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!

CHA