!"

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 hunch
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,