“I don’t know. I can’t tell what is the matter,” was the rejoinder.
“Well, I have some little mechanical skill,” replied Jack. “Suppose we go up to your house and have some breakfast, of which you seem to be in need and we certainly are, and then I and my cousin, Tom Jesson here, will go to work on your light.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
A FORTUNATE FIND.
The lighthouse keeper’s hut was well furnished and provisioned, and they partook of a good meal. While they ate, enjoying to the full the hot coffee and crisp bacon with which their host served them, they listened to his tale of his life.
He had been an orange grower in Florida, but a frost had wiped out all his plantation in a single night. A ruined man, he was compelled to seek any sort of employment, and through a friend had secured a position as assistant keeper at this lonely lighthouse. The name of the island on which the boys had landed was Nacassa, and it was one of the most easterly of the Bahama group.
The light had been placed on Nacassa by the British government, to whom all the Bahama Islands belong, to warn ships of the dread Nacassa reefs, which, it appeared, were once celebrated for the annual harvest of wrecked ships they gathered in.
By the time the keeper had concluded his story the boys had finished eating, and Jack declared that he was ready to see if he could find out what ailed the light.
They entered the tower by a small door and began climbing winding stairs that coiled round and round inside the narrow limits of the lighthouse. At last they reached the top. The light was run by a clockwork mechanism, which, in its turn, was operated by weights which were drawn to the top of the tower every day. It was their gradual descent during the night that made the clockwork run and the light revolve.
Jack examined the machinery with interest. He wound up the weights and carefully listened to the “click-click” of the mechanism as they descended. He was puzzled to locate what was wrong for a while, but at last he found it. Like most such troubles it was a very small one, which was just what made it so hard to find.