BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE 285 



lantern. She drew some planks over the hole, and after a fashion 

 stopped the broken windows with pieces of boards or glass. The 

 activity calmed her mind. She saw she was safe if she could hold 

 out until some one came to her relief, or until the store-ship 

 returned again. There were a bag of crackers and several cans of 

 lamp-oil safe from the flames stored in the lantern, but they 

 formed a meagre diet. She trimmed her lamp as was her wont, 

 from time to time stopping to watch the rising sea or scan the 

 distant shore, where the Indians had disappeared. The night was 

 a severe one for coasting vessels. Many a wreck would strew the 

 Keys by the morrow, now that the good light was destroyed. 

 Many a brave ship with its light hearts and cabins full of mirth 

 would " crash together the keel and the mast, to be tossed up aloft 

 in the glee of the wave.'" A sense of duty and self-sacrifice came 

 over her mind, strengthening her to action. "The ships shall 

 have the benefit of the light as long I am here," spoke the girl ; 

 and so, when everything was made as secure in the lantern as her 

 means admitted, she touched the wicks with turpentine, and then 

 with a match. In an instant, like the electric contagion of a 

 heroic deed, the bright light flashed over the seething main, in a 

 train of splendour ; and the mariner, who had been watching for 

 that light from his reeling deck, saw it and blessed it aloud, 

 though he wist not the enduring heart that made it burn. 



Down among the tangled foliage of one of the islands close 

 bordering the far shore was crouched a band of Indians. Over 

 the fire cooked their supper. Their canoes, inverted, lay along the 

 shore. Their blankets and the plunder of their foray were scat- 

 tered around them. The dense hedge of palmetto with its fan- 

 leaves, and the matted cane, bent over them, screening them from 

 the wind, and though on the pulses of the gale they could hear the 

 sobbing of the distant sea, they were secure from the tempest and 

 from want, laughing low with humour, smoking their pipes, drying 

 their leggings and stretching and basking like cats in the genial 

 warmth and light of the fire. They too saw the bright flash of 

 the light-house, as it stepped to its place in the heavens like the 

 star over the cradle of Bethlehem. With their harshly uttered 

 accents of surprise, they started to their feet and peered out from 



