Children of the lighthouse

by Nora Archibald Smith

“To-ery see-ery tug-ery come-ery in-ery first-ery, you-ery goose-ery!” laughed the boy.

The mother laughed, too, seeing the whispering pair, and inquired, “Who do you think will understand your ‘secret language,’ if you go to Santa Barbara?”

“Oh, we’ll teach it to the natives, like the Missionaries did when they first came to California,” cried Lesley, gayly, jumping out from her corner.

Of course as the Lighthouse tender was sent only once in two months and as no other vessel touched the island regularly, to see her come in was a great event and one always viewed with excitement by the entire population, with the exception, perhaps, of the sea-birds, the rabbits, and the fishes, who did not care much for outside gayety.

The Lightkeeper, with Jenny Lind and the car, was early on the shore, long before the Vigilant could have been hoped for, and Stumpy, waiting in the storehouse door, saluted the Boss in nautical fashion and limped to his side to exchange opinions on wind and weather. Mrs. McLean forsook her usual stroll among the cabbages and, tying herself up in a shawl against the wind, her head as tightly bandaged as a sausage, she took her stand at the top of the flight of steps nearest the Lighthouse where everything could be seen and heard. The children stood by her side, at first, but soon clattered down the steps and along the rocky path to the shore, where novelty and gayety seemed more possible.

It was a gray day with a troubled sea and the air was filled with the screams of the sea-birds and the dash of the breakers against the black and jagged rocks. As to that, however, these noises were as familiar to the island-folk and as little noticed by them, as the rumble of street-cars and the honk of automobiles are to people of the city.

The children had hardly reached the shore, where Stumpy and the Lightkeeper were already stationed in their little rowboat, when a trail of white smoke was seen on the horizon, and jumping up and down in wild excitement Ronald cried, “There she is, there she is, Lesley! We were only just in time!”

The Vigilant at last hove in sight, steamed to within a few hundred feet of the shore and then blew a blast that startled the birds into louder screaming and greater flapping of wings.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah for the Vigilant!” cried the children, and in a moment out shot their father’s flat-bottomed skiff from the rocks, dipping down behind each breaker and popping up again when it had been passed, like a very Jack-in-the-Box.

The “Gov’ment” had never felt it necessary to build a pier at Friar’s Island, so the only way to land the stores and the barrels of oil was to lower a few of them at a time from the tender into the little boat, row them back to the shore, and then haul them up by a derrick to a small platform that jutted out from the rocks. It was Pacific Ocean, you know, straight up to the island, with no friendly bay or shallow water, just wild surf and big breakers to the very base of the unfriendly cliffs.