"Well, that's not very likely either, for I never was took bad in my
life since I took the measles, and that's more than twenty years ago.
Come, Pup, don't let us look at the black side o' things, let us try to
be cheerful, my dog. Hallo!"
The exclamation was caused by the appearance of a green billow, which in
the uncertain light seemed to advance in a threatening attitude towards
the beacon as if to overwhelm it, but it fell at some distance, and only
rolled in a churning sea of milky foam among the posts, and sprang up
and licked the beams, as a serpent might do before swallowing them.
"Come, it was the light deceived me. If I go for to start at every wave
like that I'll have a poor night of it, for the tide has a long way to
rise yet. Let's go and have a bit supper, lad."
Bremner rose from the anvil, on which he had seated himself, and went up
the ladder into the cook-house above. Here all was pitch dark, owing to
the place being enclosed all round, which the mortar-gallery was not,
but a light was soon struck, a lamp trimmed, and the fire in the stove
kindled.
Bremner now busied himself in silently preparing a cup of tea, which,
with a quantity of sea-biscuit, a little cold salt pork, and a hunk of
stale bread, constituted his supper. Pup watched his every movement
with an expression of earnest solicitude, combined with goodwill, in his
sharp intelligent eyes.
When supper was ready Pup had his share, then, feeling that the duties
of the day were now satisfactorily accomplished, he coiled himself up at
his master's feet, and went to sleep. His master rolled himself up in a
rug, and lying down before the fire, also tried to sleep, but without
success for a long time.
As he lay there counting the number of seconds of awful silence that
elapsed between the fall of each successive billow, and listening to the
crash and the roar as wave after wave rushed underneath him, and caused
his habitation to tremble, he could not avoid feeling alarmed in some
degree. Do what he would, the thought of the wrecks that had taken
place there, the shrieks that must have often rung above these rocks,
and the dead and mangled bodies that must have lain among them, _would_
obtrude upon him and banish sleep from his eyes.
At last he became somewhat accustomed to the rush of waters and the
tremulous motion of the beacon. His frame, too, exhausted by a day of
hard toil, refused to support itself, and he sank into slumber. But it
was not unbroken. A falling cinder from the sinking fire would awaken
him with a start; a larger wave than usual would cause him to spring up
and look round in alarm; or a shrieking sea-bird, as it swooped past,
would induce a dream, in which the cries of drowning men arose, causing
him to awake with a cry that set Pup barking furiously.
Frequently during that night, after some such dream, Bremner would get
up and descend to the mortar-gallery to see that all was right there.
He found the waves always hissing below, but the starry sky was calm and
peaceful above, so he returned to his couch comforted a little, and fell
again into a troubled sleep, to be again awakened by frightful dreams of
dreadful sights, and scenes of death and danger on the sea.
Thus the hours wore slowly away. As the tide fell the noise of waves
retired a little from the beacon, and the wearied man and dog sank
gradually at last into deep, untroubled slumber.
So deep was it, that they did not hear the increasing noise of the gulls
as they wheeled round the beacon after having breakfasted near it; so
deep, that they did not feel the sun as it streamed through an opening
in the woodwork and glared on their respective faces; so deep, that they
were ignorant of the arrival of the boats with the workmen, and were
dead to the shouts of their companions, until one of them, Jamie Dove,
put his head up the hatchway and uttered one of his loudest roars, close
to their ears.
Then indeed Bremner rose up and looked bewildered, and Pup, starting up,
barked as furiously as if its own little black body had miraculously
become the concentrated essence of all the other noisy dogs in the wide
world rolled into one!