The lighthouse was a massive structure, over a hundred feet in height. It had been built in obedience to a general demand, owing to the number of vessels that had been wrecked in the vicinity. There were treacherous currents and swiftly running tides due to the peculiar conformation of the Maine coast at that point, and if a ship once grounded on the shoals while a storm was raging its hours were numbered.
In the distance, with the sun playing on it and the sea gulls swooping about its top, it seemed something slender and ethereal. It was only when one was close at hand that its real strength and solidity could be appreciated.
It was built on a solid rock foundation that sloped down into the sea many feet distant from its base. The tower was circular in form so as to offer as little surface as possible to the wind from whatever quarter it might blow. The walls at the bottom, where the force of the waves spent itself, were many feet thick, but they grew thinner as the tower rose in the air. At the top was the enormous light 65 of many thousand candle power. It was the alternating kind, and every fifteen seconds it threw out a ray that could be seen by mariners for many miles.
The lighthouse stood about a mile from the mainland, and all the household supplies had to be brought over by Lester or his father from the little village of Bartanet. Whatever was needed for the light itself came at stated intervals on the government cutters that cruised along that section of the coast.
The boys, under Lester’s guidance, had long before this explored every portion of the lighthouse and wondered at the marvels of the machinery that set the light in motion and kept it going automatically through the night. Brought up in inland towns, all this was new to them, and their curiosity and interest were insatiable.
Now as they watched it growing larger as they drew nearer, they shared the delight and pride of Lester in the noble structure of which his father was the guardian.
“Isn’t it glorious?” demanded Fred.
“Think of the lives that have been saved by it,” said Teddy.
“And will be saved by it during the next hundred years,” added Bill.
“I wonder if poor Mr. Montgomery saw it on that last cruise of his,” pondered Fred.