"Here are some letters for you," said the light-keeper, returning from Shipton one noon and handing Dave a package of letters.
"This is a funny-looking one," thought Dave. "It is not written, but printed. Somebody sent it that did not know how to write. Let me see what it says:--
"’DEAR DAVIE I THOUGHT I WOULD WRITE YOU A LITTLE AND SAY I AM WELL AND HOPE YOU ARE GRANSIR IS BETTER BECAUSE I READ TO HIM HE SAYS I LIKE MY TEACHER SHE IS YOUR SISTER SHE SAYS SHE MAY TAKE ME TO THE LIGHTHOUSE AND I WOULD LIKE TO COME I SHALL PRAY FOR YOU WHEN THE STORMS COME AND EVERY DAY YOUR TRUE FRIEND
Dave was so much pleased with this communication that he read it to the light-keeper.
"Dave, I wish you would invite your sister and her friends to come down here. Ask those boys who were with you in the schooner."
"I will try to make it interesting for them."
"Tell us what you know about lighthouses."
"Well, let me think. There is one thing I could do. I have in my drawer an account of lighthouses I have written off at spare moments, just to keep me busy, you know, and I could read that."
"I think we would all like that very much."
"I think you have had some visitors since you have been here that you did not plan for."
"Yes, indeed; and they may come any time, just as your party surprised me. Sometimes, though near me, they may not get to me. I was saying the first day you came here it was the tenth anniversary of a great storm. It was a foreign vessel, a Norwegian bark. The vessel struck on the bar--"
"The fog was very thick, so that they couldn’t have got much warning from the light. The first thing to do now in a fog, of course, is to start the signal. But we had none then--only an old bell I used to strike; but when the wind was to south’ard it carried away from the bar the sound of the bell. This was a southerly storm, and such storms are not likely to be long, but they may blow very hard while they do last. I heard the storm roaring through the night; and when I looked out in the morning, there was this vessel just on the bar! Oh, what a tumult she was in! Such a raging of the waves all around that vessel! I always go off to the help of people if I can reach them; but there was no reaching that vessel with a boat. Yes, I could see them and they could see me in the morning, when the fog lifted, but there was no getting from one to the other. I could see them clinging to the rigging, hanging there as long as the waves would let them. I would watch some immense sea--and they roll up big in a storm, I tell ye--come rushing at the vessel, rolling over it, completely burying the deck. After such seas some one would be missing. I never want to see that sight again. There they were dying, and I couldn’t get anywhere near them! The vessel did not break up at once. She was there the next day, and I went to her, and others went, but we found nobody aboard. I think they saved part of her cargo; but the waves pounded her up fearfully, and carried off many things of her cargo. One by one they came ashore. It did touch me one day, when I was down on the rocks fishing, near the lighthouse at low tide, to see something floating on the water. ’Why, that is a box,’ I said. We are all curious, you know, and I wondered what was in that box. I went to the lighthouse, got a long pole, and reached the box and brought it ashore. I’ll show it to you if you would like to see it."