The Pillar of Light Part 34

Brand rose to his feet, as was his way when deeply moved.

"Thank G.o.d, yes!" he cried.

A faint hoot came to them through the chortling of the wind.

"One of our visitors," shouted Brand, "and here we are gossiping as though snugly seated in arm-chairs at the fireside."

He hurried to the gallery, putting on an oil-skin coat.

"We _must_ win through, and I guess I'll play ball with my father-in-law," quoth Pyne to himself as he followed.

This time it was the _Falcon_ alone, and she signaled with a lamp that it was deemed best to defer active operations until the following afternoon. The tide at dawn would not suit.

She went off, and the two men returned to the grateful shelter of the service-room.

Brand forbade further talk. Pyne must rest now and relieve him at three o'clock. The youngster needed no feather-bed: he was asleep in amazingly quick time. There is a supperless hunger which keeps people awake at night with a full larder in the house. The crude article differs from the cultured one so greatly that the man who hungers of necessity cannot sleep too much.

Thus far, the inhabitants of the lighthouse had been given quite enough nutriment to maintain life. There was no reason why any, even the most delicate, should be in real danger during the next forty-eight hours.

But scientific reasoning and the animal instincts of mankind clash at times; in that lay the danger whose sullen shadow was deepening the lines in the corners of Brand's eyes.

Every hour, the officer on duty and some men of the watch visited him to report that all was well below. Some of the less drunken mutineers were pitifully sober now: the others were maudlin. Beyond the few words exchanged on this and kindred topics, he was left alone with his thoughts throughout the silent watch. Pyne slept heavily. Glancing at times at the youngster's stalwart figure and firm, handsome face, Brand found himself reviewing the buried years. He thought of the days when he, too, looked forth on the world with the stern enthusiasm of triumphant youth.

Long-forgotten ghosts were resurrected, shattered ideals built up again.

He wondered, if the decades rolled back, would he decide, a second time, to abandon the fine career which lay at his feet and withdraw his grief and his talents to the seclusion of lonely rocks and silent headlands!

He had been happy, as men count happiness, during the decades. No cloud had arisen to mar the complete content of his life. The blossoming of the girls into delightful womanhood was an increasing joy to him, and it was pa.s.sing strange that his little household should be plunged into a whirlpool of events in the very hour when their domesticity seemed to be most a.s.sured. The changeful moods of the elements found no counterpart in his nature. He, knowing the sea, did not expect it to remain fixed in one aspect. Whether in storm or calm the contrary would surely happen 'ere many days had pa.s.sed. But life was a different thing. How came it that at the very close of so many years of a.s.sociation with the fickle ocean she should play such a trick on him and his daughters, enfold them with perils, s.n.a.t.c.h them from the quiet pleasures of the life they had planned for the future, and thrust upon them, even if they escaped with their lives, a publicity which he, at any rate, abhorred and even dreaded.

He harbored no delusions on this point. He knew that the drama of the Gulf Rock was now filling the columns of newspapers all over the world.

He and his beloved girls would be written about, discussed, described in fulsome language, pictured by black and white artists, and eulogized by wide-awake editors eager to make much of a topic dear to the public mind.

On the rock they were undoubtedly in grave danger. Death confronted them--death at once extraordinary and ghastly. No tyrant of the Middle Ages, with all his paraphernalia for wringing truth or lies out of cringing wretches, had devised such a fate as threatened if the inconstant sea should choose to render the reef altogether unapproachable for many days. Yet, if help came, he and those dear to him were already steeped in unavoidable notoriety, bringing in its train certain vague disabilities which he had striven to avoid for over twenty years.

And all this because one fierce gale, out of the many he had endured, sprang into being at a moment when his mates were incapacitated and his daughters happened to pay him a surprise visit.

"It is an insane freak of fortune," he muttered, "so incomprehensible, so utterly out of focus with common events, that if I were a superst.i.tious man, I should regard it as betokening the approach of some great epoch in my life. Surely, a merciful Providence would not bring my girls here to subject them to the lingering torture of hunger and thirst. I must not think of it further. That way lies madness."

There was at least one other troubled soul on the rock which divined some sinister portent in the storm. Mrs. Vansittart, even at this moment, was staring into the black void with questioning eyes.

He resolutely threw back his head as if he would hurl into the outer darkness the gibbering phantom which whispered these words of foreboding. Although the lamp needed no attention just then, he climbed to the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g stage merely to find relief in mechanical action. He carefully examined the adjustment, and, to judge how the weather was shaping, went out into the gallery to look at the distant lights.

The three quick flashes of the Seven Stones Lightship were very clear.

That was a good sign. The wind came from that quarter, and, bl.u.s.tering though it was, driving gigantic waves before it into the loud embrace of the reef, it maintained the good promise of the last few hours.

Seeking the comparative shelter of the east side, he gazed steadily at the Lizard. Its two fixed electric beams, nearly in line with the Gulf Rock, were dull and watery. A local squall of rain was sweeping down from the land. Changeable, threatening, unsettled--the meteorologist might apply any of these terms to the prevalent conditions.

Far out in the Channel he saw the twinkling masthead lights of several steamers. Blow high or low, mails must travel and vessels put to sea. On such a night, at other times, he would re-enter the lighthouse with a cheery sense of its comfort and home-like aspect. Now he dreaded the brilliant interior of the service-room. Its garish aspect ill accorded with the patient misery, the useless repinings, the inebriate stupor which crouched beneath. If he and those committed to his charge were to be saved, either the sea must be stilled or another miracle of the loaves and fishes enacted.

There, alone on the gallery, amidst the din of howling wind and ceaseless plaint of the waves, he seemed to be apart, cut off from the sufferings within. He lifted his eyes to the sombre arch of the heavens.

Men said the age of miracles had pa.s.sed. Pray G.o.d it might not be so!

When Brand went out, the sudden rush of cold air through the little door leading to the balcony aroused Pyne.

That young gentleman was rudely awakened from a seriously vivid dream.

He fancied that Constance and he were clinging to the tail of an enormous kite, which had been made to hover over the rock by a green imp seated in an absurdly small boat.

They were solemnly advised by other gnomes, imps with sparkling, toad-like eyes, to entrust themselves to this precarious means of escape, but the instant they dropped off the ledge of the gallery their weight caused the kite to swoop downwards. The resultant plunge into the ocean and Constance's farewell shriek were nothing more terrifying than the chill blast and whistle of the air current admitted by Brand. But Pyne did not want to go to sleep again. He did not like emerald-hued spirits which arranged such unpleasant escapades.

He straightened his stiff limbs and sat up.

He was about to feel in a pocket for his pipe--he experienced the worst pangs of hunger after waking in such fashion--when he saw a woman's head and shoulders emerging out of the stairway.

At first he thought it was Constance, and he wondered why she had m.u.f.fled her face in the deep collar of a cloak, but the visitor paused irresolutely when her waist was on a level with the floor.

She uttered a little gasp of surprise.

"You, Charlie?" she cried. "I thought you slept in the kitchen?"

"No, Mrs. Vansittart," he said. "I am a.s.sistant-keeper and I am here most all the time with Mr. Brand. But what in the name of goodness--"

"I was restless," explained the lady hurriedly. "If I remained another minute among those women I should have screamed aloud. How peaceful you are here. Where is Mr. Brand?"

"Guess he's gone outside to squint at the weather. But come right in. I can offer you a chair. Mr. Brand wants to see you, and this is a quiet time for a chat."

"How does he know me? What did he say?"

Mrs. Vansittart pressed her left hand to her breast. With the other she kept the high collar over her mouth and cheeks. Pyne could only see her eyes, and the alarmed light that leaped into them increased his astonishment at her unexpected presence.

"It seems to me," he answered, "that if you just walk up four more steps and sit down you can ask him all those things yourself."

"Were you speaking of me to him."

"I did happen to mention you."

"And he said he knew me?"

"No, ma'am. He said nothing of the sort. But, for mercy's sake, what mystery is there about it?"

"Mystery! None whatever. I was mistaken. I have never met him. I came now to explain that to him. Oh--"

She dived suddenly as the gallery door opened. Brand caught a fleeting glimpse of her vanishing form.

"Who was that?" he asked.

Pyne had found his pipe and was filling it with tobacco.

"Mrs. Vansittart," he answered.

"Paying her long-deferred visit, I suppose. She chose a curious hour."