“You wouldn’t like to be a lighthouse-keeper on a night like this, John, would you?” asked Mrs Potter, as she busied herself with supper.
“May be not: but I would be content to take things as they are sent. Anyhow, I mean to apply for the situation, because I like the notion of the quiet life, and the wage will be good as well as sure, which will be a matter of comfort to you, old girl. You often complain, you know, of the uncertainty of my present employment.”
“Ay, but I’d rather ’ave that uncertainty than see you run the risk of bein’ drownded in a light’ouse,” said Mrs Potter, glancing uneasily at the window, which rattled violently as the fury of the gale increased.
“Oh, faither,” exclaimed Tommy, pausing with a potato halfway to his mouth, as he listened partly in delight and partly in dread to the turmoil without: “I wish I was a man that I might go with ’ee to live in the light’ouse. Wot fun it would be to hear the gale roarin’ out there, an’ to see the big waves so close, an’ to feel the house shake, and—oh!”
The last syllable expressed partly his inability to say more, and partly his horror at seeing the fire blown almost into the room!
For some time past the smoke had poured down the chimney, but the last burst convinced John Potter that it was high time to extinguish the fire altogether.
This accomplished, he took down an old family Bible from a shelf, and had worship, for he was a man who feared and loved God. Earnestly did he pray, for he had a son in the coasting trade whom he knew to be out upon the raging sea that night, and he did not forget his friends upon the Eddystone Rock.
“Get thee to bed, lass,” he said when he had concluded. “I’ll sit up an’ read the word. My eyes could not close this night.”
Poor Mrs Potter meekly obeyed. How strangely the weather had changed her! Even her enemies—and she had many—would have said there was some good in her after all, if they had seen her with a tear trickling down her ruddy cheek as she thought of her sailor boy.
Day broke at last. The gale still raged with an excess of fury that was absolutely appalling. John Potter wrapped himself in a tarpaulin coat and sou’wester preparatory to going out.