LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 568, 13 April 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE LIGHTHOUSE OF THE GANNETS. IN FOUR CHAPTERS. Chapter 11.— Danger". ( Continued ) Then came a dreadful moment of feverish expectation. A crash of breaking planks, a shouting, and trampling, and clutching at every point of vantage, and neither Eosa nor Mrs Lee, nor even the gentlemen of the party, ever quite realised how narrow had been their escape, as they emerged, wet, dripping, and breathless, from the clouds of flying spray, and began one by one to ascend the copper ladder that formed the only means of access to the lighthouse. But all, crew and passengers, were safe ashore, though the Delight was immediately afterwards a mere heap of drifting wreck, tossed to and fro among the eddies between the half sunken rocks, over which the sea broke in thunder. At the head of the ladder stood a tall, melancholy-eyed man, whom, by his dress, the newcomers concluded to be the keeper of the lighthouse, while behind him came a young sailor lad, whose beardless face contrasted with the unshaven chin and strongly marked features of his senior. • You are welcome, as what Christians would not be, to such poor accommodation as I have to offer,' said the elder man, whose garb was that of a sailor, but whose speech had a fluency unusual among mariners: 'a roof at anyrate, and a fire presently whereby to dry your wet clothes, and the government rations of rum, biscuit, and salt meat. This is not a commodious place, ladies; but I hardly thought, when, five minutes since, I saw your boat going fast to splinters against the ragged rocks below, that you would be standing here safe and sound. Lookers-on, as the saying is, see most of the game, and you've had a narrow squeeze for it. A Eavenscombe boat, or one from Studley ! Why, it's Skipper Mawle, surely ?' 'Yes, Mr Willis, I be,' answered the old man ; ' that is, in course, if I ought to be called a skipper without even a craft to be master of. It cost me fifteen years of hard saving before I bought the Delight, and now she's gone, like a broken tobacco-pipe.' ' The wreck of your boat shall be no loss to you, Mawle, in a money point \of view,' said Mr Damer in a kindly tone ; ' I can promise you that. By this time the keeper of the lighthouse had conducted his unexpected guests into a large, low-ceiled room, the white-washed walls of which were adorned by a few cheap prints, a copy of the " Nautical Almanac," and some old brass-hilted cutlasses and telescopes hanging to rusty nails. A ladder led upwards to the loft-like upper story where the lamp was kept, and three hammocks, as on board a ship-of-war, swung in their respective corners. The lad was already busy kindling a fire in the cooking-stove, and imErovised seats were provided for the ladies ; ut Mrs Lee, as she looked around her, could not repress a shudder. ' Will it be long, do you think, before we can be taken away from here ?' she asked, addressing herself to no one especially. There was a singular gravity in the face of the man who had been addressed as Willis, as he replied : ' Who can tell ? If the weather mends, and a vessel comes within hail, there's a chance ; not else.' ' Have you not regular visits from the shore?' asked Mr Damer, as he placed a wo"deu bench near the lire for the accommodation of Miss Lee and her mother. 'Yes, we have, sir,' answered Willis moodily. 'Tuesday, if the sea allows, the boat will bring fresh provisions. Bring a new hand, too, she will, in place of the one that's missed the number of his mess thi ee weeks ago. Poor Tom was standing on the stones below, not two yards from the ladder foot, when a bigger wave than common washed him clear oft' the platform, and we were as powerless to help as new-born babes could have been. He wasn't the first that's been swept off the Gannet. Let's hope he'll be the last; but all our lives are in the Lord's hand.'

' What do you rueau ?' asked Mr Darner, who saw that there was a deep earnestness underlying the man's gloomy vagueness of speech. ' I mean that the lighthouse is going to pieces, and that four-and-twenty hours of storm, such as we often have here, will send us' ' Where ?' exclaimed Mrs Lee, with white lips, as Willis hesitated to conclude his speech. ' You hear it give the answer, lady, do you not ?' returned the keeder of the lighthouse after a pause, during which nothing

was heard but the shrieking of the wind, and the boom of the resounding waves. ' The voice of the strong cruel sea hungering for our poor lives. If the wind does not drop, nothing earthly can save us.' Chapter lII.—A Sail ! • Is he mad ?' whispered Mr "Darner in the ear of the old boatman Mawle : but low as his tone was, Willis overheard the question, and took upon himself to reply to it. ' No, sir ; I am sound enough so far as my wits go,' he answered civilly, but sadly; ' though many a better head than mine has been turned by work such as mine. Few lighthouse keepers can hold out, nerve and braiu, so long as I've done. You don't know what it is to have your ears filled, through daylight and darkness, with the roar of the enemy so near to one, to see no prospect but the waste of gray waters hemming in one's solitary dwelling. All this, you'll say, is wide of the mark. I only mention it to shew you that a man's intellect may remain unimpaired, though his manner, from lonely living, may come to be odd and strange. Anyhow, the lighthouse is going to bits, as an unseaworthy ship might do. The boy Bill knows it as well as I do.' ' I'm afraid Mr Willis speaks gospel truth,' said the master of the late Delight, whose deep voice now made itself heard above the confused utterances of the rest of the party. ' 'Tis common talk among us blue-jackets how the building here on the Gannets stands sorely in need of repairs, and the wonder is, rather, it has kept its own so long. It's an old lighthouse this, and was ill-built, with iron bolts where copper should have been, and the timber of the foundations, that were sound heart-of-oak piles in their day, have rotted with age and damp. Two year agone the government surveyor came to see it, and he promised as repairs should be done. Never a stick nor a clamp has been changed, to my knowledge. You, squire, as has been a parliament man, understands how what oughter be done don't get done.

Mr Darner notified a hurried assent. His was a difficult task. Mr Lee, a man of average sense, but weak in nerve and muscle, was unfit to calm, in so awful a situation, the fears of his half-hysterical wife ; while Eosa, braver than her mother, a noble girl, who only lacked the stimulus of love to euable her to confront peril boldly at the loved oue's side, did not love him—Mr Dalmer of Darner Park. It was hard to have to ca'm the.nervous anxiety of the one, the natural timidity of the other, while all the time the instinct which prompts all of us to hold on to life until the last, was asserting itself in Mr Darner's breast.

The men, gathered under that menaced roof, acquitted themselves fairly well so far as nvinliness went. Mawle, an old man, with two daughters, and with grandchildren that were used to prattle and play about on the beach within reach of the brown caressing hand of the aged sea king, seemed to think a good deal more of the dear faces that he might never see again than of his own fate. The young sailors, like the junior lighthouse keeper, gave up hope with a sigh or two, but with marvellously few words. Mr Damer seemed courageous and unselfish; Mr Lee, quiet and composed; while Eosa appeared only heedful of her mother's terror.

'Can we do anything, Wdlis,' said Mr Damer, 'to stave off the breaking up of the lighthouse? Here we are, half-a-dozen strong men and sailors too—have the knack of engineering; and perhaps' ' Useless, sir, if we were sixty, instead of six,' returned the lighthouse keeper, after a moment's consideration. 'We want a derrick here, and boring-tools, and braziers, and the calmest of weather, that iron and copper, and lead and timber, may get a clutch of the slippery stone below. Why, sir, when first I was sent here, the Gannet's Brood, as they call the smaller rocks, were twice as many and twice as big. and they made a screen for the lighthouse, on which now the whole strength of the Atlantic spends itself.' ' That's true,' rejoined Mawle, 'When I was a boy, we counted the Ganne's as twenty-nine ; they're eleven now. Mr Willis, thtre, hasn't allays earned his living by the sea, as you may tell by his speech ; but he has heard the thunder of the salt water when most of us were well asleep.' All this time the mighty sea was dealing stroke after stroke upon the more exposed iiauk of the lighthouse, that trembled beneath the. blows, as if it were a birch tree quivering under the fierce impact of a fitful gale. The wind howled around the wooden turret wherein were the lamps, soon to be lighted. The very planking of the floor shook ominously beneath the tread of those whose tenure of life seemed to depend on the endurance of the rusted fastenings that alone held up the entire structure. ' If I'm a judge of weather,' said one of the Delight's crew, a sallow, grizzled, little sailor, ' it's getting worse, not The wind's not stronger, but the sea is, and them big Atlantic waves are the awkwardest, short of Cape Horn, that ever Jack Judkins had to deal with. I told you, skipper, that I smelt mischief, before we sailed to-day, but you wouldn't heed a broken-down, longvoyage man like me. We'll be' The rest of Mr John Judkins' discourse was cut short. There was a crash of breaking woodwork below, and a smashing of glass, and a gurgling of angry water, and then a piercing shriek of female voices, as through a breach in the wall the waves were now gaining access. It was plain that the rocking, trembling structure was no longer tenable. ' I've looked for this,' exclaimed Willis, who seemed to gain energy from the very desperation of the position, ' this many a day. To stop here is to perish, like a rat in a hole. Our only place of refuge is the Gannet's Back, and our only hope that some of us may be found living when, after the storm is spent, a fishing lugger may pass within hail I 'll show you, at any rate, how to stave off death for a while. Follow quick.' The Gannet's Back, so called, was a long and sharp ridge of black wave-worn rock, which as the highest spot of the ground to be found within the limits of the islet, afforded the best chance of at least temporary safety to those driven forth from the lighthouse, now tottering to its fall. It was, however, difficult to maintain a firm foothold on the narrow spine of crumbling rock, over the lower portion of which the surf broke heavily; while not a part of it was high enough above the surface of the water to be free from the spray, which mingled with the now fast-falling rain. While still the lightnight flashed, and the thunder bellowed in the distance, as the storm rolled on to the eastward. (jTo be continued.)