The keeper landed Regie safely right inside the light itself, and indeed it was large enough to hold them all. What a marvellous place it was! It seemed as though they were in a beautiful crystal house, for they were surrounded by tier after tier of glass prisms, so arranged as to project the light from the lantern against a series of brass reflectors at the back, and they, in turn, throw the light twenty-five miles out to sea.
The children were too much awed by the wonderful contrivance to even speak, until Harry slipped out of the light and peered in at them through the glass. It made him look very funny—eyes, nose, mouth, every feature appeared to be drawn out lengthwise by the prisms.
“Why, Harry Murray!” cried Nan, “you're a disgrace to the family. I never saw anything so ugly in all my life!”
“I wish you could come out here and have a look at yourself, then,” Harry called back. “Your head is about two inches high, and two feet wide. You could stand in a bandbox, you are so short, but it would take a dozen of 'em to hold you the other way!”
Nan and Harry were so much amused with these ridiculous distortions that Reginald was the only one who really paid attention to the keeper's description of the lantern, but he listened sagely, and plied questions fast enough to atone for the indifference of the others. Harry might be partially excused for his inattention, on the ground that he had been through the light two or three times before. As for Nan, it must be confessed that she was not of an inquiring turn of mind.
“There's one sad thing about this light,” said the keeper to Reginald, who sat on a little stool with his crutches laid across his knees. “There's one very sad thing, and that is, that some sailors do not understand what it is for at all. They seem to be fascinated by it, and they steer straight for it, and of course there's no help in the end, but that they all get wrecked on the bar.”
“Why, that's very queer,” said Reginald. “I should think a man wasn't fit to be a sailor at all unless he understood about lighthouses and things.”
“So it would seem,” said the keeper, with a shrug; “but I've thought sometimes that the trouble is with their steering apparatus, and that the poor things are more to be pitied than blamed. The moment they come in sight of the light, their helms seem to get bewitched, and first thing they know their queer-rigged little crafts are headed straight for the light, and on they come, sort of in spite of themselves, and with death staring them right in the face.”
“Have there been many wrecks lately?” asked Reginald, his eyes as large as saucers.
“Five last night.”