"——ever foremost in the chase,And victor at the tilt and tournament,They called him the great Prince and man of men.But Enid, whom her ladies loved to callEnid the Fair, a grateful people namedEnid the Good."
"——ever foremost in the chase,And victor at the tilt and tournament,They called him the great Prince and man of men.But Enid, whom her ladies loved to callEnid the Fair, a grateful people namedEnid the Good."
"That settles it," cried Jim, brandishing his pipe towards Penzance. "I hope as how Miss Enid Trevillion is asleep an' doin' well, an' that she'll grow up to be both fair an' good. If she does, she'll be better'n most women."
Brand made no reply. He went within to attend to the lantern. In five minutes the great eyes of the Lizard, the Longships and the Seven Stones Lightship were solemnly staring at their fellow-warden of the Gulf Rock, whilst, in the far west, so clear was the night, the single flash of St. Agnes and the double flash of the Bishop illumined the sky.
At the foot of a long flight of steps leading from the boat quay to the placid waters of Penzance harbor a stoutly built craft was moored. It had two occupants this bright January morning, and they were sufficiently diverse in appearance to attract the attention of the local squad of that great army of loungers which seems to thrive in tobacco-blessed content at all places where men go down to the sea in ships.
The pair consisted of a weather-beaten fisherman and a girl.
The man was scarred and blistered by wind and wave until he had attained much outward semblance to his craft. Nevertheless, man and boat looked reliable. They were sturdy and strong; antiquated, perhaps, and greatly in want of a new coat; but shaped on lines to resist the elements together for years to come. Ben Pollard and his pilchard-driver,Daisy, were Cornish celebrities of note. Not once, but many times, had they been made immortal—with the uncertain immortality of art—by painters of the Newlyn school.
The girl, an animated cameo, to which the shabby picturesqueness of Old Ben in his patched garments and oldDaisyin her unkempt solidity supplied a fitting background, merited the tacit approval she received from the pipe-smokers.
Flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, with a face of a delicate, flower-like beauty which added to its mobile charm by the healthy glow of a skin brightened and deepened in tone by an abiding love of the open air, she suggested, by her attire, an artistic study of the color effects derivable from the daringly trustful little plant which gave the boat its name. She wore a coat and skirt of green cloth, lightly hemmed and cuffed with dark red braid. Her large white hat was trimmed with velvet of a tone to match the braid, and her neatly fitting brown boots and gloves were of the right shade. Beneath her coat there was a glimpse of a knitted jersey of soft white wool, this being a tribute to the season, though a winter in Lyonnesse can usually shrug its comfortable shoulders at the deceitful vagaries of the Riviera.
That she was a young person of some maritime experience was visible to the connoisseurs above at a glance. She was busily engaged in packing the spacious lockers of theDaisywith certain stores of apples, oranges and vegetables—ranging from the lordly new potato (an aristocrat at that time of the year) to the plebeian cabbage—and her lithe, active figure moved with an ease born of confidence in the erratic principles of gravitation as codified and arranged by a rocking boat.
Pollard, too, was overhauling his gear, seeing that the mast was securely stepped and the tackle ran free. Whilst they worked they talked, and, of course, the critics listened.
"Do you think the weather will hold, Ben?" asked the girl over her shoulder, stooping to arrange some clusters of daffodils and narcissus so that they should not suffer by the lurch of some heavy package when the boat heeled over.
"The glass be a-fallin', sure, missy," said the old fellow cheerily, "but wi' the wind backin' round to the norrard it on'y means a drop o' wet."
"You think we will make the rock in good time?"
"We'm do our best, Miss Enid."
She sat up suddenly.
"Don't you dare tell me, Ben Pollard, that after all our preparations we may have to turn back or run for inglorious shelter into Lamorna."
Her mock indignation induced a massive grin. "A mahogany table breaking into mirth," was Enid's private description of Ben's face when he smiled.
"'Ee knaw the coast as well as most," he said. "Further go, stronger blow, 'ee knaw."
"And not so slow, eh, Ben? Really, you and theDaisylook more tubby every time I see you."
Thus disparaged, Pollard defended himself and his craft.
"Me an'Daisy'll sail to Gulf Light quicker'n any other two tubs in Penzance, missy. Her be a long run at this time o' year, but you'm get there all right, I 'xpect. Wi' a norrard breeze we'm be safe enough. If the wind makes 'ee c'n zee et comin', 'ee knaw."
She laughed quietly. Any reflection on the spanking powers of his pilchard-driver would rouse Ben instantly.
"As if I didn't know all you could teach me," she cried, "and as if anyone in all Cornwall could teach me better."
The old fisherman was mollified. He looked along the quay.
"Time we'm cast off," he said. "Miss Constance be a plaguey long time fetchin' them wraps."
"Oh, Ben, how can you say that? She had to go all the way to the Cottage. Why, if she ran—"
"Here she be," he broke in, "an' she b'ain't runnin' neither. Her's got a young man in tow."
What announcement would straighten the back of any girl of nineteen like unto that? Enid Trevillion turned and stood upright.
"Why, it's Jack!" she cried, waving a delighted hand.
"So it be," admitted Pollard, after a surprised stare. "When I look landward my eyes b'ain't so good as they was."
He stated this fact regretfully. No elderly sea-dog will ever acknowledge to failing vision when he gazes at the level horizon he knows so well. This is no pretence of unwilling age: it is wholly true. The settled chaos of the shore bewilders him. The changeful sea cannot.
Meanwhile, the dawdlers lining the wharf, following Enid's signals with their eyes, devoted themselves to a covert staring at the young people hurrying along the quay.
Constance Brand, being a young and pretty woman, secured their instant suffrages. Indeed, she would have won the favorable verdict of a more severe audience. Taller than Enid, she had the brown hair and hazel eyes of her father. To him, too, she owed the frank, self-reliant pose of head and clearly cut, refined features which conveyed to others that all-important first good impression. Blended with Stephen Brand's firm incisiveness, and softening the quiet strength of her marked resemblance to him, was an essential femininity which lifted her wholly apart from the ruck of handsome English girls who find delight in copying the manners and even the dress of their male friends.
Her costume was an exact replica of that of Enid. She walked well and rapidly, yet her alert carriage had a grace, a subtle elegance, more frequently seen in America than in England. Her lively face, flushed with exercise, and, it may be, with some little excitement, conveyed the same Transatlantic characteristic. One said at seeing her: "Here is a girl who has lived much abroad." It came as a surprise to learn that she had never crossed the Channel.
The man with her, Lieutenant John Percival Stanhope, R. N., was too familiar a figure in Penzance to evoke muttered comment from the gallery.
A masterful young gentleman he looked, and one accustomed to having his own way in the world, whether in love or war. True type of the British sailor, he had the physique of a strong man and the adventurously cheerful expression of a boy.
The skin of his face and hands, olive-tinted with exposure, his dark hair and the curved eyelashes, which drooped over his blue eyes, no less than the artistic proclivities suggested by his well-chiseled features and long, tapering fingers, proclaimed that Stanhope, notwithstanding his Saxon surname and bluff bearing, was a Celt. His mother, in fact, was a Tregarthen of Cornwall, daughter of a peer, and a leading figure in local society.
One may ask: "Why should a youth of good birth and social position be on such terms of easy familiarity with two girls, one of whom was the daughter of a lighthouse-keeper, and the other her sister by adoption?"
Indeed, a great many people did ask this pertinent question; among others, Lady Margaret Stanhope put it often and pointedly to her son, without any cogent answer being forthcoming.
If she were denied enlightenment, although her maternal anxiety was justifiable, the smokers on the pier, as representing the wider gossip of the town, may also be left unsatisfied.
"This is a nice thing," he cried, when he came within speaking distance of the girl in the boat. "I manage to bamboozle the admiral out of three days' leave and I rush to Penzance to be told that Constance and you are off to the Gulf Rock for the day. It is too bad of you, Enid."
Eyebrows were raised and silent winks exchanged among the human sparrows lining the rails.
"So Master Jack came to see Miss Trevillion, eh? What would her ladyship say if she heard that?"
"Why not come with us?" The audacity of her!
"By Jove," he agreed, "that would be jolly. Look here. Wait two minutes until I scribble a line to the mater—"
"Nothing of the sort, Jack," interposed the other girl quietly, taking from his arm the water-proof cloaks he was carrying for her. "You know Lady Margaret would be very angry, and with very good reason. Moreover, dad would be annoyed, too."
"The old girl is going out this afternoon," he protested.
"And she expects you to go with her. Now, Jack, don't let us quarrel before we have met for five minutes. We will see you tomorrow."
He helped her down the stone steps.
"Enid," he murmured, "Connie and you must promise to drive with me to Morvah in the morning. I will call for you at eleven sharp."
"What a pity you can't sail out to the rock with us today. Tomorvah is so distant."
The minx lifted her blue eyes to his with such ingenuous regret in them that Stanhope laughed, and pipes were shifted to permit the listeners above their heads to snigger approval of her quip.
"Dad will wig us enough as it is, Enid," said the other girl. "We are bringing him a peace-offering of fruits of the earth, Jack."
"Will you be able to land?"
"One never can tell. It all depends on the state of the sea near the rock. Anyhow, we can have a chat, and send up the vegetables by the derrick."
"We'm never get there thiccy tide if we'm stop here much longer," interrupted Ben.
"Hello, old grampus! How are you? Mind you keep these young ladies off the stones."
"And mind you keep your tin-pot off the stones," growled Pollard. "They was a-sayin' larst night her were aground at Portsea."
"They said right, Father Ben. That is why I am here."
Enid glanced at him with ready anxiety. There was nothing of the flirt in her manner now.
"I hope you had no mishap," she said, and Constance mutely echoed the inquiry. Both girls knew well what a serious thing it was for a youngster to run his first boat ashore.
"Don't look so glum," he chuckled. "I am all right. Got a bit of kudos out of it really. We fouled theVolcanicand strained our steering gear. That is all."
It was not all. He did not mention that, during a torpedo attack on a foggy night, he ran up to three battleships undefended by nets and stenciled his initials within a white square on five different parts of their sleek hulls, thus signifying to an indignant admiral and three confounded captains (dictionary meaning of "confounded") that these leviathans had been ingloriously sunk at their moorings by torpedoes.
"It sounds unconvincing," said Constance. "You must supply details tomorrow. Enid, that horrid pun of yours ruins the word."
"Are we also to supply luncheon?" chimed in Enid.
"Perish the thought. I have lived on sandwiches and bottled beer for a week. There! Off you go."
He gave the boat a vigorous push and stood for a little while at the foot of the steps, ostensibly to light a cigar. He watched Constance shipping the rudder whilst Enid hoisted the sail and old Ben plied a pair of oars to carry the boat into the fair way of the channel.
They neared the harbor lighthouse. The brown sail filled and theDaisygot way on her. Then she sped round the end of the solid pier and vanished, whereupon Lieutenant Stanhope walked slowly to the Promenade, whence he could see the diminishing speck of canvas on the shining sea until it was hidden by Clement's Island.
At last, the devotees of twist and shag, resting their tired arms on the railing, were able to exchange comments.
"Brace o' fine gells, them," observed the acknowledged leader, a broken-down "captain" of a mine abandoned soon after his birth.
"Fine," agreed his nearest henchman. Then, catching the gloom of the captain's gaze after Stanhope's retreating figure, he added:
"But what does that young spark want, turning their pretty heads for them, I should like to know?"
"They didn't seem partic'lar stuck on 'im," ventured another.
"The ways of women is curious," pronounced the oracle. "I once knew a gell—"
But his personal reminiscences were not of value. More to the point was the garbled, but, in the main, accurate account he gave of the rescue of an unknown child by one of the keepers of the Gulf Rock lighthouse on a June morning eighteen years earlier.
Stephen Brand was the name of the man, and there was a bit of a mystery about him, too. They all knew that a light-keeper earned a matter of £70 to £80 a year—not enough to maintain a daughter and an adopted child in slap-up style, was it? A small villa they lived in, and a governess they had, and ponies to ride when they were big enough. The thing was ridiculous, wasn't it?
Everybody agreed that it was.
People said Brand was a swell. Well, that might or might not be true. The speaker did not think much of him. He was a quiet, unsociable chap, though Jones, a Trinity pensioner, who kept the "Pilchard and Seine" now, wouldn't hear a wrong word about him, and always called him "cap'n." A pretty sort of a captain! But then, they all knew what an old slow-coach Jones was. They did: Jones's pints were retailed on the premises for money down.
Then there was Spence, lame Jim, who lived at Marazion: he told a fine tale about a fight with a shark before Brand reached the boat in which was the blessed baby—that very girl, Enid, they had just seen. Was it true? How could he say? There was a lot about it at the time in the local papers, but just then his own mind was given to thoughts of enlisting, as a British expedition was marching across the desert to relieve Khartoum—and cause Gordon's death.
No: Brand and the two girls had not dwelt all the time in Penzance. The light-keepers went all over the kingdom, you know, but he had hit upon some sort of fog-signal fad—Brand was always a man of fads: he once told the speaker that all the Polwena Mine wanted was work—and the Gulf Rock was the best place for trying it. At his own request the Trinity people sent him back there two years ago. Some folk had queer tastes, hadn't they? And talking so much had made him dry.
Then the conversation languished, as the only obvious remark of any importance was not forthcoming.
Meanwhile, theDaisysped buoyantly towards the southwest. Although she was broad in beam and staunch from thwart to keel it was no light undertaking to run fourteen miles out and home in such a craft.
But old Ben Pollard knew what he was about. Not until the granite pillar of the distant Gulf Rock opened up beyond Carn du was it necessary to turn the boat's head seawards. Even then, by steering close to the Runnelstone, they need not, during two-thirds of the time, be more than a mile or so distant from one of the many creeks in which they could secure shelter in case of a sudden change in the weather.
Thenceforward there was nothing for it but a straight run of six miles to the rock, behind which lay the Scilly Isles, forty miles away, and well below the boat's horizon.
So, when the moment came for the final decision to be made, Pollard cast an anxious eye at a great bank of cloud mounting high in the north.
There was an ominous drop in the temperature, too. The rain he anticipated might turn to snow, and snow is own brother to fog at sea, though both are generally absent from the Cornish littoral in winter.
"Ben," cried Enid, breaking off a vivid if merciless description of a new disciple who had joined the artistic coterie at Newlyn, "what are you looking at?"
He scratched his head and gazed fixedly at the white battalions sweeping in aërial conquest over the land.
"She do look like snaw," he admitted.
"Well, what does that matter?"
Without waiting for orders Constance had eased the helm a trifle. TheDaisywas now fairly headed for the rock. With this breeze she would be there in less than an hour.
"It be a bit risky," grumbled Ben.
"We will be alongside the lighthouse before there can be any serious downfall," said practical Constance.
"Surely we can make the land again no matter how thick the weather may be."
Ben allowed himself to be persuaded. In after life he would never admit that they were free agents at that moment.
"It had to be," he would say. "It wur in me mind to argy wi' she, but I just couldn't. An' how often do us zee snaw in Carnwall? Not once in a blue moon." And who would dispute him? No West-country man, certainly.
At a distance of five miles one small fishing craft is as like another as two Liliputians to the eye of Gulliver. In a word, it needs acquaintance and nearness to distinguish them.
As it happened, Stephen Brand did happen to note theDaisyand the course she was shaping. But, during the short interval when his telescope might have revealed to him the identity of her occupants, he was suddenly called by telephone from the oil-room to the kitchen. When next he ran aloft in a wild hurry to signal for assistance, he found, to his despair, that the Land's End was already blotted out in a swirling snowstorm, and the great plain of blue sea had shrunk to a leaden patch whose visible limits made the reef look large by comparison.
With the mechanical precision of habit he set the big bell in motion. Its heavy boom came fitfully through the pelting snow-flakes to the ears of the two girls and old Ben. The latter, master of the situation now, announced his intention to 'bout ship and make for Mount's Bay.
"'Ee doan' ketch me tryin' to sail close to Gulf Rock when 'ee can't zee a boat's length ahead," he said, emphatically. "I be sorry, ladies both, but 'ee knaw how the tide runs over the reef, an' 'tes easy to drive to the wrong side of the light. We'm try again tomorrow. On'y the flowers'll spile. All the rest—"
Crash! A loud explosion burst forth from the dense heights of the storm. TheDaisy, sturdy as she was, seemed to shiver. The very air trembled with the din. Pollard had his hand on the sail to swing it to starboard when Constance put the tiller over to bring the boat's head up against the wind. For an instant he hesitated. Even he, versed in the ways of the sea, was startled. Both girls positively jumped, the sudden bang of the rocket was so unexpected.
"Mister Brand must ha' zeed us," pronounced Ben. "That's a warnin' to we to go back."
The words had scarce left his lips when another report smote the great silence, otherwise unbroken save by the quiet plash of the sea against the bows and the faint reverberations of the distant bell.
"That is too urgent to be intended for us," said Constance. "We were just half way when the snow commenced."
"I did not notice any vessel near the rock," cried Enid, tremulously. "Did you, Ben?"
Pollard's slow utterance was not quick enough. Before he could answer, a third rocket thundered its overpowering summons.
"That is the 'Help wanted' signal," cried Constance. "Ben, there is no question now of going back. We must keep our present course for twenty minutes at least, and then take to the oars. The bell will guide us."
"Oh, yes, Ben," agreed Enid. "Something has gone wrong on the rock itself. I am quite sure there was no ship near enough to be in trouble already."
"By gum, we'm zee what's the matter," growled Ben. "Steady it is, Miss Brand. Ef we'm in trouble I'd as soon ha' you two gells aboard as any two men in Penzance."
At another time the compliment would have earned him a torrent of sarcasm. Now it passed unheeded. The situation was bewildering, alarming. There were three keepers in the lighthouse. The signal foreboded illness, sudden and serious illness. Who could it be?
In such a crisis charity begins at home. Constance, with set face and shining eyes, Enid, flushed and on the verge of tears, feared lest their own beloved one should be the sufferer.
To each of them Stephen Brand was equally a kind and devoted father. He never allowed Enid to feel that she was dependent on his bounty. Only the other day, when she hinted at the adoption of an art career as a future means of earning a livelihood, he approved of the necessary study but laughed at the reason.
"With your pretty face and saucy ways, Enid," he said, "I shall have trouble enough to keep you in the nest without worrying as to the manner of your leaving it. Work at your drawing, by all means. Avoid color as the bane of true art. But where Connie and I live you shall live, until you choose to forsake us."
No wonder these girls thought there was no other man in the world like "dad." Their delightful home was idyllic in its happiness: their only sorrow that Brand should be away two months out of three on account of the pursuit in which he passed his hours of leisure during recent years.
Neither dared to look at the other. They could not trust themselves even to speak. There was relief in action, for thought was torture.
The docileDaisysteadily forged through the waves. The spasmodic clang of the bell came more clearly each minute. Pollard, kneeling in the bows, peered into the gloom of the swirling snow. He listened eagerly to the bell. With right hand or left he motioned to Constance to bring the boat's head nearer to the wind or permit the sail to fill out a little more.
Enid, ready to cast the canvas loose at the first hint of danger, consulted her watch frequently. At last she cried:
"Twenty minutes, Ben."
What a relief it was to hear her own voice. The tension was becoming unbearable.
"Right y' are, missy. No need to slack off yet. 'Tes clearin' a bit. We'm heave to alongside the rock in less'n no time."
The fisherman was right. His trained senses perceived a distinct diminution in the volume of snow. Soon they could see fifty, a hundred, two hundred yards ahead. On the starboard quarter they caught a confused rushing noise, like the subdued murmur of a millrace. The tide had covered the rock.
"Luff et is!" roared Ben, suddenly. "Steady now."
Out of the blurred vista a ghostly column rose in front. Smooth and sheer were its granite walls, with dark little casements showing black in the weird light. The boat rushed past the Trinity mooring-buoy. She held on until they heard the sea breaking.
"Lower away!" cried Ben, and the yard fell with a sharp rattle that showed how thoroughly Enid had laid to heart Pollard's tuition.
Constance brought theDaisyround in a wide curve, and Ben got out the oars to keep her from being dashed against the reef.
Enid's eyes were turned towards the gallery beneath the lantern.
"Lighthouse ahoy!" she screamed in a voice high-pitched with emotion.
There was no answering clang of the door leading from the room on a level with the balcony. Not often had the girls visited the rock, but they knew that this was the first sign they might expect of their arrival being noted if there were no watchers pacing the "promenade."
"Help us, Ben," cried Constance, and their united shouts might be heard a mile away in the prevailing stillness. A window half way up the tower was opened. A man's head and shoulders appeared.
It was Stephen Brand.
"Thank God!" murmured Constance.
Enid, on whose sensitive soul the storm, the signal, the hissing rush of the boat through the waves, had cast a spell of indefinite terror, bit her lip to restrain her tears.
Brand gave a glance of amazement at the three uplifted faces. But this was no time for surprise or question.
"I am coming down," he shouted. "Providence must have sent you at this moment."
He vanished.
"What can it be?" said Constance, outwardly calm now in the assurance that her father was safe.
"Must ha' bin a accident," said Ben. "That signal means 'Bring a doctor.' An' there ain't a blessed tug in harbor, nor won't be till the tide makes."
"That will mean delay," cried Enid.
"Five or six hours at least, missy."
The main door at the head of the iron ladder clamped to the stones swung back, and Brand leaned out. He had no greeting for them, nor words of astonishment.
"When will the tug reach here, Ben?" he asked.
The fisherman told him the opinion he had formed.
"Then you girls must come and help me. Jackson scalded his hands and arms in the kitchen, and Bates was hurrying to the store-room for oil and whitening when he slipped on the stairs and broke his leg. We must get them both ashore. Ben, you can take them?"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Now, Constance, you first. Hold tight and stand in the skip. Your boat cannot come near the rock."
He swung the derrick into place and began to work the windlass. Constance, cool as her father, whispered to the excited Enid:
"Let us divide the parcels and take half each."
"Oh, I should have forgotten all about them," said Enid, stooping to empty the lockers.
Constance, without flickering an eyelid, stepped into the strong basket with its iron hoops, and, having arranged some of the plethoric paper bags at her feet, told her father to "hoist away."
She arrived safely. Enid followed her, with equalsang froid, though a lift of forty odd feet whilst standing in a skip and clinging to a rope is not an every-day experience.
"Dang me," said Ben, as Enid, too, was swung into the lighthouse, "but they're two plucked 'uns."
The great bell tolled away, though the snow had changed to sleet, and the heights beyond the Land's End were dimly visible, so its warning note was no longer needed. The sky above was clearing. A luminous haze spreading over the waters heralded the return of the sun. But the wind was bitterly cold; the fisherman watching the open door, with one eye on the sea lest an adventurous wave should sweep theDaisyagainst the rock, murmured to himself:
"'Tes a good job the wind 's i' the norrard. This sort o' thing's a weather-breeder, or my name ain't Ben Pollard."
And that was how Enid came back to the Gulf Rock to enter upon the second great epoch of her life.
Once before had the reef taken her to its rough heart and fended her from peril. Would it shield her again—rescue her from the graver danger whose shadow even now loomed out of the deep. What was the bell saying in its wistful monotony?
Enid neither knew nor cared. Just then she had other things to think about.
There comes a time in the life of every thinking man or woman when the argosy of existence, floating placidly on a smooth and lazy stream, gathers unto itself speed, rushes swiftly onward past familiar landmarks of custom and convention, boils furiously over resisting rocks, and ultimately, if not submerged in an unknown sea, finds itself again meandering through new plains of wider horizon.
Such a perilous passage can never be foreseen. The rapids may begin where the trees are highest and the meadows most luxuriant. No warning is given. The increased pace of events is pleasant and exhilarating. Even the last wild plunge over the cascade is neither resented nor feared. Some frail craft are shattered in transit, some wholly sunken, some emerge with riven sails and tarnished embellishments. A few not only survive the ordeal, but thereby fit themselves for more daring exploits, more soul-stirring adventures.
When the two girls stood with Stephen Brand in the narrow entrance to the lighthouse, the gravity of their bright young faces was due solely to the fact that their father had announced the serious accidents which had befallen his assistants. No secret monitor whispered that fate, in her bold and merciless dramatic action, had roughly removed two characters from the stage to clear it for more striking events.
Not once in twenty years has it happened that two out of the three keepers maintained on a rock station within signaling distance of the shore have become incapacitated for duty on the same day. The thing was so bewilderingly sudden, the arrival of Constance and Enid on the scene so timely and unexpected, that Brand, a philosopher of ready decision in most affairs of life, was at a loss what to do for the best now that help, of a sort undreamed of, was at hand.
The case of Jackson, who was scalded, was simple enough. The Board of Trade medicine chest supplied to each lighthouse is a facsimile of that carried by every sea-going steamship. It contained the ordinary remedies for such an injury, and there would be little difficulty or danger in lowering the sufferer to the boat.
But Bates's affair was different. He lay almost where he had fallen. Brand had only lifted him into the store-room from the foot of the stairs, placing a pillow beneath his head, and appealing both to him and to Jackson to endure their torture unmoved whilst he went to signal for assistance.
The problem that confronted him now was one of judgment. Was is better to await the coming of the doctor or endeavor to transfer Bates to the boat?
He consulted Ben Pollard again; the girls were already climbing the steep stairs to sympathize with and tend to the injured men.
"Do you think it will blow harder, Ben, when the tide turns?" he asked.
The old fellow seemed to regard the question as most interesting and novel. Indeed, to him, some such query and its consideration provided the chief problem of each day. Therefore he surveyed land, sea and sky most carefully before he replied:
"It may be a'most anything afore night, Misser Brand."
At another time Brand would have smiled. Today he was nervous, distraught, wrenched out of the worn rut of things.
"I fancy there is some chance of the doctor being unable to land when he reaches the rock. Do you agree with me?"
His voice rang sharply. Ben caught its note and dropped his weather-wise ambiguity.
"It'll blow harder, an' mebbe snaw agin," he said.
"I shall need some help here in that case, so I will retain the young ladies. Of course you can manage the boat easily enough without them?"
Pollard grinned reassuringly.
"We'm run straight in wi' thiccy wind," he said.
So they settled it that way, all so simply.
A man sets up two slim masts a thousand miles apart and flashes comprehensible messages across the void. The multitude gapes at first, but soon accepts the thing as reasonable. "Wireless telegraphy" is the term, as one says "by mail."
A whole drama was flowing over a curve of the earth at that moment but the Marconi station was invisible. There was no expert in telepathic sensation present to tell Brand and the fisherman that their commonplace words covered a magic code.
Jackson, white and mute, was lowered first. The brave fellow would not content himself with nursing his agony amidst the cushions aft. When Bates, given some slight strength by a stiff dose of brandy, was carried, with infinite care, down three flights of steep and narrow stairs, and slung to the crane in an iron cot to be lowered in his turn, Jackson stood up. Heedless of remonstrances, he helped to steady the cot and adjust it amidships clear of the sail.
"Well done, Artie," said Brand's clear voice.
"Oh, brave!" murmured Enid.
"We will visit you every day at the hospital," sang out Constance.
Jackson smiled, yes, smiled, though his bandaged arms quivered and the seared nerves of his hands throbbed excruciatingly. Speak aloud he could not Yet he bent over his more helpless mate and whispered hoarsely:
"Cheer up, old man. Your case is worse'n mine. An' ye did it for me."
Pollard, with a soul gnarled as his body, yet had a glimpse of higher things when he muttered:
"D'ye think ye can hold her, mate, whiles I hoist the cloth?"
Jackson nodded. The request was a compliment, a recognition. He sat down and hooked the tiller between arm and ribs. Ben hauled with a will; theDaisy, as if she were glad to escape the cascades of green water swirling over the rock, sprang into instant animation. The watchers from the lighthouse saw Ben relieve the steersman and tenderly arrange the cushions behind his back. Then Brand closed the iron doors and the three were left in dim obscurity.
They climbed nearly a hundred feet of stairways and emerged on to the cornice balcony after Brand had stopped the clockwork which controlled the hammer of the bell.
What a difference up here! The sea, widened immeasurably, had changed its color. Now it was a sullen blue gray. The land was nearer and higher. TheDaisyhad shrunk to a splash of dull brown on the tremendous ocean prairie. How fierce and keen the wind! How disconsolate the murmur of the reef!
Brand, adjusting his binoculars, scrutinized the boat.
"All right aboard," he said. "I think we have adopted the wiser course. They will reach Penzance by half-past two."
His next glance was towards the Land's End signal station. A line of flags fluttered out to the right of the staff.
"Signal noted and forwarded," he read aloud. "That is all right; but the wind has changed."
Enid popped inside the lantern for shelter. It was bitterly cold.
"Better follow her example, Connie," said Brand, to his daughter. "I will draw the curtains. We can see just as well and be comfortable."
Indeed, the protection of the stout plate glass, so thick and tough that sea-birds on a stormy night dashed themselves to painless death against it, was very welcome. Moreover, though neither of the girls would admit it, there was a sense of security here which was strangely absent when they looked into the abyss beneath the stone gallery. Constance balancing a telescope, Enid peering through the field-glasses, followed the progress of theDaisyin silence, but Brand's eyes wandered uneasily from the barometer, which had fallen rapidly during the past hour, to the cyclonic nimbus spreading its dark mass beyond the Seven Stones Lightship. The sun had vanished, seemingly for the day, and the indicator attached to the base of the wind vane overhead pointed now sou'west by west. It would not require much further variation to bring about a strong blow from the true southwest, a quarter responsible for most of the fierce gales that sweep the English Channel.
Nevertheless, this quick darting about of the fickle breeze did not usually betoken lasting bad weather. At the worst, the girls might be compelled to pass the night on the rock. He knew that the tug with the two relief men would make a valiant effort to reach the lighthouse at the earliest possible moment. When the men joined him the girls could embark. As it was, the affair was spiced with adventure. Were it not for the mishap to the assistant-keepers the young people would have enjoyed themselves thoroughly. The new airt of the wind, too, would send theDaisyspeedily back to port. This, in itself, justified the course he had taken. On the whole, a doubtful situation was greatly relieved. His face brightened. With a grave humor not altogether artificial, he cried:
"Now, Constance, I did not take you aboard as a visitor. Between us we ought to muster a good appetite. Come with me to the store-room. I will get you anything you want and leave you in charge of the kitchen."
"And poor me!" chimed in Enid.
"Oh, you, miss, are appointed upper house-maid. And mind you, no followers."
"Mercy! I nearly lost my situation before I got it."
"How?"
"We met Jack Stanhope and asked him to come with us."
"You asked him, you mean," said Constance.
"And you met him, I meant," said Enid.
"I don't care a pin how you treated Stanhope, so long as you didn't bring him," said Brand, "though, indeed, he would have been useful as it turned out."
When lunch was ready they summoned him by the electric bells he had put up throughout the building. It gave them great joy to discover in the living room a code of signals which covered a variety of messages. They rang him downstairs by the correct call for "Meal served."
It was a hasty repast, as Brand could not remain long away from the glass-covered observatory, but they all enjoyed it immensely. He left them, as he said, "to gobble up the remains," but soon he shouted down the stairs to tell them that theDaisyhad rounded Carn du. He could not tell them, not knowing it, that at that precise moment old Ben Pollard was frantically signaling to Lieutenant Stanhope to change the course of the small steam yacht he had commandeered as soon as the murmur ran through the town that the Gulf Rock was flying the "Help wanted" signal.
The officials did not know that Brand was compelled by the snowstorm to use rockets. All the information they possessed was the message from Land's End and its time of dispatch.
Jack Stanhope's easy-going face became very strenuous, indeed, when he heard the news.
The hour stated was precisely the time theDaisywas due at the rock if she made a good trip. Without allowing for any possible contingency save disaster to the two girls and their escort, he rushed to the mooring-place of the 10-ton steam-yachtLapwing, impounded a couple of lounging sailors, fired up, stoked, and steered the craft himself, and was off across the Bay in a quarter of the time that the owner of theLapwingcould have achieved the same result.
His amazement was complete when he encountered the redoubtableDaisybowling home before a seven-knot breeze. He instantly came round and ranged up to speaking distance. When he learnt what had occurred he readily agreed to return to Penzance in order to pick up the relief lighthouse-keepers, and thus save time in transferring them to the rock.
In a word, as Enid Trevillion was safe, he was delighted at the prospect of bringing her back that evening, when the real skipper of theLapwingwould probably have charge of his own boat. There was no hurry at all now.
If they left the harbor at three o'clock, there would still be plenty of light to reach the Gulf Rock. Ben Pollard, glancing over his shoulder as theDaisyraced towards Penzance side by side with theLapwing, was not so sure of this. But the arrangement he had suggested was the best possible one, and he was only an old fisherman who knew the coast, whereas Master Stanhope pinned his faith to the Nautical Almanac and the Rules.
The people most concerned knew nothing of these proceedings.
When Constance and Enid had solemnly decided on the menu for dinner, when they had inspected the kitchen and commended the cleanliness of the cook, Jackson, when they had washed the dishes and discovered the whereabouts of the "tea-things," they suddenly determined that it was much nicer aloft in the sky parlor than in these dim little rooms.
"I don't see why they don't have decent windows," said Enid. "Of course it blows hard here in a gale, but just look at that tiny ventilator, no bigger than a ship's port-hole, with a double storm-shutter to secure it if you please, for all the world as if the sea rose so high!"
Constance took thought for a while.
"I suppose the sea neverdoesreach this height," she said.
Enid, in order to look out, had to thrust her head and shoulders through an aperture two feet square and three feet in depth. They were in the living-room at that moment—full seventy feet above the spring tide high-water mark. Sixty feet higher, the cornice of the gallery was given its graceful outer slope to shoot the climbing wave-crests of an Atlantic gale away from the lantern. The girls could not realize this stupendous fact. Brand had never told them. He wished them to sleep peacefully on stormy nights when he was away from home. They laughed now at the fanciful notion that the sea could ever so much as toss its spray at the window of the living-room.
They passed into the narrow stairway. Their voices and footsteps sounded hollow. It was to the floor beneath that Bates had fallen.
"I don't think I like living in a lighthouse," cried Enid. "It gives one the creeps."
"Surely, there are neither ghosts nor ghouls here," said Constance. "It is modern, scientific, utilitarian in every atom of its solid granite."
But Enid was silent as they climbed the steep stairs. Once she stopped and peeped into her father's bedroom.
"That is where they brought me when I first came to the rock," she whispered. "It used to be Mr. Jones's room. I remember dad saying so."
Constance, on whose shoulders the reassuring cloak of science hung somewhat loosely, placed her arm around her sister's waist in a sudden access of tenderness.
"You have improved in appearance since then, Enid," she said.
"What a wizened little chip I must have looked. I wonder who I am."
"I know who you soon will be if you don't take care."
Enid blushed prettily. She glanced at herself in a small mirror on the wall. Trust a woman to find a mirror in any apartment.
"I suppose Jack will ask me to marry him," she mused.
"And what will you reply?"
The girl's lips parted. Her eyes shone for an instant. Then she buried her face against her sister's bosom.
"O, Connie," she wailed, "I shall hate to leave you and dad. Why hasn't Jack got a brother as nice as himself."
Whereupon Constance laughed loud and long.
The relief was grateful to both. Enid's idea of a happy solution of the domestic difficulty appealed to their easily stirred sense of humor.
"Never mind, dear," gasped Constance at last. "You shall marry your Jack and invite all the nice men to dinner. Good gracious! I will have the pick of the navy. Perhaps the Admiral may be a widower."
With flushed faces they reached the region of light. Brand was writing at a small desk in the service-room.
"Something seems to have amused you," he said. "I have heard weird peals ascending from the depths."
"Connie is going to splice the admiral," explained Enid.
"What admiral?"
"Any old admiral."
"Indeed, I will not take an old admiral," protested the elder.
"Then you had better take him when he is a lieutenant," said Brand.
This offered too good an opening to be resisted.
"Enid has already secured the lieutenant," she murmured, with a swift glance at the other.
Brand looked up quizzically.
"Dear me," he cried, "if my congratulations are not belated—"
Enid was blushing again. She threw her arms about his neck.
"Don't believe her, dad," she said. "She's jealous!"
Constance saw a book lying on the table: "Regulations for the Lighthouse Service." She opened it. Brand stroked Enid's hair gently, and resumed the writing of his daily journal.
"The Elder Brethren!" whispered Constance. "Do they wear long white beards?"
"And carry wands?" added the recovered Enid.
"And dress in velvet cloaks and buckled shoes?"
"And—"
"And say 'Boo' to naughty little girls who won't let me complete my diary," shouted Brand. "Be off, both of you. Keep a lookout for the next ten minutes. If you see any signals from the mainland, or catch sight of theLancelot, call me."
They climbed to the trimming stage of the lantern, which was level with the external gallery. Obedient to instructions, they searched the Land's End and the wide reach of Mount's Bay beyond Carn du. Save a scudding sail or two beating in from the Lizard and a couple of big steamers hurrying from the East—one a Transatlantic Transport liner from London—there was nothing visible. In the far distance the sea looked smooth enough, though they needed no explanation of the reality when they saw the irregular white patches glistening against the hull of a Penzance fishing-smack.
"O, Connie, the reef!" said Enid, suddenly, in a low voice.
They glanced at the turbid retreat of the tide over the submerged rocks. The sea was heavier, the noise louder, now that they listened to it, than when they arrived in theDaisy, little more than an hour earlier. Some giant force seemed to be wrestling there, raging against its bonds, striving feverishly to tear, rend, utterly destroy its invisible fetters. Sometimes, after an unusually impetuous surge, a dark shape, trailing witch-tresses of weed, showed for an instant in the pit of the cauldron. Then a mad whirl of water would pounce on it with a fearsome spring and the fang of rock would be smothered ten feet deep.
For some reason they did not talk. They were fascinated by the power, the grandeur, the untamed energy of the spectacle. The voice of the reef held them spellbound. They listened mutely.
Beneath, Brand wrote, with scholarly ease:
"Therefore I decided that it would best serve the interests of the Board if I sent Bates and Jackson to Penzance in the boat in which my daughter—" he paused an instant and added an "s" to the word—"fortunately happened to visit me. As I would be alone on the rock, and the two girls might be helpful until the relief came, I retained them."
He glanced at the weather-glass in front of him and made a note:
"Barometer falling. Temperature higher."
In another book he entered the exact records. A column headed "Wind direction and force," caused him to look up at the wind vane. He whistled softly.
"S. W.," he wrote, and after a second's thought inserted the figure 6. The sailor's scale, ye landsman, differs from yours. What you term a gale at sea he joyfully hails as a fresh breeze. No. 6 is a point above this limit, when a well-conditioned clipper ship can carry single reefs and top-gallant sails, in chase full and by. No. 12 is a hurricane. "Bare poles," says the scale.
Slowly mounting the iron ladder, he stood beside the silent watchers. The Bay was nearly deserted. No sturdy tug-boat was pouring smoke from her funnel and staggering towards the rock. Northwest and west the darkness was spreading and lowering.
He did not trouble to examine the reef. Its signs and tokens were too familiar to him. Its definite bellow or muttered threat was part of the prevailing influence of the hour or day. He had heard its voice too often to find an omen in it now.
"This time I must congratulate both of you," he said quietly.
"On what?" they cried in unison, shrill with unacknowledged excitement.
"Ladies seldom, if ever, pass a night on a rock lighthouse. You will have that rare privilege."
Enid clapped her hands.
"I am delighted," she exclaimed.
"Will there be a storm, father?" asked Constance.
"I think so. At any rate, only a miracle will enable the tug to reach us before tomorrow, and miracles are not frequent occurrences at sea."
"I know of one," was Enid's comment, with great seriousness for her. He read her thought.
"I was younger then," he smiled. "Now I am fifty, and the world has aged."
They descended into the service-room.
"Let me see," said Enid; "it will be nineteen years on the 22d of next June, since you found me floating serenely towards the Gulf Rock in a deserted boat?"
"Yes, if you insist on accuracy as to the date. I might cavil at your serenity."
"And I was 'estimated' as a year old then? Isn't it a weird thing that a year-old baby should be sent adrift on the Atlantic in an open boat and never a word of inquiry made subsequently as to her fate? I fear I could not have been of much account in those days."
"My dear child, I have always told you that the boat had been in collision during the fog which had prevailed for several days previously. Those who were caring for you were probably knocked overboard and drowned."
"But alone! Utterly alone! That is the strangeness of it. I must be an American. Americans start out to hustle for themselves early in life, don't they."
"Certainly, in that respect you might claim the record."
Brand had not told her all the facts of that memorable June morning. Why should he? They were not pleasant memories to him. Why cumber her also with them? For the rest, he had drawn up and read to her, long ago, a carefully compiled account of her rescue and the steps taken to discover her identity.
"I entered on an active and useful career with no such halo of glory," broke in Constance. "I am just plain English, born in Brighton, of parents not poor but respectable. Mother died a year after my birth, didn't she, dad?"
"You were thirteen months old when we lost her," he answered, bending over the clock-work attachment of the fog bell to wipe off an invisible speck of dust. Since his first term of service on the rock the light had changed from an occulting to a fixed one.
"She is buried there, isn't she," the girl went on. "How strange that, amidst our many journeyings, we have never visited Brighton."
"If I were able to take you to her grave-side, I would not do it," said Brand. "I do not encourage morbid sentiments, even of that perfectly natural kind. Your mother, to you, Constance, is like Enid's to her, a dear but visionary legend. In a degree, it is always so between loved ones lost and those who are left. Truth, honor, work, these are the highest ideals for the individual. They satisfy increasingly. Happy as I am in your companionship, you must not be vexed when I tell you that the most truly joyful moment of my life was conferred when my little friend here first responded accurately to external influences."
He laid his hand on an object resting on a table by itself. It looked like an aneroid barometer, but the others knew it was the marine auriscope to which he had devoted so many patient hours.
"Is it in working order now?" asked Constance instantly, and Enid came nearer. Together they examined the small dial. It was equipped with an arrow-headed pointer, and marked with the divisions of the compass but without the distinguishing letters.
These three understood each other exactly. By inadvertence, the conversation had touched on a topic concerning which Brand was always either vague or silent. Both girls were quick-witted enough to know that Constance's mother was never willingly alluded to either by the lighthouse-keeper or by the elderly Mrs. Sheppard who looked after them in infancy, and was now the housekeeper of Laburnum Cottage.
Constance was annoyed. How could she have been so thoughtless as to cause her father a moment's suffering by bringing up painful reminiscences. But he helped her, being master of himself.
He adjusted a switch in the instrument.
"I had no difficulty in constructing a diaphragm which would intercept all sounds," he said. "The struggle came when I wanted an agent which would distinguish and register a particular set of sounds, no matter what additional din might be prevalent at the same time. My hopes were wrecked so often that I began to despair, until I chanced one day to read how the high-tension induction coil could be tuned to disregard electrical influences other than those issued at the same pitch. My anxiety, until I had procured and experimented with a properly constructed coil, was very trying, I assure you."
"I remember wondering what on earth it was," volunteered Enid. "It sounded like a mathematical snake."
"And I am sorry to say that even yet I am profoundly ignorant as to its true inwardness," smiled Constance.
"Yet you girls delight in poets who bid you hearken to the music of the spheres. I suppose you will admit that the ear of, say, Ben Pollard, is not tuned to such a celestial harmony. However, I will explain my auriscope in a sentence. It only listens to and indicates the direction of foghorns, sirens, and ship's bells. A shrill steam whistle excites it, but the breaking of seas aboard ship, the loud flapping of a propeller, the noise of the engines, of a gale, or all these in combination, leave it unmoved."
"I remember once, when we were going from Falmouth to Porthalla in a fog, how dreadfully difficult it was to discover the whereabouts of another steamer we passeden route," said his daughter.
"Well, with this little chap on the bridge, the pointer would have told the captain unerringly. I don't suppose it will be thick whilst you are here, or you would see it pick up the distant blasts of a steamer long before we can hear them, and follow her course right round the arc of her passage. It is most interesting to watch its activity when there are several ships using their sirens. I have never had an opportunity of testing it on more than three vessels at once, but as soon as I could deduce a regular sequence in the seemingly erratic movements of the indicator, I marked the approach and passing of each with the utmost ease."
"Would that stop collisions at sea?"
"Nothing will do that, because some ship's officers refuse at times to exercise due care. But with my instrument on board two ships, and a time chart attached to the drums, there would be no need for a Board of Trade inquiry to determine whether or not the proper warning was given. To the vast majority of navigators it will prove an absolute blessing."
"You clever old thing!" cried Enid. "I suppose you will make heaps of money out of it."
"The inventor is the last man to make money out of his inventions, as a rule," said Brand. "I suppose I differ from the ordinary poor fellow inasmuch as I am not dependent for a livelihood on the success of my discovery."
"There's not the least little bit of chance of there being a fog tonight?" queried Enid, so earnestly that a wave of merriment rippled through the room.
"Not the least. In any event, you two girls will be in bed and sound asleep at ten o'clock."
"Perish the thought!" cried Constance. "Bed at ten, during our first and only night on a lighthouse!"
"You will see," said her father. "You cannot imagine how the clock dawdles in this circumscribed area. Work alone conquers it. Otherwise, men would quit the service after a month's experience."
"Ship ahoy!" screamed Enid. "Here comes theLapwinground Carn du. Mr. Lawton must have lent her to bring the relief. How kind of him."
"TheLapwingcannot approach the rock," said Brand. "I will signal 'Landing impossible today.' It will save them a useless journey."
He selected the requisite flags from a locker, the phrase he needed being coded. Soon the strong breeze was trying to tear the bunting from the cordage, and though they could not hear the three whistles with which the little yacht acknowledged the signal, they could easily see the jets of steam through their glasses.
Constance happened to overlook the table on which stood the auriscope.
"This thing has actually recorded those whistles," she cried in wonder.
"What sort of whistle has theLapwing?" asked Brand.
"A loud and deep one, worthy of a leviathan. It was a fad of Mr. Lawton's. They say his siren consumes more steam than his engines."
Her father laughed.
"Anyhow, he is sticking to his course," he announced. "I may as well take in the decorations."
Undauntedly, but much flurried by a sea ever increasing in strength as the force of the ebb tide encountered the resistance of the wind, theLapwingheld on. With wind and sea against her she would have made slow work of it. As it was, there was help forthcoming for both journeys unless the wind went back to the north again as rapidly as it had veered to the southwest.
She would not be abreast the rock for nearly an hour, so Brand left the girls in charge of the lookout whilst he visited the oil-room. A wild night, such as he anticipated, demanded full pressure at the lamp. If the air became super-saturated, breakage of the glass chimneys might take place, and he must have a good stock on hand. Water and coal, too, were needed; the double accident to Bates and Jackson had thrown into arrears all the ordinary duties of the afternoon watch.
Naturally, the pair in the lantern found the progress of the yacht exasperatingly slow.
"A niceLapwing," said Enid, scornfully. "I will tell Mr. Lawton he ought to rechristen her theBantam. All her power is in her crow."
When Brand joined them matters became livelier. More accustomed than they to the use of a telescope, he made discoveries.
"The two supernumeraries are there," he announced, "but I cannot see Lawton. Indeed, so far as I can make out, she is commanded by Stanhope, dressed in Ben Pollard's oil-skins."
"He has left Lady Margaret!" cried Constance.
"He never went home!" essayed Enid.
"Poor chap! He was going to take us for a drive tomorrow," said Constance.
"To Morvah," explained Enid, with a syllabic emphasis meant for one pair of ears.
"It is very nice of him to struggle on and have a look at us," said Brand. "He can come close enough to see us, but that is all. Our small megaphone will be useless."
Indeed, theLapwingdared not approach nearer than the Trinity mooring buoy. By that time the three, protected from the biting wind by oilskin coats, were standing on the gallery. The reef was bellowing up at them with a continuous roar. A couple of acres of its surface consisted of nothing more tangible than white foam and driving spray.
Stanhope, resigning the wheel to a sailor, braced himself firmly against the little vessel's foremast and began to strike a series of extraordinary attitudes with his arms and head.
"Why is he behaving in that idiotic manner?" screamed Enid.
"Capitalidea—semaphore—clever fellow, Jack," shouted Brand.
Abashed, Enid held her peace.
The lighthouse-keeper, signalling in turn that he was receiving the message, spelled out the following:
"Is all well?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Bates and Jackson reached hospital. Bates compound fracture. If weather moderates will be with you next tide."
"All right," waved Brand.
The distant figure started again:
"L-o-v-e t-o E-n-i-d."
Enid indulged in an extraordinary arm flourish.
"A-n-d C-o-n-s-t-a-n-c-e."
"That spoils it," she screamed. "It ought to be only kind regards to you, Connie. I believe you are a serpent, a—"
"Do stop your chatter," shouted Brand, and he continued the message:
"Weather looks very bad. Little hope for tonight.Lancelotdue at six. Will see personally that no chance is lost. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," was the response.
TheLapwingfell away astern from the vicinity of the buoy.
"Why is he doing that?" asked Constance, close to her father's ear.
"He is too good a sailor to risk turning her in that broken water. A little farther out there is greater depth and more regular seas."
They watched the yacht in silence. At last her head swung round towards the coast. When broadside on, a wave hit her, and the spray leaped over her masts.
"That gave them a wetting," cried Brand, and his calm tone stilled their ready fear. Indeed, there was greater danger than he wanted them to know. But theLapwingreappeared, shaking herself, and still turning.
"Good little boat!" said Brand. The crisis had passed. She was headed, at full speed, for the Bay. And not too soon. 'Ere she reached the comparative shelter of Clement's Island she was swept three times by green water.
Inside the lantern, their faces ruddy with the exposure, their eyes dancing with excitement, the girls were voluble with delight. Could anything be more thrilling than their experiences that day!
"That semaphore dodge is too precious to be lost," cried Enid. "Connie, you and I must learn the alphabet. You shall teach us this very evening, dad. Fancy me signaling you the whole length of the Promenade: 'Just look at Mrs. Wilson's bonnet,' or 'Here come the Taylor-Smiths. Scoot!' Oh, it's fine."
She whirled her arms in stiff-jointed rigidity and mimicked Stanhope's fantastic posing.
"Why should you scoot when you meet the Taylor-Smiths?" asked Brand.
"Because Mrs. T.-S. hauls us off to tea and gives us a gallon of gossip with every cup."
"I thought your sex regarded gossip as the cream?"
"Sex, indeed! Old Smith is worse than his wife. He doesn't say much, but he winks. One of his winks, at the end of a story, turns an episode into a three-volume novel."
"It seems to me I must teach you the code in my own self-defence," he replied. "And now for tea. Let us have it served here."
They voted this an admirable notion. The girls enlivened the meal by relating to him the doings and sayings of current interest ashore during the past two months. By a queer coincidence, which he did not mention, his relief was again due within a week, just as on the occasion of Enid's first appearance on the rock. The fact struck him as singular. In all probability he would not return to duty. He had completed twenty-one years of active service. Now he would retire, and when the commercial arrangements for the auriscope were completed, he would take his daughters on a long-promised Continental tour, unless, indeed, matters progressed between Stanhope and Enid to the point of an early marriage.
He had foreseen that Stanhope would probably ask Enid to be his wife. He knew the youngster well, and liked him. For the opposition that Lady Margaret might offer he cared not a jot. He smiled inwardly—as the convenient phrase has it—when he reviewed the certain outcome of any dispute between himself and her ladyship. He would surprise her.
Brand, the lighthouse-keeper, and Brand urging the claims of his adopted daughter, would be two very different persons.
Of course, all Penzance knew that he was a gentleman, a scientist in a small way, and a man of means: otherwise Constance and Enid would not have occupied the position they held in local society. Those unacquainted with English ways ofttimes make the mistake of rating a man's social status by the means he possesses or the manner of his life in London. No greater error could be committed. The small, exclusive county town, the community which registers the family connections of many generations, is the only reliable index. Here, to be of gentle birth and breeding—not bad credentials even in the court of King Demos—confers Brahminical rank, no matter what the personal fortunes of the individual.
Brand, it is true, did not belong to a Cornish county family, but there were those who conned him shrewdly. They regarded him as a well-meaning crank, yet the edict went forth that his daughters were to be "received," and received they were, with pleasure and admiration by all save such startled elderly mammas as Lady Margaret Stanhope, who expected her good-looking son to contract a marriage which would restore the failing fortunes of the house.
All unconscious of the thoughts flitting through his brain, for Brand was busy trimming a spare lamp, the two girls amused themselves by learning the semaphore alphabet from a little hand-book which he found for them.
When the night fell, dark and lowering, the lamp was lighted. They had never before seen an eight-wicked concentric burner in use. The shore lighthouses with which they were better acquainted were illuminated by electricity or on the catoptric principle, wherein a large number of small Argand lamps, with reflectors, are grouped together.
To interest them, to keep their eyes and ears away from the low-water orgy of the reef, he explained to them the capillary action of the oil. Although they had learnt these things in school they had not realized the exactness of the statement that oil does not burn, but must first be converted into gas by the application of heat. On the Gulf Rock there were nearly 3,000 gallons of colza oil stored in the tanks beneath, colza being used in preference to paraffin because it was safer, and there was no storage accommodation apart from the lighthouse.
Requiring much greater heat than mineral oil to produce inflammable gas, the colza had to be forced by heavy pressure in the cistern right up to the edge of the wicks, and made to flow evenly over the rims of the burner, else the fierce flame would eat the metal discs as well.
He read them a little lecture on the rival claims of gas and electricity, and demonstrated how dazzlingly brilliant the latter could be on a dark, clear night by showing them the fine light on the Lizard.
"But in hazy weather the oil wins," he said, with the proper pride of every man in his own engine. "Fishermen sailing into Penzance along a course equidistant from the two points tell me that if they can see anything at all on a foggy night they invariably catch a dull yellow radiance from the rock, whilst the Lizard is invisible. The oil has more penetrative power. Its chemical combination is nearer the mean of nature's resources."