“T’other patrol’s; one afore me. He’s got a foot big enough to cover up a pumpkin hill.”
Slowly, Tom and Walter returned to the station.
“I suppose I must say good night, and go to my aunt’s now.”
“Wish I had an aunt’s to go to, now. My beat is short, and I must go over it twice more, afore I turn in at twelve. If you are down at the station in the morning, you’ll see on my detector the proof that I’ve been faithful; but I would be, without the thing,” said the sensitive knight of the beach. Walter watched Tom as he turned his face again toward the dark sea and the lonely beach. The light of the lantern steadily dwindled till it seemed like that of a star about to dip beneath the waters of the ocean and disappear; and dip and disappear it did, as Tom stumbled over the shore rocks down upon the beach. Walter went slowly along the lane to Uncle Boardman’s.
In the morning, he was at the station again.
“Do you want to see me open the detectors?” said the keeper to Walter. “Come here then.”
Walter watched the keeper as he opened one of the detectors.
“There,” he said, removing a card or dial. “Do you see those marks?”
“And we might have had to run out the boat” (p. [47]).