CHAPTER XXXI. 



BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 



"And that unknowing what he did, 

 He leaped amid a murderous band, 

 And saved from outrage worse than death 

 The lady of the land. " 



Coleridge. 



There are some positions in which one is thrown so hopeless, and 

 so complicated in the abundance of their misfortunes, that the 

 heart gives up resistance and lamentation. Then, after a little, 

 there arises a pride of superiority, and the heart grows greater 

 from its conscious scaling of these disasters. They cease to afflict, 

 and are the sources of a bitter pride. 



So from her house of refuge by the sea the mind of the im- 

 prisoned girl ran over her lonely life, her position of disaster, and 

 her feebleness against a nation of foes. Her mind recovered its 

 tone, she became proud of herself, matching her feeble endurance 

 against war, fire, and the girdling waves. She did not flaunt her 

 new-found hardihood, but used the arm of the feeble, and kept 

 concealed in the bottom of the lantern, yet proud of her own 

 endurance and fortitude. She knew that Indian eyes were on the 

 tower, and that the bushes, seemingly inhabited only by the 

 cardinal birds, were sheltering her enemies as well. She peered 

 out from the crevices of the tower, watching her foes or the pass- 

 ing sails that, unconscious of her fate, crept along the horizon, and 

 the sea, in glassy undulations, murmured to the shore. 



As noon rode in the dazzling air and the hollow tower still 

 stood, blackened by the fire, yet seemingly deserted, the Indians, 

 satisfied by the death-like stillness, stole from their hiding-places 

 to examine their work of destruction. First one crept out, with 



