses known to them lay before them. They felt sure that the light beckoned them on to safety. So, with heartfelt thanks to God for His mercy, they steered directly towards it, and about an hour later were dashed against the rocks of Dago.
Then, as signals for help and cries of terror rose above the roar of wind and sea, the small boats swarmed forth from their concealment and boarded the stranded vessel. The crews killed all who were still alive on board, and plundered everything of value to be found—money, bales of goods, and provisions. They then carried everything ashore and stored it in the lower vaults of the tower. Such an expedition would often have to be repeated twice or thrice in a single night, for the deceptive light enticed vessels from three different quarters, and all went into the trap. The Master was careful to extinguish the light about two hours before daybreak, in order that no vessel should make towards his stronghold in broad daylight. Of his victims not one man was ever left alive.
They had, indeed, leagued themselves with all the fiends of Darkness and the Storm, in defiance of both Heaven and Earth.
This, then, was the sorcery by which they drew bread, meat, wine and fruit from the rocks and the sea. It was the stranded vessels that filled the chambers and vaults of the Tower of Dago with everything dear to the heart of man, and covered the rocky shore beneath the tower with that which was now dearest of all to its inmates' hearts—the fleshless bones of their brother men.
CHAPTER V
The Famine
It came to pass as the Master of the Tower of Dago had foretold. A year of famine visited the island.