lder
girls were half asleep. Baptiste stepped out to look at the sky. "Come,"
he cried, returning. "We can stop now, it is growing gray in the east,
almost morning."

"But not yet," said Nataline; "we must wait for the first red. A few
more turns. Let's finish it up with a song."

She shook her head and piped up the refrain of the old Canadian chanson:

"En roulant ma boule-le roulant
En roulant ma bou-le."

And to that cheerful music the first night's battle was carried through
to victory.

The next day Fortin spent two hours in trying to repair the clockwork.
It was of no use. The broken part was indispensable and could not be
replaced.

At noon he went over to the mainland to tell of the disaster, and
perhaps to find out if any hostile hand was responsible for it. He found
out nothing. Every one denied all knowledge of the accident. Perhaps
there was a flaw in the wheel; perhaps it had broken itself. That was
possible. Fortin could not deny it; but the thing that hurt him most was
that he got so little sympathy. Nobody seemed to care whether the light
was kept burning or not. When he told them how the machine had been
turned all night by hand, they were astonished. "CRE-IE!" they cried,
"you must have had a great misery to do that." But that he proposed to
go on doing it for a month longer, until December tenth, and to begin
again on April first, and go on turning the light by hand for three
or four weeks more until the supply-boat came down and brought the
necessary tools to repair the machine--such an idea as this went beyond
their horizon.

"But you are crazy, Baptiste," they said, "you can never do it; you are
not capable."

"I would be crazy," he answered, "if I did not see what I must do. That
light is my charge. In all the world there is nothing else so great as
that for me and for my family--you understand? For us it is the chief
thing. It is my Ten Commandments. I shall keep it or be damned."

There was a silence after this remark. They were not very particular
about the use of language at Dead Men's Point, but this shocked them
a little. They thought that Fortin was swearing a shade too hard. In
reality he was never more reverent, never more soberly in earnest.

After a while he continued, "I want some one to help me with the work
on the island. We must be up all the nights now. By day we must get some
sleep. I want another man or a strong boy. Is there any who will come?
The Go