[to be continued.]
LIFE IN A LIGHT-HOUSE.
BY A. J. ENSIGN.
A cold biting west wind was blowing. The sea close under the beach was smooth and steel blue, and the breakers reared their white crests slowly, falling in dull booms of muttered thunder. Beyond the rollers a wide expanse of ice-hard gray water swept away to the iron line of the horizon, where strange shapes of writhing billows tossed against the glow of the rising moon. Half a dozen stars of the first magnitude swam in moisture in the zenith, and far away in the west a smudge of black cloud, touched on its lower edge with blood red, kept the record of the swift winter sunset.
"It will blow from the south'ard and east'ard afore mornin', an' it'll snow," said the light-house keeper, as he peered out into the growing gloom, pierced as it was by the rays of the lamp which he had set burning half an hour before.
"Ay," said his assistant, "an' we'll have fog, too, I'm thinkin'."
"Well, get steam up for the siren, an' stan' by fur trouble afore dawn."
The predictions of both men came true. Before two o'clock in the morning the wind had shifted to the southeast, and was blowing a gale. Great tangled masses of brown cloud were flying across the sky at terrific speed, and in and out of the rifts shot the red moon flaming like a comet. The breakers no longer reared and fell slowly, but hurled themselves in shrieking masses of foam upon the stricken beach. A yelling as of ten thousand evil spirits surrounded the caged lantern; but the great yellow light blazed out its warning upon the black waters. But not for long; for out of the southeast swept the impenetrable gray fog that no light could pierce. Then the hoarse moaning blast of the steam-siren sent its cry of warning out over the raging waters. At four o'clock the gale was terrific, and ever and anon the shriek of a steam-whistle told that some vessel was groping her way toward the entrance to the harbor. Suddenly the whistle burst into a series of rapid screams.